Shane Parrish

the Slippery Slope Effect

examples from everyday life

During waves of Prohibition fever in the United States and elsewhere, conservative abstainers have frequently made the case that even taking the first drink would be the first step towards a life of sin. They’re right: It’s true that drinking a beer might lead you to become an alcoholic. But not most of the time.

And weighing different paths is what thinking is all about. A little time spent thinking ahead can save us massive amounts of time later.

Our lack of perfect information about the world gives rise to all of probability theory, and its usefulness

We know now that the future is inherently unpredictable because not all variables can be known and even the smallest error imaginable in our data very quickly throws off our predictions

You know that violent crime has been declining to its lowest rates in decades.

Any new information you encounter that challenges a prior simply means that the probability of that prior being true may be reduced.

The bell curve is great because it’s easy to understand and easy to use. Its technical name is “normal distribution.”

At first glance they seem similar