We fixate on the vivid story in front of us and ignore how common the thing actually is. The background frequency usually matters more than the detail.
What is base rate neglect? Read the full idea →Told someone is quiet and tidy, people guess librarian — forgetting there are far more shy salespeople than librarians.
For a rare disease, even an accurate test mostly flags false positives, because almost no one actually has it.
The pitch sounds brilliant, but most startups fail — the base rate should temper the excitement.
A vivid crash on the news swamps the fact that flying is statistically far safer than the drive to the airport.
One impressive anecdote in an interview outweighs the base rate of how rarely that trait predicts performance.
That's just how memory works. Lock base rate neglect in with a 5-minute active-recall session — spaced repetition, no signup.
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