Concept
What you see is all there is
What you see is all there is, Kahneman's WYSIATI, is System 1's habit of building the most coherent story it can from the evidence at hand without noticing what is missing. Absent evidence is not part of the story, so one vivid detail becomes a personality and two data points become a trend.
System 1 optimises for coherence, not completeness. Given a thin set of facts it assembles them into the most consistent account and delivers it with confidence, and it does not flag that other facts might exist, because it has no representation of what it did not see. This is the mechanism behind overconfidence, first impressions, jumping to conclusions and the persuasive power of one good anecdote. It cannot be switched off, but it can be interrupted with a question that makes absence visible: not 'am I sure', which System 1 answers yes, but 'what would I need to know to be wrong?', a concrete request for the missing evidence. What did I not see, who did I not ask, what else could produce this? The story usually turns out to rest on less than the certainty deserved.
A real-life example
A founder in Istanbul is certain his product failed on pricing and has said so at every dinner for a year. Listing what he would need to know to be wrong, he realises he never asked the eleven customers who left. Three of the four he calls left over a two-day onboarding.
How to use it
- 1When a story about why arrives complete, ask what you would need to know to be wrong.
- 2List the evidence the story actually rests on before acting on it.
- 3Go and find one item of the missing evidence before deciding.