What is decision matrix?

Decision matrix is a concept in personal epistemology: Weight your criteria and score options systematically when multiple factors matter.

Example: You're choosing between three job offers. Each has a different salary, commute, growth trajectory, team culture, and technical stack. You can't hold all five dimensions across all three options in your head simultaneously — Cowan's 3-to-5 slot limit guarantees it. So you build a matrix: criteria down the left, options across the top, weights assigned to each criterion based on what actually matters to you right now, and scores filled in cell by cell. The offer that 'felt' weakest turns out to score highest because it dominates on the two criteria you weighted most heavily. The matrix didn't make the decision — it made visible what your intuition was averaging incorrectly.

This concept is part of Phase 23 (Decision Frameworks) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for decision frameworks.