Percentyl

The path · certificate

Contrarian thinking, over time.

Thinking against the crowd at the right moment is not learned in an evening. This path plays like the app: one lesson a day, reviews that come back when your memory starts to slip, a test at every level. Six levels, twenty-six lessons, one exam. The certificate is earned at the end of the road.

The full syllabus

Six levels, twenty-six lessons, one exam.

One lesson a day, spaced reviews that come back when memory fades, a test at the end of each level, a verifiable certificate at the end. Every lesson cites its sources.

Level 1 Foundations

Why your brain misleads you, and why you cannot feel it

  1. Two speeds of thought Three riddles almost nobody gets right, and why understanding an illusion is not enough to correct it. 18 min
  2. The invisible anchor A number heard thirty seconds earlier shifts your estimate, judges setting a sentence included. 16 min
  3. What comes to mind You judge how often things happen by how fast examples come to mind, and the news skews that counter. 16 min
  4. The coherent story Confidence measures how coherent the story is, not how good the information is. Thin information, high confidence. 17 min
  5. Overconfidence, in numbers Three ranges you set and score yourself. Almost everyone misses more of them than they announced. 17 min

Level 2 Posture

Soldier or scout: what you are looking for when you think

  1. The soldier and the scout Two ways to use your intelligence, the same feeling of rigour, and a study where the most numerate split the most. 17 min
  2. The man who reopened the file An antisemitic officer discovers the convicted man is innocent. What he does, and what it costs him. 18 min
  3. Five thought experiments Five thirty-second tests that bypass introspection, including one that fails in a very instructive way. 18 min
  4. A number on your certainty The tally of one famously rigorous man's predictions, and a method for finding your own number. 17 min
  5. Light identity Why some beliefs stop being revisable, and how to spot them with a single question. 17 min

Level 3 The language of probability

Saying what you think in numbers, and being scored on it

  1. The fog of words In 1951, “serious possibility” meant anywhere from 20 to 80 % to the analysts who had written it together. 17 min
  2. Cutting the impossible Answering a question you know nothing about, and seeing which unknown decides everything. 16 min
  3. Outside first The base frequency before the details of the case. In the other order, adjusting turns into justifying. 17 min
  4. The score that forgives nothing The accounting that makes cowardice and arrogance equally expensive, and that scores your cases. 17 min
  5. The fox and the hedgehog Twenty years of study on hundreds of experts: the most televised are the least accurate. 17 min

Level 4 The art of disagreement

Where to look for what the crowd misses, and when to follow it

  1. The awkward question A famous interview question, its three false answers, and what makes a real one. 17 min
  2. Secrets still exist Where the truths nobody looked for are hiding, and why it is almost never for lack of intelligence. 17 min
  3. The second level Being right about a company and making money on it are two different things. 17 min
  4. What you can't say Telling a false idea, a forbidden idea and a shocking-and-false idea apart. Beginners confuse the last two. 17 min
  5. The crowd is often right Eight hundred guesses at the weight of an ox, and the lesson that keeps this whole level from becoming foolish. 17 min

Level 5 Deciding in the real world

From judgment to decision: judging your choices without lying to yourself

  1. The decision and the outcome A pass intercepted twice in a hundred is still a good decision on the day it gets intercepted. 17 min
  2. Turn the problem over How would you guarantee failure? The inverted question produces a list, the direct one produces an intention. 16 min
  3. The premortem Ten minutes that surface the objections a team would never otherwise put into words. 16 min
  4. The forces running through you Show me the incentive, I will show you the outcome. And what happens to a measure once it becomes a target. 17 min
  5. The complete loop Six lines written before, reread before you look at the outcome. The whole path fits in there. 17 min

Level 6 The great review

The whole path, retraced in one lesson, before the exam

  1. Retracing the path The twenty-five previous lessons in one, before the final exam. 20 min