Coaching practices for Plausibility Checking
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Plausibility Checking, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- 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
- I’ve got two stories about why this happened and I keep flip-flopping
- A scenario laid out as a vivid story grips me, but the moment I’d try to say it plainly
- Because I can explain exactly why something would happen, I treat it as likely to happen
- I traced a problem down to what felt like the real cause and it all hangs together so neatly that I trust it completely
Practices that may help
- Surface and test underlying assumptions
Identify the implicit assumptions that your reasoning depends on and test whether they hold.
Socratic Questioning - Count the assumptions each explanation requires
When two explanations fit the facts, count how many unverified assumptions each one rests on.
Occam’s Razor: Prefer the Simpler Explanation - Strip the narrative and restate as a bare frequency claim
Translate the vivid scenario into a dry statistical question to see if it still feels probable.
The Conjunction Fallacy — When "More Details" Feels More Likely - Explicitly distinguish coherence from probability
A story can be internally consistent and still be rare — learn to separate "makes sense" from "likely."
The Conjunction Fallacy — When "More Details" Feels More Likely - Verify the root cause by tracing back up the chain
After reaching a root, work back up: does each "because" in the chain make logical sense?
The Five Whys - Identify what the narrative leaves out
After hearing or constructing a causal story, deliberately list the facts it doesn’t explain.
The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories - Distrust easy fluency
Treat "this feels obviously right" as a flag to check, not a signal to proceed.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Made Usable - Consult an outside observer to counteract narrative pull
Describe the scenario to someone who doesn’t share your narrative context and listen to their probability estimate.
The Conjunction Fallacy — When "More Details" Feels More Likely - 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 - Check the Facts, Made Practical
"Check the facts" is a DBT emotion regulation skill for testing whether an emotion is justified by the actual situation or whether it is firing based on an interpretation — a story the mind has added. The underlying mechanism (examining the evidence for a belief) is the same as cognitive restructuring in CBT, which has strong randomized-trial support for anxiety and depression. DBT packages it specifically as a regulation tool, to be used when the emotion may not fit the facts.
Related concerns
- When Occams Razor Count Assumptions
When two explanations fit the facts, count how many unverified assumptions each one rests on.
Count the assumptions each explanation requires
- Coherence Vs Probability
A story can be internally consistent and still be rare — learn to separate "makes sense" from "likely."
Explicitly distinguish coherence from probability
- Conjunction Error Probability
Before judging a joint claim, estimate each element on its own, then check whether the conjunction is lower.
Test each component probability separately
- Narrative Vs Probability
Translate the vivid scenario into a dry statistical question to see if it still feels probable.
Strip the narrative and restate as a bare frequency claim
- The Conjunction Fallacy When More Details Feels More Likely At Work
The conjunction fallacy is the well-replicated tendency to judge a specific combination of events as more probable than one of its components alone — made famous by Kahneman and Tversky’s Linda problem. It happens because vivid, representative details hijack probability judgment, and the fix is to reason about base rates rather than narrative fit.
- When Conjunction Fallacy Use Outside Observers
Describe the scenario to someone who doesn’t share your narrative context and listen to their probability estimate.
Consult an outside observer to counteract narrative pull
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