Map and Territory

What is a belief, and what makes some beliefs work better than others? These four sequences explain the Bayesian notions of rationality, belief, and evidence. A running theme: the things we call “explanations” or “theories” may not always function like maps for navigating the world. As a result, we risk mixing up our mental maps with the other objects in our toolbox.

—Rob Bensinger,
Biases: An Introduction

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A
Predictably Wrong

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1. What Do I Mean By “Rationality”?
2. Feeling Rational
3. Why Truth? And…
4. … What’s a Bias, Again?
5. Availability
6. Burdensome Details
7. Planning Fallacy
8. Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You
9. Expecting Short Inferential Distances
10. The Lens That Sees Its Own Flaws

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B
Fake Beliefs

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11. Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)
12. A Fable of Science and Politics
13. Belief in Belief
14. Bayesian Judo
15. Pretending to be Wise
16. Religion’s Claim to be Non-Disprovable
17. Professing and Cheering
18. Belief as Attire
19. Applause Lights

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C
Noticing Confusion

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20. Focus Your Uncertainty
21. What Is Evidence?
22. Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence
23. How Much Evidence Does It Take?
24. Einstein’s Arrogance
25. Occam’s Razor
26. Your Strength as a Rationalist
27. Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
28. Conservation of Expected Evidence
29. Hindsight Devalues Science

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D
Mysterious Answers

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30. Fake Explanations
31. Guessing the Teacher’s Password
32. Science as Attire
33. Fake Causality
34. Semantic Stopsigns
35. Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions
36. The Futility of Emergence
37. Say Not “Complexity”
38. Positive Bias: Look into the Dark
39. Lawful Uncertainty
40. My Wild and Reckless Youth
41. Failing to Learn from History
42. Making History Available
43. Explain/Worship/Ignore?
44. “Science” as Curiosity-Stopper
45. Truly Part of You

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Interlude: The Simple Truth