Two series on this blog solved the same puzzle. Neither knew the other existed. Both landed on one quiet rule: a check is only as honest as the mistake it cannot inherit. This post finally says that rule out loud. It comes in two flavors, one that bends under pressure and one that never does, plus a third case nobody ordered: a process with nothing wrong with it that still needs a babysitter, because of where its inputs came from. Post 5 of The Portable Mind.
Ask one agent whether to keep funding a failing project and it usually says no. Put a small crowd of them in a room, agreeing with each other in a circle, and the answer flips to yes almost every time. This post is about knowing when to stop, why stopping on purpose is not the same as giving up, and why a crowd can talk itself out of the one instinct any of its members had alone. It also closes the series' running case, and puts an honest price on what all this trust-but-verify machinery actually costs. Post 4 of The Portable Mind.
Confidence is not evidence. A system can be completely wrong and completely sure of it at the same moment, because the part that feels sure and the part that would actually know better were never talking to each other. This post asks a reasoner to grade its own homework, and proves, carefully and a little reluctantly, that a certain honest kind of reasoner logically cannot. Post 3 of The Portable Mind.
A summary that was perfect yesterday can be perfectly wrong today, and nothing about the summary itself has to change for that to happen. The world moved. The old answer just kept insisting it was still the right one. This post is about that particular stubbornness, and its quieter cousin: believing the evidence that agrees with you a little more than the evidence that doesn't. Post 2 of The Portable Mind.
Ask a system to price a job before it has looked at the job, and watch it guess wrong with total confidence. That is not a personality flaw. It is arithmetic: nobody can spend variety they have not noticed yet, whether the nobody is a person or a model. This post opens a series about five ways thinking fails, for reasons that were always going to be reasons, not accidents anyone can tune away. Opening The Portable Mind.