ONE OF SEVEN WAYS OF SEEING
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Experiential evidence is a meta-category of evidence that is less objective than empirical evidence, encompassing suggestions from commonly accepted standards, norms, and the opinions of qualified experts.
Anecdotes and professional experience can suggest useful questions without showing how representative a case is. Structured consultation with several experts, such as the Delphi method, can expose differences in judgment, but the quality of the result still depends on the evidence and the panel.
These notes to Kahneman’s chapter on expert intuition include the Getty kouros example and references on intuition as recognition. They raise a question about whether a strong expert hunch is reliable, without supplying the chapter’s full argument.
Experts cannot predict rare, high-impact events (Black Swans) but act as if they can, leading to massive forecast errors. The solution is to focus on tinkering and maximizing exposure to positive Black Swans rather than naive prediction.
Parrish suggests asking a claimed expert to explain details in plain language, handle unfamiliar cases, describe failures and identify the limits of their knowledge. Fluent delivery alone does not establish understanding.
Explicit memory involves conscious, intentional recall of information, including personal experiences (episodic) and factual knowledge (semantic).
Rethinking the equilibrium or exploiting the assumptions that others rely on can provide a competitive advantage. By shifting away from expected patterns, you can make yourself unpredictable and resilient.
Exploration means trying options to learn about them; exploitation means choosing what seems best from the evidence already available. The balance depends on the cost of experimenting, the uncertainty about alternatives, and how many future decisions could benefit from what you learn.
The explore/exploit tradeoff describes the balance between trying new things (exploration) to gather information and sticking with known good options (exploitation) to maximize reward. Formalized as the multi-armed bandit problem, it applies to decisions in everyday life, technology, medicine, and more, with optimal strategies depending on one's time horizon.
Exponential backoff increases the waiting interval after repeated failures, often by doubling it and choosing a random delay within the interval. It reduces repeated contention and retry traffic. Whether attempts eventually stop is a separate policy; applications to perseverance or forgiveness are analogies rather than consequences of the algorithm.
Methods that worked in the past may become less useful as conditions change. Reassess their assumptions and consider alternatives alongside the approaches you retain.
Musashi urges a fighter to coordinate the whole body in an attack, using the sword as an extension of the body and committing fully to the movement.
Paterson advises investigators to keep asking questions after identifying an external factor. Review how the organization assessed a dependency, assigned responsibility, monitored performance, and prepared for a failure.
When an external event contributes to a problem, root cause analysis should also examine how the organization anticipated and responded to it. Supplier oversight, changing circumstances and dependence on consultants can reveal weaknesses that the organization can address.
When an external event causes a problem, also examine the vulnerability that allowed it to do so. Root-cause analysis can identify reasonable precautions, contingency plans, or changes in goals without assuming that every external threat was foreseeable or preventable.
Organizations face external pressures from market demand, politics and law, social and ethical expectations, technology, and competitors. Banasiewicz examines how shared purpose, organizational memory, and limits on information processing shape their responses.
Skepticism should not halt at religion's front door; it is appropriate and vital for religious people to apply critical thinking to avoid scams, bad beliefs, and to identify pseudoscientific claims within their faith.
Extremistan is Taleb’s name for domains where a single extreme observation can dominate a total, such as wealth, book sales, or citations. Averages and ordinary fluctuations may then give a poor picture of concentration and risk.
Taleb uses Mediocristan for quantities whose extremes have limited influence on the total, and Extremistan for quantities where a single observation can dominate it. In Extremistan, a sample average may change sharply when a rare extreme value appears.
Taleb contrasts Mediocristan, where individual observations have limited influence on a large aggregate, with Extremistan, where rare extreme observations can dominate it. The distinction asks how much an average can conceal and whether a thin-tailed model fits the quantity being studied.
Prioritize long-term direction over short-term speed by making decisions that increase your velocity toward your ultimate goal, as exemplified by Mae West's career strategy.
Having enough savings to act independently without financial pressure, allowing one to choose work based on passion rather than necessity. It frees you from outside authority and prostituting your mind.
Taleb argues that demonstrated capability can influence an opponent more strongly than verbal threats. He develops the argument through a fictional Mafia warning, legends about the Assassins, and his own accounts of photographing abusive strangers. He also argues that public web-shaming carries risks beyond the immediate confrontation.
Build a learning process that includes manageable attempts, feedback, and revision. Fear of failure need not stop disciplined practice, but mistakes help only when you examine them and change your approach.
A mental model that examines decisions through the lens of false positives (undeserved outcomes) and false negatives (missed deserved outcomes). By abstracting arguments to these two types of errors, it clarifies disagreements in areas such as social policy, personal risk-taking, and even jetlag management.
The principle that a scientific theory must be able to be proven wrong by conceivable observations; if it cannot be falsified, it is not empirical science.
A falsifiable hypothesis can conflict with possible observations. Seeking such observations helps test an idea more seriously than collecting only examples that fit it.
Skepticism does not require rejecting fiction; it only warns against confusing fiction with reality. Fantasy and storytelling are valuable for creativity, learning, and emotional experience, as long as the boundary between the imagined and the real is maintained.
