Framers

The frames we employ affect the options we see, the decisions we make, and the results we attain. By being better at framing, we get better outcomes.

The Consistency Principle The third principle for choosing constraints is perhaps the most obvious: consistency. Constraints should not be placed in direct contradiction to one another. As we envisage alternative realities, one constraint cannot go against another one; otherwise our counterfactuals would keep running into contradictions.

Mutability, minimal change, and consistency are principles to apply when iterating the constraints we place on counterfactuals.

The second element of our mental models is counterfactuals, which we examine in chapter 4. These are imagined alternatives to reality; hypotheses of a world in which one or several things are changed. As with causality, we think in counterfactuals all the time. They come naturally to us. Counterfactuals let us escape the cognitive here and now: we

In 2008 Nokia led the world in mobile phone sales. When Apple introduced the iPhone, few thought it would take off. The trend was to make handsets smaller and cheaper, but Apple’s was bulkier, pricier, and buggier. Nokia’s frame came from the conservative telecom industry, valuing practicality and reliability. Apple’s frame came from the breathless

The minimal-change principle pushes us in a particular direction when picking counterfactuals: we tend to omit rather than add. It is easier for us to imagine a world without some features of reality than to introduce ones that do not yet exist. If you are asked to imagine a color you haven’t seen before, you likely will fail.

“AI Discovers Antibiotics to Treat Drug-Resistant Diseases,” boomed a front-page headline in the Financial Times. But that missed the real story. It wasn’t a victory for artificial intelligence but a success of human cognition: the ability to rise up to a critical challenge by conceiving of it in a certain way, altering aspects of it, which open up

The telephone was first thought about as a way to listen to music remotely: people would dial in to hear a concert. The phonograph was considered to be a way to communicate messages:

The idea of agency provides that humans have choices and can exercise them. We are subjects, not objects, in the world. We have the capacity to act. Having agency hinges upon our ability to frame causally. This is not to say that “free will” exists objectively, nor that human choices aren’t influenced by social structures. Yet only if our actions h