I’d be interested to know: what is missing from my new list of causes of bad things and potential types of solutions? Thanks to those of you who commented on my prior version!

Causes of bad things in the world:

—
1) EXTERNAL CAUSES

1i) Nature or evolution (e.g., malaria, cancer) -> Potential solutions: technological development, such as medical cures

1ii) Bad luck (e.g., landslides, earthquakes, droughts) -> charity, government programs providing social safety nets

1iii) Scarcity (e.g., insufficient food or water in an area) -> migration away from high scarcity areas, technological development to increase food production

—
2) FAILINGS OF HUMAN NATURE

2i) Highly selfish actions by non-evil people (e.g., some of the crimes that are committed, some of the manipulation that occurs) -> cultural norms discouraging selfishness, cultural norms to punish those taking highly selfish actions

2ii) Harmful actions taken in highly emotional, confused, or desperate mental states (e.g., crimes of passion, harmful, desperate reactions out of fear, harm caused during extreme mental illness) -> widely available and effective mental health treatment, widespread education/training related to mental health and emotional regulation

2iii) Well-intentioned ideologues who are convinced that their simple but wrong model of the world is the absolute truth (e.g., some of the genocides and wars, many harmful yet well-intentioned policies) -> rationality education/training, a robust culture of respectful disagreement and debate

2iv) Cognitive biases leading to actions with severe negative consequences (e.g., greatly misjudging whether a project will bring enough benefit to be worth the cost, excessive fear towards or devaluing of ‘othered’ outsiders leading to mistreatment or harm to outsiders, lack of preparation for likely occurrences that are not salient) -> rationality education/training, careful design of systems to counteract biases, strong moral norms of respect towards all, moral circle expansion

2v) Retaliation or revenge (e.g., cycles of retribution) -> a culture of forgiveness, effective dispute resolution methods and institutions, reliable enforcement of laws

2vi) Evil people acting alone (e.g., serial murder, child abuse) -> effective police forces, high crime clearance rates, enforcement of laws, scientific investigation into the root causes of evil

2vii) Evil people who rally supporters (e.g., some genocides and wars, some extractive government policies) -> strong norms around truth telling and social punishment for lying, a robust culture of respectful disagreement and debate, a culture of empathy toward and acceptance of those who are different than you, a well-educated and informed citizenry, scientific investigation into the root causes of evil, a strong constitution, a strong independent judiciary, strong norms around maintaining freedom and independence of thought

—
3) CHALLENGES OF COORDINATION AND INFORMATION

3i) Negative-sum competition (e.g., fighting over food when there isn’t enough to go around) -> technological innovation to increase abundance, thoroughly enforced laws forbidding negative-sum behaviors

3ii) Unintended side effects of actions that are not innately unethical (e.g., addiction caused by the invention of social media, new promising-seeming medical treatments that turn out to have horrendous side effects) -> a robust and low-transaction cost systems for those who were harmed to be compensated by those who caused the harm, hard to undermine enforced regulation requiring organizations to ameliorate harms once they have been identified

3iii) Collective action problems and negative externalities caused by individually reasonable behavior (e.g., pollution, climate change, overuse of resources) -> methods for assigning prices to negative externalities so that someone bears the cost, regulation to limit negative externalities

3iv) Prisoner’s dilemmas and difficulties of pre-commitment and coordination (e.g., arms races, such as with nuclear weapons) -> technology to facilitate coordination and simultaneous action, public projects by governments and private donors

What other broad causes of bad things or potential types of solutions am I missing?

This piece was first written on November 2, 2025, and first appeared on my website on November 17, 2025.

How can you tell who is a valid expert, and who is full of B.S.?

On almost any topic of importance you can find a mix of valid experts (who are giving you reliable information) and false but confident-seeming “experts” (who are giving you misinformation). To make matters even more confusing, sometimes the fake experts even have very impressive credentials, and every once in a while, the real, genuine experts are entirely self-taught.

Here are 12 signs we look for in an expert to help us determine whether they are trustworthy. 

1. They have deep factual knowledge

Let’s start with the obvious: for most topics, a lot of factual knowledge is required before you can have genuine expertise. This means that a genuine expert will have an impressive command of the relevant (non-debated) facts on the topic of their expertise. Thankfully, it’s a lot easier to tell if an expert has a strong command of the non-debated facts than whether they are correct about more controversial claims. 

2. They communicate their confidence levels

Not all knowledge is equally well-established. Even theories that are widely accepted enjoy different levels of support from the relevant evidence. When an expert regularly pretends that all their claims are equally well-established, they demonstrate they are willing to make you believe something is certain when it isn’t.

