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Notes -
People naturally cluster their beliefs about things into this neat little narratives. They see John running and get attached to some particular theory about why he is running. They interpret his pace and the look on his face to mean he must be running from someone or something and then build out theories about what the pursuer could be. They think extensively about all the different types of pursuers and that occupies so much of their mind space that they end up way, hilariously, over estimating the likelihood of each of those theories. It's very easy to accidentally discount the possibility that he's just out for an exercise run and made a funny face way below where it belongs if you're not careful.
The practice reminds you to think critically about each additional compounding conditional in this way and prevents common failure modes. It fits nicely with the demand to measure both probability and confidence in things like bets. I've seen myself moderate my beliefs in real time when faced with the need to define odds and offer a bet, it's a humbling thing to have happen.
It also breaks you out of the "my team vs their team" mindset. When I assign a probability besides one or zero to something I've given myself a reasonable out to it not happening. I'm less emotionally invested in some outcome and can more easily resist each new piece of evidence to the contrary causing me to double down about how it really, if you squint, supports my original position. I think this is something a lot of people who end up sucked into ideological pipelines could avoid most of their bad ends if they adopted. "From the evidence before I think I was still right in favoring outcome X, but I see I now that I was too confident and maybe evidence Y and Z should be less compelling to me in the future" is a much superior mental state to "No, bullshit, I was always right and there must be some kind of conspiracy to hide the truth". And the latter appears to be a very common occurrence.
Can you make due without these tools? Absolutely. Some people are able to free solo crazy climbs. But I find it strange that you don't least recognize their value.
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