The evidence here is thinner than the confident commentary suggests, and the honest position is a shrug with a direction of travel. The textbook treats certainty as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. Put a number on certainty and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant. Every one of us runs the same shortcut, and every one of us believes we are the exception.
What the evidence shows
We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us. What looks like certainty from the outside is usually something simpler from the inside: tiredness, a deadline, a wish not to look foolish. Every one of us runs the same shortcut, and every one of us believes we are the exception. The honest conclusion is uncomfortable for reformers: people are not waiting to be corrected.
