What is nudge theory defaults?

Nudge theory defaults is a concept in personal epistemology: Define good defaults so that the do-nothing option is acceptable.

Example: Your team's deployment pipeline requires six manual approval steps before code ships. Most developers skip two or three of them under deadline pressure, introducing inconsistency. You redesign the pipeline so the default path — doing nothing special — runs all six checks automatically. Developers who need to skip a check must explicitly opt out. Deployments become safer not because people got more disciplined, but because the do-nothing path became the safe path.

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