It’s a good sign that someone treats their subject with the nuance expected from genuine expertise, when they indicate how confident they are (e.g., “It’s been shown in many high-quality studies that…”, or “My best guess is…”), and they explain limitations in the evidence they are using (e.g., “this is unfortunately based on just one study, but that is all that currently exists”)

3. They admit not knowing

Genuine experts also sometimes say that they don’t know the answer to a question, or that the answer is generally not known by anyone. This is important because every topic will have some unknowns, and no expert can know everything about a topic. Telling you when they don’t know is a sign that, when they say they do know, they actually do know.

4. They tell you to look at sources other than themselves

This might happen when an expert doesn’t know the answer to a question, or when they want to help you go beyond the answer they can give you. Genuine experts don’t seek to be seen as a sole arbiter of knowledge or authority on a topic (which can be an indication that ego, rather than truth-seeking, is a primary motivation for them), but instead encourage you to look at resources other than the ones they have produced.

5. They use logic and evidence

Anyone can use rhetorical devices like emotional appeals, no matter how wrong they are, but a well-reasoned argument that uses valid logic and strong evidence will tend to point toward truth. Or, put another way, using strong logic and strong evidence is easier to do when you’re right, whereas emotional appeals are no easier when you’re right than when you’re wrong.  

6. They cite high-quality evidence

Some evidence is much more reliable than other evidence, and those who rely on the less reliable kinds when the more reliable kinds exist probably aren’t doing the best job they can at figuring out the truth. For this reason, genuine experts cite high-quality evidence when it exists (e.g., looking at multiple randomized controlled trials for causal claims) rather than low-quality evidence (e.g., just talking about personal anecdotes), and when high-quality evidence doesn’t exist, they cite the highest quality evidence that does exist.

7. They acknowledge the consensus

Consensus views among experts are more often correct than the idiosyncratic views of just one or two experts. The consensus will not always be right, of course, but often it will be the best understanding we have available. That’s why reliable experts are transparent about the degree to which their opinion differs from the majority of experts, provide reasoned explanations for any deviations, and they are cautious not to present fringe theories as mainstream. This shows a deep engagement with the topic of their expertise and also an adherence to ethical standards of honesty and accuracy in communication.

8. They change their mind

Genuine experts will change their minds about topics within their expertise in response to evidence and arguments. It’s hard to become an expert in something without having been wrong from time-to-time.

That means that anyone claiming to be an expert who has never changed their mind probably has not found and corrected their mistakes. Relatedly, changing one’s mind in response to evidence is also a sign of the epistemic humility associated with genuine expertise.

Of course, if someone has a long history of being wrong, that is evidence against them being a genuine expert, not in favor of it. But, since everyone makes some mistakes, if they make mistakes from time to time and then note they were wrong and improve their beliefs, that is a sign that they are following the evidence where it leads rather than continuing to believe what they do regardless of the evidence.

9. They Steelman

When you ‘straw man’ an argument, you misrepresent or oversimplify someone else’s position to make it easier to attack or refute. Instead of dealing with the actual argument, you replace it with a weaker version that distorts the original point, which you then argue against. The opposite of this is called ‘steelmanning’, and it involves presenting the strongest possible version of an argument you’re objecting to, even if it’s more robust than the one originally presented. This approach aims to strengthen the opposing case in order to facilitate a more genuine and constructive debate. 

The most reliable experts will accurately present the strongest arguments made by those that disagree with them while pointing out flaws in those arguments, rather than focusing on just weak arguments from the other side or just mocking the other side (including ad hominem attacks rather than focusing on the substance of the claims of the other side). This is important because knocking down a weak argument from the other side of a debate does little to show the other side is wrong; you have to refute the strongest claims of the other side to actually show they are wrong. Additionally, demonstrating a knowledge of the strongest arguments against your own position shows a deeper level of expertise than only understanding the opposing point of view at a superficial level.

10. They clearly explain their reasons for believing

The philosopher Daniel Dennett has said: “if I can’t explain something I’m doing to a group of bright undergraduates, I don’t really understand it myself.” This sentiment is echoed by philosopher John Searle, who said “In general, I feel if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.” 

When communicating with non-experts, genuine experts are often able to give clear, easy-to-follow (and, ideally, checkable) explanations for why they believe what they believe – without dumbing down the points. They avoid unnecessary jargon and technical language (which sounds smart but makes their arguments very difficult for their audience to follow). Not every genuine expert is able to do this, but the ability to do this well is a sign of genuine expertise. This is important because an expert who cannot explain their ideas clearly will end up requiring you to believe them based on their authority rather than engaging with the arguments themselves. And sometimes, people claiming to be experts will hide behind technical expertise and jargon so that you won’t notice that their arguments are actually weak.

