Mental model · Numbers & chance
Bayesian updating
Bayesian updating: Moving a belief a proportionate amount as evidence arrives, instead of flipping or ignoring. Record both.
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Moving a belief a proportionate amount as evidence arrives, instead of flipping or ignoring.
Try it now
Write a belief with a rough percentage. Then write one piece of evidence and where it should move the number.
What to do with the answer
Record both. Over time, check whether the things you called 70% happened about seventy percent of the time.
Where it misleads
Numbers do not turn a guess into knowledge. They make it checkable, which is different and better.
The module it belongs to
- Logical Thinking — Reason consistently
The book behind it
- Superforecasting — Its big ideas, in our own words.