Great Reviews and Terrible Tacos - Sharpening Substitute Questions with Counterfactuals

Developer Tea

This episode delves into the use of substitute questions—simpler queries we use to answer more complex ones—and the crucial concept of cohesion between these substitutes and our true objectives. You'll learn how to leverage counterfactual thinking to scrutinize your assumptions and enhance the effectiveness of your decisions. Discover two powerful counterfactual techniques: asking "what else could be true?" to reveal alternative explanations, and employing thought experiments to, for example, precisely define your desires and career aspirations. The discussion offers practical applications, from refining hiring processes by identifying high-cohesion interview criteria to avoiding confirmation bias in debugging. By adopting counterfactual thinking, you can significantly improve your analytical skills, make more informed choices, and build robust strategies.

• Uncover how cognitively taxing questions lead us to use substitute questions as heuristics, and why understanding the cohesion between these is vital for accurate decision-making.
• Learn to implement "counterfactual thinking" to rigorously check your heuristics and substitute questions, ensuring they effectively align with your actual goals and underlying evaluations.
• Discover two key counterfactual techniques: exploring "what else could be true?" to identify alternative explanations for observations, and conducting thought experiments to clarify nuanced personal and professional desires.
• Explore practical applications of counterfactuals to drastically improve processes like hiring, by challenging low-signal interview criteria (e.g., LeetCode problems) and making more predictive assessments of candidates.
• Understand how counterfactuals can combat biases like confirmation bias in problem-solving, such as debugging, by prompting you to consider alternative causes and avoid poor pathways of biased logic.
• Realise the transformative power of counterfactual thinking in refining your thinking process, improving your career trajectory, and enhancing departmental operations by identifying and improving low-cohesion substitutions.

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