I think people are continually surprised by how often I use believability as a metric when evaluating practical advice:
- have you had at least 3 successes in the domain?
- do you have a coherent explanation?
If yes, queue to test against reality. If no, discount advice.
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But what about SuRvIvOrShIp BiAs?
In my experience, this usually gets invoked by people who don’t like the advice they’re given.
In practice, 3 successes in a practical domain is plenty rigorous as a lower bar for practical advice.
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Another interesting quirk: this sounds suspiciously like ad hominem. It *does* mean I will write you off if you don’t have 3 successes in the domain you’re giving advice on.
But it also means I will shut up and listen if a junior person has more successes in a domain than I do.
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There are, of course, the usual caveats. Like how you need to spend at least a minimal amount of time thinking through the advice by a less believable person, to make sure you’re not missing something. I talk about some of this here:
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You can actually also extend this to an entire hierarchy of practical evidence: commoncog.com/blog/the-hiera
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But the key thing to notice here is that it doesn’t matter how compelling or how plausible the argument/model/advice SOUNDS, all that matters is if it works when tested in your own life.
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Concrete example:
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I always check for proof of good synthesis when reading yet another Second Brain guide.
Yes, yes, you can tell me how you’ve set up the perfect notetaking workflow, but can you show me how it’s helped you?
I want proof of work, dammit.
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Hmm, one last note: when I say that I commit to this as an epistemology of practical evidence, I truly mean it.
You are more believable than I am -> you give me advice -> I take it.
(Assuming, of course, that it doesn’t break some ethical rule).
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But think about how hard this is, though. It means that I have to commit to actually testing the advice, so long as it’s given by a more believable person, EVEN IF it clashes against what I currently believe.
Because what I believe doesn’t matter. I’m not believable.
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Not surprised, amazed.
You've completely changed my worldview and I now use and talk about this all the time.
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You're the perfect antidote to academic platitudes. "sure it works in practice, but does it work in theory?"
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I’m probably going to get flak for this, but I’m very reluctant to try Cynefin out because I can’t for the life of me find three successful applications of the framework in practice.
Maybe it’s the amount of rubbish on the internet about the framework, though.
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