The Things You Can’t Do 1
A* = arg maxA (P(D|A) − [P(Ur|A) + w · P(Uir|A)]) w > 1
Written out in symbols, this formula looks like something off a physics exam. Please don’t leave.
The formula is subtraction. There’s one multiplication in it, and that’s the whole of it. Looking hard is a presentation problem, not a difficulty problem. By the time we’re done you’ll be able to read it — and more to the point, you’ll understand why it isn’t really a formula at all.
Because here’s the twist, and it’s the first thing worth knowing. This is not a tool for calculating the right answer. It’s a tool for stopping you lying to yourself.
The original document — The Binary Outcome Framework — says exactly that in its first line. Not a theory of optimal choice. A discipline against confabulation under uncertainty.
Confabulation. A precise and rather lovely word. It means making things up without knowing that you’re making them up — filling a gap with a story so smooth you never notice it’s a story. We all do it.
So if you came for a decision calculator, this isn’t it. It’s closer to a brake.
Start with what happens when you’re about to act and you don’t know how it will turn out. Which is to say: always. Every real decision you have ever made, you made without knowing.
The framework asks one thing of you before you act. Sort the possible outcomes into three boxes.
— the reason you’re doing this at all. P(D)
You lose money you can earn back. You look foolish and recover. You waste a weekend. It hurts, and then it’s over, and you’re still standing. P(Ur)
You can’t undo it. The money is gone for good. The relationship doesn’t come back. The injury doesn’t heal. You said the thing that can’t be unsaid. P(Uir)
Three boxes — and now the rule this whole thing lives on. An outcome goes in exactly one box.
No blending. Not a bit of both. Not mostly good with a slight downside. Not seven out of ten. One box. It is either the thing you want, or it’s fixable damage, or it’s permanent damage.
This is what binary means in the name, and the word misleads people, so let me be clear. It does not mean two choices. It means an outcome is either in a box or it isn’t. Yes or no. In or out. No sliding scale.
I know that sounds fussy. Believe me — it is the entire point.