11. They have a track record

Sometimes genuine experts will have track records of predictions or successes that you can check, and this provides direct evidence of their knowledge or skill. Unfortunately, this only applies to some fields, like chess masters, martial experts who fight in tournaments, experts who make public predictions about the economy or politics, etc.

12. They use multiple lenses

The world is complex and multi-faceted, and any one simple theory is going to fail to explain a lot of what’s really going on. For this reason, genuine experts tend to look at problems from multiple frames and perspectives; they don’t act as though one way of looking at things solves all problems, or that one solution works for all problems, or that one simple theory explains everything.

So the next time you hear claims from an alleged expert on a topic that is important to you, you may want to consider: how many of these signs of expertise do they exhibit? You can use this checklist, considering if they:

1. have deep factual knowledge
2. communicate their confidence levels
3. admit not knowing
4. tell you to look at sources other than themselves
5. use logic and evidence
6. cite high-quality evidence
7. acknowledge the consensus
8. change their mind
9. steelman
10. clearly explain their reasons for believing
11. have a track record
12. use multiple lenses

And if you’re seeking to be an expert in something yourself, you may want to ask yourself: “to what extent do I exhibit these traits?”Being able to discern genuine expertise from B.S. requires good judgment. If you’d like to improve your skills at making accurate judgments, why not try our Calibrate Your Judgment tool, created in partnership with Open Philanthropy.

This piece first appeared on Clearer Thinking.org on April 16, 2024, and first appeared on my website on April 22, 2024.

The squirrel lay there on its back, quivering.

I knew it was totally screwed. Its back was probably broken, but it was clearly still alive.

“Fuck,” I thought to myself. “Look at how much it’s suffering. Should I kill it to put it out of its misery?”

I stood there pondering the question, trying to decide if the ethical thing to do was to kill it.

It then suddenly flipped over, ran through a hole in a fence, and climbed up a tree.

That was a great reminder of why one should set the bar extremely high for harming another creature “for a greater good.” It’s disturbing to me to consider the possibility I could have killed that squirrel in a foolish attempt to prevent its suffering.

It’s also a reminder that I don’t know shit about squirrels.

If you’re wondering how a squirrel could be okay after such a drop, a quick google search suggests it’s due to their high floofiness to mass ratio, plus their amazing falling instincts (they position their body and tail so as to increase drag).

But size is also a surprisingly important factor when it comes to falls. The smaller you are, the lower your kinetic energy is when you hit the ground, and the greater your surface area is relative to your mass, which means that air resistance has more effect. If dropped from a high place, an ant lands gracefully on the ground, whereas a whale practically explodes.

So if you ever fall from the top of a tall tree, I’d recommend being an ant or at least a squirrel, and definitely not a whale.

This was first written on November 16, 2022, and first appeared on this site on November 18, 2022.

A libertarian, a socialist, an environmentalist, and a pro-development YIMBY watch an apartment complex being built. The libertarian is pleased – ‘the hand of the market at work!’ – whereas the socialist worries that the building is a harbinger of gentrification; the YIMBY sees progress, but the environmentalist is concerned about the building’s carbon footprint. They’re all seeing the same thing, but they understand it differently because they inhabit different worldviews.

We can think of worldviews as snow globes. We each occupy our own snow globe, and when we’re inside it, it can seem like the whole world. If it’s snowing in our snow globe, we think it’s snowing everywhere; if our snow globe is made of green glass, everything looks green to us. We might not even realize that there’s anything beyond our snow globe! But if we can step outside, we see that our view from inside was only part of a much larger picture. If you can step outside your snow globe – and visit other people’s – you’ll be able to see a more accurate representation of the world and communicate better with others. For every snow globe you master, you’ll gain a powerful new lens through which to see the world – and you’ll see that no single snow globe has all the answers.

What makes a worldview?

Worldviews are a type of story we learn about how the world works and about what things matter and why. In this post, we put forward a theory of worldviews that will help you understand how different worldviews work. We call this “Snow Globe Theory.” Every worldview includes many beliefs, but after reflecting on a wide variety of worldviews, we believe that almost every one has four central components. There are other common elements that some worldviews have but others don’t – for example, a strong culture, or a theory about trustworthy sources of knowledge – but this article will focus on these four central elements:

1. What is good?
2. Where do good and bad come from?
3. Who deserves the good?
4. How can you do good or be good?

You can understand a worldview quite well if you know what thoughtful people with that worldview would all answer in response to these four questions. While each individual member of a group will have somewhat different answers to the questions above, it is the portions of their answers that most members of that group share with each other that compose the group’s worldview. Let’s explore Snow Globe Theory and the four components it assigns to worldviews.

