I agree this could be discussed more, with one caveat. For playing to your outs, it's not about hoping your opponent misplays, it's about hoping your opponent gets awful luck. There's an important distinction between the two: very often, your opponent doesn't mess up, or if they do it's a minor mistake that doesn't cost the game. But no one can prevent bad luck.
The very high level thinking process is figuring out what worlds let you win, and choosing the one that's most likely to happen. Ex: my opponent needs to have a dud turn or 2 duds in a row, so I'll build 1 more turn; if I don't get another turn I was going to lose anyway. I need both of the last 2 Provinces to win, so screw PPR, I'll buy a Province now. I'm leading in VP but will lose very quickly to the engine my opponent is building, so I need to 3-pile ASAP, even if that means buying Curses over several turns. (That last one actually happened me once, and choosing to buy VP instead of buying Curses/actions dropped my win chance by a lot.)
I don't like to assume my opponent will misplay unless I don't have any other way to win, because if they play correctly you seal your own fate and that's never fun.