THE REFERENCE LIBRARY
A growing collection of ideas for understanding the world — and your own thinking.
An argument from ignorance treats a claim as true because it has not been disproved, or as false because it has not been proved. Either inference needs more than a bare lack of proof.
The logical fallacy of concluding that a claim is false because it seems personally unbelievable, including dismissing wrongdoing solely because you trust the person involved.
Silence alone does not settle whether a claim is true. Its evidential value depends on the context, including whether a response would be expected if the claim were true or false.
A logical fallacy where one argues that no useful distinction can be made between two extremes because there is no precise point where they meet, ignoring that the extremes are clearly different (also known as the continuum fallacy or sorites fallacy).
A strategy for evaluating competing hypotheses by accumulating arguments for each side, weighing them, and selecting the winner. Overconfidence can arise from biased argument recruitment, and cultural differences (e.g., Chinese vs. American) affect how people generate arguments consistent or inconsistent with their chosen answer.
A mental model where existing information is reorganized to present a different viewpoint without introducing new facts or simply arguing the opposite case; it demonstrates that the same material can be arranged to tell a completely different story.
The argument to moderation fallacy asserts that a compromise between two extreme positions must be correct, ignoring that truth or correctness may lie entirely with one side or neither.
A logical fallacy where the truth of an argument is judged based on the financial status of the arguer, either assuming wealth indicates correctness or poverty indicates wisdom.
Argumentum ad Baculum, also known as the argument from fear, is a logical fallacy that relies on threats, punishment, or scare tactics to persuade someone to accept a conclusion, replacing logical premises with emotional manipulation.
The argumentum ad crumenam is a logical fallacy that assumes wealth, money, or possessions are the measure of the correctness of an argument.
A post mortem ad hominem invents an insult a deceased thinker would direct at an opponent. The imagined authority’s personal attack does not address the argument, and its attribution may also be speculative.
The argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people) is a logical fallacy that claims a belief, attitude, or value is correct simply because a group of people holds it, ignoring that groups can be wrong.
Organizing observations in rows and columns can make patterns across major factors easier to compare. A grid supports analysis; separating causal effects also requires an appropriate study design.
Eponymy—naming a product or company after oneself—signals commitment and confidence. Even if not an egomaniac, being perceived as arrogant can convey the same valuable message.
Artisans prioritize existential reasons over financial ones, putting soul into their work and avoiding shortcuts. Doing so preserves pride and authenticity, while optimizing for efficiency removes soul and leads to dislike.
Taleb argues that heavy marketing can reward cheap production and the manipulation of buyers’ associations. He contrasts those incentives with his preference for artisanal products discovered through recommendations.
Separate early-stage innovators ("artists") from operational implementers ("soldiers") to allow wild ideas to develop before being shaped by efficiency demands, as exemplified by DARPA's structure.
When matching separately collected information to an event, examine whether the proposed link is justified. The source borrows checks from causal analysis while distinguishing a correct match from proof that one thing caused another.
Persuasive listening and strategic questions can open minds and encourage change more effectively than arguing.
A communication heuristic that emphasizes verifying mutual understanding and following up on agreements, especially useful when interacting with individuals who tend to be vague or avoid direct confrontation.
Erikson recommends asking a person to restate agreed actions after difficult feedback. This checks what they understood and provides a chance to resolve disagreements; repetition alone does not establish commitment.
This heuristic advises asking a person to repeat an agreement and following up promptly, especially useful for 'Yellow' personality types who resist change unless they feel it was their own idea.
Erikson recommends asking a detail-oriented employee to restate what was agreed, then following up on action. Repetition can reveal what they heard, but it does not establish that they accept the feedback or its reasoning.
When facing a question spanning multiple domains, break it down by identifying relevant disciplines (e.g., economic, biological, ethical) and formulate sub-questions to avoid missing critical complexities.
The arts are modes of seeking to express beauty, depth, and insight, and essential questions help differentiate profound from trivial. Questions directed inward also encourage self-knowledge and personal development.
Elder and Paul distinguish ethical questions about harm and rights from questions of law, convention, and religious doctrine. Their framework separates clear cases from harder disputes in which relevant ethical principles may conflict.
This framework categorizes questions into three types based on the reasoning required: one system (established procedure), no system (subjective preference), and conflicting system (multiple viewpoints with better or worse answers).
Confirmation bias can turn information gathering into a search for reassurance. Specific questions about problems can help when someone has an incentive to conceal them; open-ended questions can help when your authority or assumptions might steer the answer. Choose questions with the likely source of missing information in mind.
Taleb uses the label Asperger Probability for his argument that rigid systematizing can obscure differences in knowledge and exposure to extreme events. His financial anecdote does not establish a clinical link between autism and risk blindness.
Review the results of a solution to determine its impact, identify what worked and what did not, and learn from the experience before tackling similar problems.
Identify the assumptions behind a goal, then examine their evidence and alternatives. Outside feedback can reveal a missed perspective, but agreement alone does not show that an assumption is true.
People often see themselves as less biased than others. This gap can reflect underestimating their own susceptibility, overestimating others’ bias, or both. The studies described here also show that people can predict others accurately while being overly optimistic about themselves.
