The importance of small decisions (by M O’Brien, A Bentley and W Brock) is a neat little primer on an evolutionary approach to decision theory. I read it under the influence of severe jet lag and so nothing at all should be read into the fact that I find it hard to summarise the argument – there’s also an awful lot of explanation by way of analogy to American football, which doesn’t help me at all. My takeaway is the title, plus this very neat diagram putting decision making modes into four quadrants separated along the dimensions transparent/opaque and individual learning/social learning:

It’s a short book so anyone whose interest is piqued will find it easy to read (sporting analogies aside).

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