Subject
15 entries
Decision Making
Bookmarks
CommonCog Forum: business sensemaking community
CommonCog is a sensemaking community for business analysis — case studies of operators like Charlie Munger and Tom Murphy, decision frameworks, and expertise development. Run by Cedric Chin, who writes seriously about how business knowledge actually works.
Cognitive Distortions That Undermine Clear Thinking
A guide to cognitive distortions that undermine clear thinking in leadership — the CBT/REBT catalog applied to high-performers under stress. Naming these patterns is the first step to catching yourself mid-distortion.
CFAR Handbook 2021: Applied Rationality Curriculum
The CFAR Handbook is the curriculum guide from the Center for Applied Rationality — a workshop-based training program for systematic thinking, calibration, and overcoming cognitive biases. It operationalizes concepts from the LessWrong rationalist community into concrete exercises.
Second-Order Thinking
Farnam Street's essay on second-order thinking — asking 'and then what?' to trace the cascading consequences of decisions beyond their immediate effects. A foundational mental model for strategic decision-making from Howard Marks.
Untools: Thinking Frameworks and Mental Models
Untools is a curated collection of thinking frameworks and decision-making tools — systems thinking, problem decomposition, first principles, and more — each explained concisely with practical guidance on when to apply them. A lightweight reference for structured reasoning.
Algorithms for Decision Making (2-column edition)
A two-column or second-edition variant of the MIT Press textbook by Mykel Kochenderfer covering decision-making under uncertainty, from MDPs and POMDPs through reinforcement learning and multi-agent systems. This copy predates the primary 2023-01 vault entry and may represent an earlier draft or reformatted version.
Decision Transformer: Reinforcement Learning via Sequence Modeling
Decision Transformer recasts offline reinforcement learning as a conditional sequence modeling problem, using a causally masked Transformer to generate actions conditioned on desired return, past states, and actions. It matches or exceeds model-free offline RL baselines on Atari, OpenAI Gym, and Key-to-Door without any value function or policy gradient computation.
Most Advice Is Pretty Bad
Sam's 'All That Is Solid' essay arguing that most advice fails because it's decontextualized — stripped of the specific circumstances under which it was true for the person giving it. A case for skepticism toward advice as a form of knowledge transfer.
The Oxymoron of "Data-Driven Innovation"
Chelsea Troy argues that 'data-driven innovation' is internally contradictory — data can only confirm what you already know to measure, and genuine innovation requires bets on things you can't yet measure. A sharp critique of how tech teams use data to avoid hard decisions.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Decision-Making
A Twitter thread by Julian Shapiro analyzing the decision-making technique shared by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — specifically the regret minimization framework and first-principles thinking. Condensed analysis of documented decision frameworks from two prominent founders.
Ergodicity: What's It Mean
Avoid Boring People's explainer on ergodicity — the distinction between time-average outcomes and ensemble-average outcomes. Core to Ole Peters's critique of expected utility theory and why average returns can be misleading for individual decision-making.
Rules — Nikita Voloboev's Personal Wiki
Nikita Voloboev's personal wiki page of life rules — a public, evolving set of principles governing how he approaches work, learning, relationships, and creativity. A practical example of explicit personal operating principles.
Six Ways to Think Long-Term: A Cognitive Toolkit for Good Ancestors
The Long Now Foundation's synthesis of six cognitive tools for long-term thinking — from the Cathedral Thinking of medieval builders to the Seventh Generation principle of Indigenous governance. A toolkit for expanding temporal perspective in decisions.
Warning Signs: Is It Time To Leave Your Startup?
A guide to recognizing when it's time to leave your startup — distinguishing genuine warning signs (runway problems, founder trust breakdown, equity dilution) from normal startup discomfort. The hardest part is separating the signal from the noise when you're emotionally invested.
Data is Not Always a Substitute for Strategy
LinkedIn Pulse article arguing that data and analytics can't replace strategic judgment — a contrarian take during peak big data hype. Data without a strategic frame is just expensive noise.