Countermoves
Process repairs worth standardizing
A bias site gets more useful when it helps people change procedure, not just vocabulary. These countermoves are the first layer of that procedural toolkit.
Generate Rival Hypotheses
Before gathering more evidence, force yourself to name at least two live alternatives to the explanation you currently favor.
- Write the favored explanation in one sentence.
- Write two rival explanations that could also fit the current facts.
- List one observation that would make each rival stronger.
Estimate Before Exposure
Record an independent estimate before seeing the first quoted number, forecast, or recommendation.
- Write your own range first.
- Only then reveal the anchor or outside estimate.
- Explain why any later movement away from your range is justified.
Use Base Rates And Reference Classes
Anchor vivid cases to wider frequencies before letting the story determine the probability.
- Identify the broad reference class first.
- Write the outside-view rate or prevalence.
- Adjust only after naming what makes the current case unusually diagnostic.
Separate Person From Situation
Treat traits, pressures, incentives, and local constraints as distinct variables rather than one fused impression.
- Describe the behavior without interpreting it yet.
- List three situational pressures that could also explain it.
- Delay any trait verdict until those pressures are inspected.
Treat Sunk Costs As Sunk
Ask what you would do if the time, money, and pride already spent could not be recovered because in reality they cannot.
- Ignore prior investment for one clean pass of the decision.
- Re-evaluate the options from today forward only.
- Create an explicit stopping rule before continuing.
Use Decision Journals And Premortems
Capture what you believed before the outcome, then imagine in advance how the plan could fail.
- Write the current forecast, assumptions, and confidence level.
- Run a premortem: imagine the plan failed and list why.
- Review the notes later before narrating the outcome.
Run Independent First Passes
Have people write their judgment privately before discussion so the room cannot manufacture agreement too early.
- Collect short independent judgments before open discussion begins.
- Compare where views diverge before anyone starts converging rhetorically.
- Use the differences to structure the discussion rather than to erase them.
Flip The Frame
Restate the same decision in an alternative wording so packaging does not masquerade as evidence.
- Rewrite the choice in neutral language.
- Restate it again from the opposite emotional frame.
- Check whether your preference survived the translation.
Test Explanation Depth
Ask for a plain-language mechanism, a challenge case, and a performance test before treating fluency as understanding.
- Explain the idea without jargon.
- Name one edge case or contrast case that would stress the explanation.
- Identify the task that would demonstrate actual competence.
Separate Threat From Ambiguity
When motives are unclear, require evidence for hostile intent instead of letting ambiguity collapse directly into threat.
- Describe the observed behavior without loading intent into the wording.
- List at least two non-hostile explanations that still fit.
- State what additional evidence would justify the harsher interpretation.
Trace The Source Chain
Separate original support from repetition and uptake before treating a widely circulated claim as well established.
- Find the earliest evidential source you can locate.
- Count independent sources separately from retellings.
- Ask what replacement explanation should exist if the first frame turns out to be wrong.
Run A Blind First Pass
Evaluate the core options once before the recommendation, popularity signal, or decoy comparison is allowed to steer you.
- State the target criterion in plain language.
- Compare the core options before viewing the recommendation or dominated extra option.
- Only then reveal the extra framing cues and note what changed.
Preserve The Original Tradeoff
Record the real conflict, tradeoff, and rejected alternatives before memory and self-justification begin polishing the story.
- Write the strongest case for the option you rejected or the commitment now in tension.
- State what evidence or values were genuinely pulling in opposite directions.
- Revisit that record before retelling why the final path was obviously right.
