think-belief-update-routine

Belief-Update Routine

A belief-update routine re-scores a standing inventory of open beliefs against newly arrived evidence, on a cadence. For each tracked belief it records a prior confidence, the evidence accrued since the last review, a revised confidence with an explicit delta and direction, a stated reason for the size of the move, and a next-review trigger. The load-bearing move is the disciplined, recurring re-score of a portfolio over time: it makes under-updating (the robust human tendency to revise too little for the evidence) visible and correctable, and it keeps beliefs that should track reality - open forecasts, strategic theses, standing assumptions - honest against new information rather than quietly stale. The output is a structured belief-update ledger, not prose, designed to be reopened and re-scored on the next cadence.

When to Use

• When you hold a set of consequential, genuinely open beliefs, forecasts, or standing assumptions that should track reality over time, and you want a recurring, disciplined re-score rather than a one-off.
• When genuinely new evidence has arrived since you last examined them, so there is something real to update on.
• When you suspect you are under-updating - holding a belief sticky as evidence accumulates against it - and you want the size of each update made explicit and checkable.
• When you want to build calibration on standing beliefs over many cycles, not judge a single decision.

When NOT to Use

• To record a single decision at the moment it is made. That is think-decision-journal, which fixes one prediction in place at commit time and forbids editing it afterward. This routine is the opposite shape: it deliberately re-scores a portfolio of open beliefs repeatedly. Do not use it to capture a one-off decision (you lose the journal's contemporaneous lock), and do not use the journal to track evolving beliefs (you violate its do-not-edit rule).
• To review a finished episode against what was expected. That is think-after-action-review, which needs a resolved outcome and emits sustain/change process actions. This routine operates on beliefs that are still open and emits revised confidences, not action items.
• To surface the conditions under which one contested claim would be the best choice. That is think-what-would-have-to-be-true, which decomposes a single claim into its load-bearing conditions at one sitting. This routine re-scores a portfolio of beliefs on a cadence against accrued evidence.
• When no genuinely new evidence has arrived. Re-scoring on a calendar with nothing new is reflection theater: it manufactures motion or just re-anchors the prior. If nothing material has changed, the honest entry is "no new evidence; no update," not an invented delta.
• For beliefs that never resolve and carry no real stakes. Re-scoring trivia delivers no calibration and no decision value; the overhead is unrecovered.