Growth that outruns a system’s capacity can trigger delays and setbacks. Senge argues for a sustainable pace rather than assuming the fastest possible growth will produce the best long-term result.
Fat Tony is a character embodying practical, street-smart thinking that relies on experiential knowledge and skepticism of theoretical models, often used to contrast with nerdy, academic reasoning.
A thought experiment contrasting the practical, instinct-driven approach of Fat Tony with Socrates' demand for explicit definitions, arguing that tacit knowledge is valuable and over-questioning can undermine intuitive competence.
A technique to identify your strengths and areas for improvement by writing down expected outcomes of important decisions and comparing them with actual results after a year.
Intuitive expertise develops through practice in a sufficiently regular environment with clear, timely feedback. A professional may acquire reliable intuition for some tasks while remaining poor at others whose outcomes are delayed or ambiguous.
Feedback loops are processes where a system's output also acts as input, either balancing toward equilibrium or reinforcing change. Understanding them improves decision-making, communication, and adapting to feedback in personal and professional life.
The passage contrasts a quick emotional reaction with deliberate reasoning that considers longer-term consequences.
This classification groups styles of self-presentation under labels for embracing or rejecting conventional femininity. The labels are interpretive categories, not an established explanation of women’s motives.
An opinionated taxonomy that interprets women’s dating behavior through market concepts such as beauty, scarcity, investment, and expectations of a partner. Its Ultra-Girl and Anti-Girl archetypes can overlap or change over time; the categories express the author’s reading of behavior and motives.
Feynman diagrams represent terms in calculations of particle interactions. Their lines and vertices make relationships easier to organize, illustrating how a useful representation can support both reasoning and communication.
The Feynman Technique is a learning method that emphasizes teaching an idea to deepen understanding, involving four steps: study, teach, identify gaps, and simplify.
The habits associated with the Feynman Technique—asking questions and explaining ideas clearly—can be useful beyond physics. Hollins uses Feynman’s interest in drawing and scientists’ reflections on awe to explore that possibility.
This step of the Feynman Technique involves writing down everything you know about a subject to define the boundaries of your current knowledge and identify gaps.
Richard Feynman's approach to learning and discovery emphasizes playful curiosity and relaxation, contrasting with intense work. He argues that serious play—focusing on interesting problems without worrying about importance—can lead to breakthrough insights.
A method for discovering how an organization's creative process can naturally generate new value by connecting with key creative individuals, as illustrated by Nike's sustainability journey.
The fight or flight response is a physiological reaction to perceived threats, preparing the body to either confront or flee from danger. This concept can be applied to everyday challenges such as deadlines or interpersonal stress, and can be managed through techniques like deep breathing.
Taleb compares separating market information from noise with filtering static from a telephone signal. The analogy highlights the risk of treating fluctuations as meaningful changes.
Comparing beliefs across different situations can reveal a shared underlying principle. Cheng uses analogies to identify her preference for preventing false negatives over false positives, then examines how that preference shapes her views.
A repeatable testing process lets you compare candidate inputs and refine them from the results. It can organize a search even when you do not know which inputs will work.
Grant uses reported cases of Anton’s syndrome, in which people do not recognize their blindness, as an analogy for unnoticed limits in knowledge and judgment. Recognizing those limits makes it possible to seek feedback and revise a confident view.
An idea’s success depends partly on who adopts, supports, and develops it. Early followers can help an invention spread, while later popularizers may receive more credit than earlier contributors. Adoption and recognition do not by themselves establish originality.
First-principles thinking examines the facts, constraints, and starting assumptions behind a problem, then builds an approach from those foundations.
The first principle of iatrogenics states that we do not need evidence of harm to claim a drug or procedure is dangerous, as harm is often delayed and hidden while benefits are immediate and visible.
Separate what you know about a problem from what you assume, then work from those foundations toward your goal. The author illustrates the approach by examining fears about leaving a job.
First-order thinking makes snap decisions that fix short-term problems but often create long-term issues, while second-order thinking considers far-reaching consequences to choose the best overall solution.
First-principles thinking involves breaking down complex problems into their fundamental truths or basic components and rebuilding solutions from there, rather than relying on analogy or existing conventions.
The principle of 'first do no harm' (primum non nocere) from medicine is applied to other domains, highlighting that interventions can cause unintended harmful side effects (iatrogenics), often due to denial of antifragility and overconfidence in human intervention.
A short-term fix that alleviates symptoms but creates unforeseen long-term consequences, often requiring more of the same fix and leading to a vicious cycle of dependency.
Flashes of inspiration are starting points in creative processes where ideas seem to arise spontaneously, often in art, music, and mathematics, before logical development takes over.
Making scout mindset (truth-seeking) a core part of your identity can help you overcome resistance from other identities. It becomes easier to change your mind and face hard truths.
Musashi advises changing tactics at a combat impasse while continuing the attack. His emphasis is on practising enough variations to change approach without hesitation.
Flow is deep absorption in an activity, often accompanied by a sense of control and altered awareness of time. Csíkszentmihályi’s model emphasizes a workable balance between challenge and skill, clear goals, and feedback.