Probabilistic Thinking

June 2026

• Jun 1, 2026ConceptsBetter Decisions Under Uncertainty: A Practical Guide and ToolkitA sound decision can still produce a bad outcome, and luck can hide weak reasoning, so the only thing you can improve is the process. The sharpest figure here is a calibration one: when people say they are 90 percent confident, studies consistently find them right roughly 70 percent of the time. From there it works through availability, sunk cost and anchoring, Gary Klein's premortem protocol, Bezos's two-way door test, and a ten-item checklist.12 MIN1.8k

March 2026

• Mar 5, 2026ConceptsWhat Is Decision Making Under Uncertainty?Frank Knight separated risk, where probabilities are known, from uncertainty, where they cannot be meaningfully assigned, and most big decisions sit on the second side. This guide maps four levels of knowability, then covers satisficing, reversible bets, scenario planning and Bayesian updating. Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment study, spanning about 20 years and more than 28,000 forecasts from 284 experts, found most specialists predicted little better than chance.32 MIN28.0k
• Mar 4, 2026ConceptsProbabilistic Thinking for Enhanced Decision-MakingProbabilistic thinking reasons in likelihoods and distributions rather than certainties, and binary thinking destroys your ability to learn: a good 70% bet that loses gets labeled a bad decision. Annie Duke calls that resulting, judging decision quality by outcome instead of process. Why probably means anywhere from 50% to 90% to different people, how P10, P50 and P90 ranges beat point estimates, and how Bayesian updating works in practice.27 MIN6.0k

November 2025

• Nov 9, 2025Work SkillsDecision Trees: Visualizing Choices and Their OutcomesHow mapping choices makes uncertainty manageable. Merck faced whether to develop Mectizan for river blindness knowing affected populations in sub-Saharan Africa could not afford it, and Roy Vagelos's team charted outcomes of developing versus not, assigned probabilities to approval, and weighed reputational value against financial loss. The analysis supported development, and the company has since donated billions of treatments.21 MIN49.6k