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Scientific literacy, the replication crisis, game theory, systems thinking, Bayesian reasoning, second-order thinking, and steelmanning
The scientific method is humanity's best error-correction tool — and the most misunderstood. Peer review, replication, falsifiability, and why "the science" is never settled.
More than 50% of published psychology findings fail to replicate. The structural incentives that produce unreliable science: publish-or-perish, p-hacking, and the file drawer problem.
People respond to incentives, not intentions. Prisoner's dilemma, moral hazard, misaligned incentives, and why understanding the game changes how you see every institution.
The most dangerous thing you can know is that you're right. Calibrated uncertainty, intellectual humility, steel-manning, and the skill of holding strong opinions loosely.
Linear thinking misses how the world actually works. Feedback loops, emergent properties, unintended consequences, and Donella Meadows' leverage points for changing complex systems.
Update your beliefs proportionally to evidence. Prior probabilities, likelihood ratios, and base rate neglect — the mathematical framework for rational belief revision that most people never learn.
First-order thinking asks "what happens next?" Second-order thinking asks "and then what?" The discipline of tracing consequences through complex systems, and why most policy failures come from stopping at the first order.
The opposite of strawmanning. Constructing the strongest possible version of an opposing argument before responding. Why this practice is rare, why it's powerful, and how it transforms both your thinking and your relationships.