When you judge someone, it takes effort. For example, say you’re a college admissions officer. It takes time to read through the thousands of applications and to think hard about whether candidate 4538 is better than candidate 17892.

Sometimes it isn’t worth your effort to really figure out which of the candidates is really better. Sometimes the candidates are close enough in ability that it isn’t worth the effort to really figure out who is better.

So, there are 2 types of judgement. Sometimes you keep pushing to see who is truly the best candidate (court cases, grades in classes, most competitions). But sometimes you just want to do a good enough job choosing, so after a point the extra effort it would take to decide isn’t worth your time (college admissions, dating, hiring, investment decisions).