Decisions and Judgment

Confidence and coherence

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011. Amazon

Confidence is a feeling produced by how coherent the story in your head is, not by the quality of the evidence behind it. Confidence in an interview or a pitch is a claim about the speaker's state, not about the world.

Used in Confidence is not signal.

Forecasting and calibration

Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment, 2005. Amazon

Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting, 2015. Amazon

In a twenty-year study of expert predictions, the most confident experts were among the least accurate. The good forecasters hedged, updated on new evidence, and kept score. A person who gives a range and updates it is behaving like a forecaster; one who gives a number and defends it is behaving like a pundit.

Used in Confidence is not signal.

One-way and two-way doors

Jeff Bezos, Amazon 2015 letter to shareholders, April 2016. sec.gov

Irreversible decisions deserve slow deliberation; reversible ones should be made fast by the owner. Most engineering decisions are reversible, and the cost of deliberating exceeds the cost of being wrong.

Used in Drive ownership.