Mind Unspun

The world is noisy. Headlines scream. Experts disagree. Social feeds boil with outrage and certainty. Everywhere you look, people are doubling down. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed—or worse, smug. Either you throw up your hands, or you dig in your heels. But there’s a third option. You can learn to think clearly. This blog exists for one reason: to help you do just that. To offer tools, ideas, and ways of seeing that make the world more legible and your decisions more grounded. Not because it’s trendy. Not because it guarantees easy answers. But because truth is better than illusion. Clarity is better than comfort. And reality, whether we like…

Bayes factors help us compare competing explanations by measuring how well each one predicts the evidence. Learn how this tool helps move beyond binary thinking and sharpens your reasoning.

Binary belief frames—like “Do vaccines cause autism?”—can mislead us by hiding alternative explanations. This post explores how thinking in terms of competing hypotheses creates more accurate, flexible beliefs and protects against overconfidence.

The Problem You’re listening to a podcast. The host says, without hesitation: “Aspartame is a known carcinogen.” Or you’re at dinner and someone asserts: “Ultraprocessed food isn’t even food — it’s literally poison.” Or you hear: “There’s absolutely no way that building collapsed without explosives.” These statements have something in common: they sound decisive. Confident. Final. But are they? Confidence and truth aren’t the same — and in fact, confident language often masks the weakness of the underlying evidence. Why We Fall for It When someone says something confidently on a podcast — like one of the opening examples — we often mistake that as evidence. But it’s not. All…

The Story You’re on a jury. The prosecution claims the suspect fled the scene of a robbery. An eyewitness testifies that they saw someone running away wearing a red jacket — and the defendant owns one. The implication is clear: this is supposed to be incriminating. And if you’re not careful, it feels that way. But let’s pause. Is this strong evidence? Or just strong storytelling? Using Likelihood Ratios to Evaluate the Evidence Let’s turn to the core question from our last post: How much more likely is this evidence if the person is guilty than if they’re not? We’ll treat the hypothesis as: And the evidence is: Now imagine…

The Engine Behind Bayesian Thinking In our last post, we introduced Bayes’ Rule as a method for updating your beliefs when new evidence comes in. But to really use it well, you need to understand the idea at the heart of it all: How much more likely is this evidence if my hypothesis is true, compared to if it’s false? This is called the likelihood ratio, and it’s the unsung hero of rational thinking. Likelihood Ratios, in Plain Terms Let’s say you’re trying to decide whether your friend is lying about being sick to avoid a dinner party. You learn they texted at 4 p.m. to cancel and said they…

Why Belief Should Shift with Evidence Previously in Tools for Truth: The Four-Box Clarity Grid gave us a simple way to test whether a condition makes a difference — by checking how often the effect happens with and without it. But once we see that contrast, what do we do with it? How much should it shift our belief? You’ve probably heard the phrase: correlation is not causation. That’s true — but it’s not the full story. In our last post, we explored the Four-Box Clarity Grid, which helps us detect contrast — the kind of correlation that causation would need to leave behind. But once you have that contrast…

We’re often told that one thing causes another — that drinking coffee boosts focus, that a new policy reduced crime, or that a certain parenting style produces confident kids. But how can we tell if those claims actually hold up? You don’t need a statistics degree or access to a peer-reviewed database to start asking sharper questions. You just need a thinking tool that helps make causation clearer — or exposes when the logic is missing. That’s what the Four-Box Clarity Grid is for. It won’t prove causation, but it will help you spot patterns, test claims, and think more clearly about what kind of evidence a solid cause-and-effect claim…