Waiting by the Stump for a Rabbit
Updated 2026-08-09
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
From the Han Feizi, the story describes a farmer from Song who saw a rabbit run into a tree stump and die, then put aside his tools and waited by the stump for more rabbits, letting his fields go to ruin. The tale names the error of treating a single low-probability windfall as a repeatable pattern. It is the classical counterpart of confusing a black swan with a stable process and of ignoring base rates when extrapolating from one success.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Separate luck from method: ask whether a success came from a repeatable mechanism or a single accident. - Check base rates: estimate how often the outcome occurs in general before relying on it. - Re-scan the environment: confirm the conditions that produced the windfall still exist before waiting again.
Anchor fast decisions
A single observed success carries almost no information about frequency when the underlying rate is low, so treating it as a pattern assigns a high probability to a rare event. Effort then shifts from productive work to waiting, which removes the income or progress that made survival possible. The strategy fails not because luck never repeats but because the expected return is far below the abandoned alternative.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- zdic.nethttps://www.zdic.net/hans/%E5%AE%88%E6%A0%AA%E5%BE%85%E5%85%94verified
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