Normally we learn when we receive information: when a teacher instructs, a book describes, an apprentice tinkers. But in the case of causal explanations, the person who imparts information, who does the explaining, actually learns as well.

“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

They were bicycle experts, after all. Just as a cycle is inherently unstable but can be balanced and controlled by the rider when in motion, so too it was crucial that a plane could be controlled and balanced by a flier in the air.

The repeated and frequent failures of causal framing have prompted many people to suggest that the whole project of causal reasoning is futile. They seemingly have David Hume on their side. The apparent flaws of causal thinking were articulated by the Scottish philosopher in the 1700s. An empiricist, Hume believed that all knowledge derives only

Thomas Edison in the early 1900s believed motion pictures would replace classrooms—a vision only realized a century later when Zoom became the new schoolhouse.

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

Frames help to do two tasks really well, which we outline in chapter 2. First, in novel situations or when circumstances change, our ability to choose a frame provides us with new options. Second, and at least as important, in situations that are familiar, frames focus our mind, thereby reducing our cognitive load. It’s an incredibly efficient way

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

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