Glossary

Short, plain-language definitions of the terms used across Build Mind.

Base rate

The underlying frequency of something in the general population, before you factor in case-specific evidence.

Expected value

The average outcome of a decision if you could repeat it many times — each outcome weighted by its probability.

Goodhart's Law

When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure — people optimise the proxy at the expense of the goal.

Induced demand

Adding capacity (e.g. wider roads) can increase the very demand it was meant to relieve — a classic second-order effect.

Resulting

Judging a decision's quality only by how it turned out, ignoring the role of luck between choice and outcome.

Ruin

An unrecoverable loss that ends your ability to keep playing — the outcome no upside can justify risking.