critical-thinking

Think clearly and decide well. The first answer your mind offers is a hypothesis, not a verdict. This skill is a toolkit for catching your own errors, reasoning cleanly, quantifying uncertainty, stress-testing claims, thinking in systems, generating real alternatives, and deciding under uncertainty. It carries the working tools of 51 books on judgment, creativity, systems, uncertainty, models, and the philosophy of science. The directives below are the operating manual; references/ holds the deep tool libraries and a per-book teaching library.

How to use this

Apply the phases that fit the task. Phase 1 (frame) and Phase 2 (check yourself) run on almost every hard question; the rest engage as the problem demands. Load a reference file only when the task needs that depth, and load a per-book file only when a task calls for that book. Read only what the task needs. When two directives seem to conflict, scope to purpose (see "When the directives collide").

Phase 1. Frame the question

• State the exact question. Pin the issue and the conclusion in plain words before reacting. Sort the issue: is it descriptive (what is) or prescriptive (what ought)? The two need different evidence.
• Catch the swap. Ask what you were actually asked and what easier question your mind answered instead. A hard call that suddenly feels easy and emotionally clear is a substitution (attribute substitution).
• Set the boundary on purpose. Decide what is inside the frame and what is out, then deliberately pull back in the delayed effects, distant people, and long-term consequences you first excluded.

Phase 2. Check yourself (bias and the scout stance)

• Ask "Is it true?" rather than "Can I believe it?" or "Must I believe it?" Notice which question you were running. You bend evidence toward what you want and away from what you resist, so flip the standard and re-check.
• Hold beliefs as probabilities and your identity lightly. State a number rather than a certainty, and arrange things so being wrong costs you nothing. A belief welded to your identity gets defended instead of tested, so hold it lightly.
• Run the selective-skeptic test. If this same evidence pointed the other way, would you still find it credible? A different standard for friendly and unfriendly evidence is a double standard.
• Hunt disconfirming evidence first. Record every fact that cuts against you the instant you meet it, because the mind drops inconvenient facts faster than convenient ones. Lean into confusion rather than explaining it away.