Scientific Definition
False positives vs. false negatives.
Plain-English Definition
False positives vs. false negatives.
Feynman Explanation
Both have a cost. Pick which one you'd rather make.
Core Principle
False positives vs. false negatives.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
False positives vs. false negatives.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Calibrating decision thresholds by which error is worse.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Both have a cost. Pick which one you'd rather make.
Examples
- Hiring decisions, AI deployment, strategic pivots.
- Calibrating decision thresholds by which error is worse.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Explicitly state which error type is more costly before deciding.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Explicitly state which error type is more costly before deciding.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Ignoring general statistics in favor of specific, vivid information.
Posterior = (likelihood × prior) / evidence.
Update beliefs in proportion to the strength of new evidence.
Start with a prior; update with new evidence.
Novices experiencing early success, often due to variance and small samples.
High-impact, hard-to-predict, retrospectively explainable events.
Striking pattern that is statistically expected in large samples.
Reasoning in distributions — ranges and probabilities — rather than points.
Average outcomes across the population differ from outcomes across time for one person.
A rough calculation using order-of-magnitude reasoning.
In quantum mechanics, certain pairs of properties cannot both be precisely known.
We ignore sample size when judging probability.