The Best Mental Model

I was watching Demis Hassabis talk in The Thinking Game recently and something he said stuck with me. The scientific method is one of the greatest mental models you can adopt. Being able to say "here's everything I've considered, this is what I currently believe" is just being human. What makes it powerful is the willingness to shift that position when new evidence shows up, and being excited about that prospect instead of digging in to defend what you thought before.

That second part is where most people struggle. We get attached to our positions and defending them becomes part of our identity rather than a working hypothesis we're testing. I've written before about questioning yourself as a way to build strength in your convictions, but there's a difference between examining your reasoning and clinging to conclusions that no longer hold up. The scientific method doesn't work that way - you state your position clearly, outline what you've taken into account, run your experiments, and when the results come back contradicting your hypothesis you're supposed to get excited rather than defensive.

I have a science degree that I've done absolutely nothing with professionally, but it gave me one thing that's proven valuable: a keener eye for bullshit. Not because I can cite studies or run complex analyses, but because it taught me to question everything and look at the method behind claims rather than just accepting them at face value. The problem is we've built a world that rewards certainty over curiosity, and social media amplifies the loudest voices rather than the most thoughtful ones.

Changing your mind gets framed as weakness or flip-flopping when it should be celebrated as learning. Admitting you were wrong becomes this huge thing instead of just being part of the process of understanding the world better. But being wrong is information - it tells you something about reality you didn't know before, and the people I respect most are the ones who can say "I thought X, but I was wrong, here's what changed my mind" without making it a whole thing.

I'm guilty of not doing this well too. I've published blog posts about systems or tools or ideas that didn't survive contact with reality for more than a few weeks. The temptation is to delete them or pretend they never happened, but they're part of the record and part of testing things out in the open to see what actually holds up. The best part about treating your beliefs like hypotheses is it removes the ego from the equation - you're not defending yourself, you're defending an idea that can be replaced with a better one at any time.