Comment by Sudeep Kumar (sudeep-kumar) on Focus Your Uncertainty · 2017-12-23T08:35:04.167Z · LW · GW

When unsure of an outcome to excuse what you are looking for is not the "most likely to be needed" excuse to be "really good" but for any excuse you need to be "as good as possible."

This might depend on the probability distribution across possible events. If the probabilty of all 3 outcomes is similar (33.3%), it might make sense to use "each excuse as good as possible".

But when one of the outcomes is really likely (say 85%+), you can start to think about adopting "most likely needed excuse to be really good" strategy.

Playing too defensive might guarantee to save you from embarassment no matter what, but you can consider being greedy too.