A lot of the important decisions we make are based on incomplete knowledge. Oftentimes, it’s not that we are making decisions carelessly, but rather that some aspects of a situation are simply unknowable.<\/p>\n
Yet we don’t generally freeze like rabbits, unable to make a decision. Somehow we charge onward, continuing to decide on our next move while living with uncertainty.<\/p>\n
I wonder whether there is a complex mechanism in the human brain that allows us to do this. Is there some sort of intuitive “probability machine” that we are always running, which assesses the current odds of success in any situation?<\/p>\n
If so, I wonder how accurate it is, and what sorts of things can throw it off. We already know that there are obvious answers to that last question. Lack of sleep or too much alcohol can completely shut down our ability to choose the higher probability option for success.<\/p>\n
But what about the opposite question? What can we do to increase the accuracy of our internal probability machine? Whatever it is, I’d like to try it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A lot of the important decisions we make are based on incomplete knowledge. Oftentimes, it’s not that we are making decisions carelessly, but rather that some aspects of a situation are simply unknowable. Yet we don’t generally freeze like rabbits, unable to make a decision. Somehow we charge onward, continuing to decide on our next … Continue reading “Probability machine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22346,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345\/revisions\/22346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}