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When decisions can’t wait for perfect data, you need methods that actually work in the real world. We sit down with Brian Moon to pull naturalistic decision making out of journals and into the field where cops, medics, operators, and executives make consequential calls under stress, time pressure, and uncertainty. The conversation opens with a clear critique: elegant lab studies often miss the work. From there, we rebuild on stronger ground; agency, process, and the lived patterns of true expertise. 

Brian traces why experience isn’t just hours served but exposure to hard problems, responsibility for outcomes, and honest feedback that reshapes judgment. We unpack how experts blend rapid recognition with deliberate checks, using counterfactuals to keep first interpretations from hardening too soon. If you lead training, you’ll get specific moves: design scenarios that force ownership of the whole problem; capture tacit cues through structured debriefs; and teach a shared language for uncertainty so teams can flexecute as conditions change. We also push into high-friction topics like use-of-force errors and pathways to violence, showing how process signals, not labels or post-hoc narratives, offer the best chance to prevent bad outcomes.

Across the hour, you’ll hear how to spot and grow real SMEs, why credentials alone fall short, and how to engineer environments where sensemaking becomes a habit instead of a hope. Whether you work a midnight shift or a corner office, you’ll leave with practical tools to clean up your decisions this week and a sharper lens for understanding human behavior where it actually happens: on the street, on the line, and in the moment. If this conversation helps, share it with a teammate, subscribe for more, and drop a review so others can find it. 

Darwin's People: AMAZON

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