The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts

In a non-ergodic system, the individual, over time, does not get the average outcome of the group. This is what we saw in our gambling thought experiment.

Simon formulated the notion now known as bounded rationality: we cannot possibly measure and assess everything as if we were a computer; we therefore produce, under evolutionary pressures, some shortcuts and distortions. Our knowledge of the world is fundamentally incomplete, so we need to avoid getting into unanticipated trouble. And even if our k

We have big brains, but we live in an incomprehensibly large universe. The virtue in thinking probabilistically is that you will force yourself to stop and smell the data—slow down, and consider the imperfections in your thinking. Over time, you should find that this makes your decision making better.

My colleague Phil Tetlock finds that forecasting skill is less a matter of what we know than of how we think.