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1/ “How likely it is to work” is a fairly obvious way of calculating the probability of success, but I actually prefer "how excited and interested am I"
2/ I think there is a compelling argument that excitement and interestingness are emotions that evolved to help humans optimize their fitness in an environment where external indicators were hard to measure.
3/ Much of what we do that improves our skills as individuals (and thus fitness in Darwinian terms) is difficult to measure.
4/ There is no easily measurable metric which Einstein could have optimized for that would have lead him to e=mc2. He just thought the problem was interesting and existing. This is true of every major discovery or innovation in history.
5/ It’s equally true of the investor, CEO or any knowledge worker. You can’t make high-level decisions on data alone, there should be an element of "going with your gut"
(a la John Boyd's concept of Fingerspitzengefuhl - taylorpearson.me/fingerspitzeng…)
(a la John Boyd's concept of Fingerspitzengefuhl - taylorpearson.me/fingerspitzeng…)
6/ For more on point 2, see