Legally binding obligations and behavioral norms shape stakeholder expectations within organizational ecosystems. These influences include black letter law, judicial decisions, and the corporate law principles of business judgment rule and duty of care.
System 1 maintains and updates a model of what is normal in our world, using associations. Surprise is a key indicator of how we interpret events and expectations, and it shapes our perception of future occurrences.
Technological change depends on both invention and adoption. Old and new technologies may coexist for years, and expertise with today’s tools does not necessarily make someone a good forecaster. Researchers’ insights can help assess emerging possibilities alongside evidence about adoption and business incentives.
Historical measurements of fundamental physical constants often underestimate true uncertainty, leading to errors that can be disconcertingly large relative to reported error bars. Examples include Millikan's oil-drop experiment and CP violation measurements, highlighting the need for subjective judgment and awareness of cognitive biases.
A framework for categorizing evidence and matching it with appropriate analytical methods to extract decision-guiding insights. It links transactional data, empirical research, norms and standards, and expert judgment to probabilistic, thematic, summarization, and pooling analyses.
An intuitive response based on associations can persist alongside a conflicting analytic judgment. The source discusses evidence for these different routes to a judgment.
Associative responses are automatic and persistent, intruding on rule-based reasoning even when individuals attempt to be rational. The rule-based system can overrule but not eliminate the associative system's influence.
A mental system that encodes and processes statistical regularities, using similarity and temporal relations to make predictions, as opposed to a symbolic rule-based system.
Associative judgments like similarity and probability are sensitive to causal and hierarchical structure, but this does not mean associations themselves represent such structure; instead, rule-based processes construct representations that feed into associative operations.
Associative/rule-based accounts distinguish rapid responses based on memory and similarity from deliberate responses based on explicit rules. The passage compares evidence for this distinction in probability judgment, arithmetic and social cognition.
A distinction between two fundamental reasoning processes: associative (similarity-based, including exemplar and prototype matching) and rule-based (governed by explicit logical or abstract rules). This distinction is orthogonal to induction vs. deduction and analytic vs. nonanalytic cognition.
Taleb recalls Beirut’s wartime blackouts and questions assurances of stability. He uses a comparison with astronomical equilibrium to express doubt about assuming that an apparently stable system will remain so.
Astrology claims to infer personality or fate from celestial positions, but reliable predictive evidence is lacking. Vague horoscopes can feel personal because readers connect broad statements with their own concerns and remember apparent successes more readily than failures.
The decoy effect occurs when an option that is worse than one alternative, but not another, shifts choices toward the alternative that dominates it. The comparison can change preferences even when people rarely select the decoy.
Taleb groups social roles by who receives the gains and who bears the losses. His table contrasts transferring downside to others, accepting personal risk, and accepting risk on behalf of others or a principle.
Asymmetry means gains and losses are unequal. Taleb emphasizes favorable asymmetry: exposure to a substantial gain with a limited loss, illustrated by Thales’ option on olive presses. Whether an opportunity is attractive also depends on its cost and likelihoods.
Harrison uses belief in Atlantis to argue for checking appealing stories against evidence. He warns that accepting unsupported historical claims may also leave someone receptive to costly or harmful claims, such as crystal healing, though believing one story does not establish that a person will accept another.
An element is defined by the number of protons in its atoms; isotopes differ in neutron count. Molecules contain bonded atoms, while ions carry a net electric charge. Chemical reactions rearrange atoms and electrons without changing the elements involved.
Attachment to our beliefs and past self prevents us from admitting we're wrong and learning. Detaching present from past and separating opinions from identity allows us to update our views joyfully.
When deadlocked with an opponent who cannot make the first move, you must explode into them with resoluteness, attacking quickly and deliberately to break the stalemate and destroy the enemy by any means.
A decision framework that emphasizes stepping back from immediate emotions to gain perspective and make more rational choices.
In Kahneman’s account, System 2 requires effort and often accepts a System 1 response without further examination. Self-control and demanding tasks call for more sustained attention.
The attention area is the initial focus of a problem, but important parts may be left out. Shifting attention to overlooked aspects can unlock new solutions.
In the artificial-diagnosis studies described here, Chinese participants performed better when they chose which symptoms to display than when symptoms appeared automatically. The authors suggest attention to weak predictors or processing overload as possible explanations; the display change had little effect on the Japanese and American participants.
Having the right attitude towards life—honesty, integrity, living in the present, and reasonable expectations—is crucial for avoiding misjudgments and improving one's life. Self-knowledge, ethical behavior, and a positive outlook are important to this approach.
A framework describing the spectrum of attitudes people can hold toward a vision, from apathy and noncompliance through various levels of compliance to genuine enrollment and commitment.
De Bono argues that deliberate changes to familiar patterns can help generate ideas. A solution’s logical appearance in hindsight does not show that logical analysis was the process that produced it.
Attribute substitution is a cognitive process where people answer a difficult question by substituting an easier related question, often without awareness. This heuristic underlies many biases and is commonly observed in judgments under uncertainty.