Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

This book explores the concept of noise, defined as the unintended and harmful variability in human judgment. The authors distinguish noise from bias, illustrating how inconsistent decisions—whether made by different people or the same person at different times—undermine accuracy in fields like medicine, law, and business. Key causes of this phenomenon include psychological heuristics, social pressures within groups, and even extraneous factors like a judge's mood or fatigue. To mitigate these errors, the text advocates for "decision hygiene" strategies, such as using predictive algorithms, structuring evaluations through the Mediating Assessments Protocol, and conducting noise audits. Ultimately, the sources suggest that while human intuition is often celebrated, it is frequently less reliable than mechanical rules or aggregated collective estimates.