Progress starts by losing the metric

Decision-Making

‘The shift towards 3-point shots had broad consequences for overall basketball tactics. But without the original and founding insight - that the game had been too cautious in accepting the increased risk of missing the shot altogether - there would have been no great leap forward. “Whenever someone innovates in business or in life,’ argues the poker player Caspar Berry, ‘they almost inevitably do so by accepting a negative metric that other people are unwilling to accept.’ (My emphasis.)

Behavioural principles

Behavioural ideas at play in this post

Short, plain-English explanations of the principles behind this post, with links to related books and examples in the archive.

Goodhart's law

This principle helps explain why people behave differently from what pure logic would predict.

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Overconfidence effect

We are often more certain than the evidence really allows.

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Base-rate neglect

We focus on vivid specifics and ignore the wider statistical odds.

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Progress starts by losing the metric

Behavioural ideas at play in this post

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