Coaching practices for How to Identify Premises

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Identify Premises, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• On paper my reasoning checks out, but the conclusion still feels shaky and I can’t locate why
• If I’m honest, I knew where I was going to land before I’d looked at anything
• My conclusion feels airtight and yet something nags at me, and I think it’s that the whole thing only holds if a couple of unspoken things are true
• My conclusion only makes sense because of a bunch of things I’m silently taking for granted about people and how the world works
• I want to know whether the evidence actually changed my mind or just confirmed where I already landed

Practices that may help

1. Surface the hidden premises
   Find the unstated assumptions that the argument needs to work.
   Argument Mapping
2. Catch yourself working backward from a conclusion
   Notice when the conclusion appeared before the evidence — and treat that as a red flag.
   Motivated Reasoning
3. Surface and test underlying assumptions
   Identify the implicit assumptions that your reasoning depends on and test whether they hold.
   Socratic Questioning
4. Surface and examine the assumptions you are making
   Name the assumptions filling the gap between the data you selected and the interpretation you reached.
   The Ladder of Inference
5. State your prior probability before seeing the evidence
   Before looking at any data, commit to a numerical estimate of how likely something is.
   Bayesian Thinking: How to Update Beliefs Rationally
6. Set the constraint: what conclusions would you not accept?
   Pre-define which conclusions would be embarrassing, then monitor whether your reasoning is steering away from them.
   Motivated Reasoning
7. Use Socratic questioning to test each belief
   Interrogate every claim with “how do I know this is true?” until only bedrock remains.
   First-Principles Thinking, Made Usable
8. Deconstruct the problem to its fundamentals
   Break the problem into the few things you actually know to be true, with no inherited conclusions.
   First-Principles Thinking, Made Usable
9. Probe for evidence behind claims
   Ask "what evidence supports that?" before accepting any factual or evaluative claim.
   Socratic Questioning
10. Specify what would falsify your belief before you look at evidence
    Write down what evidence would prove you wrong before you go looking.
    Falsification Thinking

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