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Paranoia: A Beginner's Guide — LessWrong

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The obvious explanation for most of those mistakes is that people do not have access to sufficient information to avoid the mistake, or are not smart enough to think through the consequences of their actions. This predicts that as decision-makers get access to more information, or are replaced with smarter people, their decisions will get better. And this is substantially true! Markets seem more efficient today than they were before the onset of the internet, and in general decision-making across the board has improved on many dimensions. But in many domains, I posit, decision-making has gotten worse, despite access to more information, and despite much larger labor markets, better education, the removal of lead from gasoline, and many other things that should generally cause decision-makers to be more competent and intelligent. There is a lot of variance in decision-making quality that is not well-accounted for by how much information actors have about the problem domain, and how smar

x Paranoia: A Beginner's Guide — LessWrong Economics Rationality Curated 2025 Top Fifty: 41 % 363 Paranoia: A Beginner's Guide by habryka 13th Nov 2025 15 min read 70 363 People sometimes make mistakes. (Citation Needed) The obvious explanation for most of those mistakes is that people do not have access to sufficient information to avoid the mistake, or are not smart enough to think through the consequences of their actions. This predicts that as decision-makers get access to more information, or are replaced with smarter people, their decisions will get better. And this is substantially true

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