Inside and Outside View

2. Mental Models

Overview

• context: failed project due to overoptimism
• lessons learned
  • inside and outside view
  • Planning Fallacy
  • Belief Perseverance
• Inside view: making predictions based on your understanding of the details of the process
  • doesn’t take into account the “unknown of the unknown”
  • probability that something goes wrong in a big project is high
• Outside view: using estimates based on a class of roughly similar previous cases
  • usually statistics are discarded when they are incompatible with our personal impressions

References

• https://www.lesswrong.com/w/inside-outside-view
• Pensieri lenti e veloci - Daniel Kahneman

Flashcards

#[flashcard] Q: inside view A: predictions based on your understanding

#[flashcard] Q: outside view A: predictions using estimates based on similar cases

#[flashcard] Q: problem of inside view A: doesn’t consider the unknown of unknown

#[flashcard] Q: common pitfall with outside view A: discarding result because it collides with our impressions