Thinking about Not-knowing #7: Connecting Actions and Results

Join Vaughn Tan in building a better relationship with the not-knowing that surrounds us. Please note that this salon will run at a different time from previous salons (17h-19h CEST).

Making good strategy is hard when you don’t know how particular actions are connected to particular outcomes — in other words, when there is not-knowing about causation. At the same time, not-knowing about causation can also offer freedom to act under specific conditions. This can be a strategic and tactical advantage.

We’ll talk about four types of not-knowing in causation and how each type offers different constraints and opportunities for strategy and tactics:

1. Inaccurate precision: Quantification obsession and legibility obsession means we assign precise probabilities (or probability ranges) to outcomes without strong basis.
2. Unknown actions: When actions are unknown, we can’t know how likely they are to produce particular outcomes.
3. Unknown outcomes: When outcomes are unknown, we cannot know when particular actions will produce them.
4. Multiple causation: We are often only partly aware of the full set of causal connections between an action and a range of either simultaneously produced outcomes or sequentially revealed outcomes.

As a bonus, we may discuss how intentionally concealing well-understood causation can have strategic benefits. (Turns out this is done both in business and in military contexts.)