Sources / Additional Reading
Wikipedia - Bayes Theorem
Veritasium - The Bayesian Trap
Paul Rulkens - Why The Majority Is Always Wrong
Overcoming Blank Page Syndrome
Key Takeaways
- ASK QUESTIONS: Get as much information as possible before starting.
- ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES: Try not to think of revision as being ‘wrong’, but rather as helping clarify future ‘right’
- VALUE THE PAST: All prior interactions influence current ones.
- THE DONUT HOLE: When you define something, you inherently define its opposite. BOTH are important.
Lecture Outline:
- Bayes Theorem:
- What is the actual probability that you have a disease when you test positive with a 99% accurate test?
- Not 99%, it’s 9%
- Your mind generally doesn’t take into account the PRIOR probability you were right
- This is a flaw in human thinking
- This is very illustrative of the revisionist design process.
- Constant refinement to finality
- Assumptions that the longer an idea stays around, the more correct it is (or closer to approval)
- People often need to see a lot of wrong options to visualize the right ones
- You need to know what you’re trying to find for any of the information to be valuable
- It also spells out “common sense” in math form
- Thinking “Inside The Box” to help define prior constraints
- What always is
- What’s legal to do
- What’s technologically possible to do
- What’s moral or socially acceptable to do
- What am I capable of doing
- What’s been done before
