Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
A professional poker player's guide to making better decisions under uncertainty
"What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process."
— Annie Duke
My Review
Duke's poker-informed decision framework maps directly to foraging optimization under uncertainty. Her distinction between decision quality and outcome quality is precisely how organisms must operate - making bets with incomplete information and updating based on feedback. Essential for understanding resource allocation decisions.
Why It Matters
Organizations, like organisms, make decisions under uncertainty with incomplete information. Duke's framework for separating decision quality from outcome quality is essential for avoiding survivorship bias and learning correctly from experience.
Key Ideas
- Outcome quality ≠ decision quality - luck matters
- Think in probabilities, not certainties
- Resulting (judging decisions by outcomes) is a cognitive trap
- Seeking truth requires betting on beliefs
How It Connects to This Framework
Book 2 (Resource Dynamics) chapter on Foraging Optimization directly parallels Duke's uncertainty framework. The concept of probabilistic decision-making under resource constraints runs throughout.
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