Component 1: What is good?

Different worldviews come with different primary intrinsic values. Intrinsic values (as opposed to “instrumental values”) are things that people care about as an end in and of themselves, not merely as a means to other ends. They are the traits and states of the world that people who share the worldview treasure and want to promote. People who hold the worldview don’t just think that these things are good – they care about them deeply and feel strongly motivated to pursue them. Examples:

• Some libertarian intrinsic values are freedom, personal choice, and individualism.
• Some intrinsic values of social justice advocates are justice, equity, and protecting the vulnerable and oppressed.

Here is our categorization of intrinsic values. You can find out your own with our Intrinsic Values Test.

Component 2: Where do good and bad come from?

Worldviews usually have a simple causal explanation for the origin of good and bad things. Examples:

• Christian conservatives think that God grants good things to people who obey him and follow his will. Bad things come from the Devil, from humans’ failure to trust God, or from humanity’s flawed and sinful nature.
• Effective altruists have intrinsic values of increasing happiness and reducing suffering. They think that people can make the world better by using reason and evidence to figure out which actions will create the most happiness and reduce the most suffering. Suffering comes from a combination of nature and human foibles and biases, which present obstacles to improving the world.

Component 3: Who deserves the good?

Worldviews tend to include beliefs about who deserves good things (or who most deserves them). Examples:

• Socialists think that most people deserve good things, but workers, in particular, deserve to reap the rewards of their labor; capitalists who exploit others are less deserving.
• Libertarians think that hard-working and ingenious people particularly deserve to be rewarded since they create value. If you create a successful business, then you deserve the wealth that comes from that business.

Component 4: How can you do good or be good?

Worldviews often include beliefs about what people should do to be good or to cause good things to happen. Examples:

• Conservatives think that to be good, we should fulfill our obligations to our family and community.
• Social justice advocates think that to be good, we should try to understand our privilege and implicit prejudices, and stop contributing to oppressive systems, such as white supremacy.

Other elements

There are other elements that worldviews commonly have, but that are not near-universal like the four components described above are.

Culture

Worldviews don’t exist in a vacuum. People who share a worldview cluster together, either because the worldview spreads within existing communities or because believers in the worldview seek each other out. This means that worldviews develop their own unique cultures. Some parts of a worldview’s culture are related to its intrinsic values and stories about where good and bad come from. For example, libertarians are more likely than socialists to work in finance, at least in part because they believe that the financial sector is a force for good. However, some aspects of these cultures are more arbitrary, and arise due to coincidences about where a worldview happened to take root. For example, Christian conservatives in the U.S. often live in the countryside and own guns. These aspects of Christian conservative culture aren’t directly related to the Christian conservative worldview – the Bible doesn’t forbid people from living in cities and, based on the pacifist content of the New Testament, you wouldn’t necessarily expect that Christians would own weapons. But for historical reasons, there is a demographic link between Christian conservatism in the U.S. and gun ownership.

Outgroups

Some worldviews also have an outgroup. This doesn’t just mean “everyone who doesn’t share the worldview” – rather, the outgroup is a specific group (or sometimes groups) of people who are seen as the particular enemies or adversaries of a worldview. For example, the outgroup for social justice advocates might be the alt-right.

Theories of knowledge

Worldviews often privilege certain sources of information over others. It’s intuitive that people who hold a certain worldview seek out media produced by those who share that worldview – we’re familiar with the fact that liberals prefer liberal media while conservatives favor conservative media. Some worldviews also involve the belief that certain kinds of information or sources of knowledge have a stronger connection to the truth than others. For example:

• Adherents of religious worldviews often see holy texts as an important source of knowledge.
• Social justice advocates believe that it’s important to pay attention to people’s lived experiences, particularly if they belong to a marginalized group.

Worldviews within worldviews

Worldviews exist at many levels. Many worldviews contain smaller, more granular worldviews within them – for example, American Christian conservatives share a broad worldview, but you could also sketch the worldviews of individual denominations with Christianity. Similarly, there are broad overarching worldviews that unify some of the different worldviews we’ve listed below – for example, democratic socialists, communists, and social justice advocates all share a broad ‘progressive’ or ‘left-wing’ worldview. The broader you get, the less specific a worldview tends to be.

Why it’s important to understand worldviews

The truth lies outside any one worldview

Most of us are taught a worldview growing up, or we pick up one in college or from media that we consume. It can be tempting to stay in that snow globe forever. However, being stuck in just one worldview limits our ability to see the world as it truly is. Worldviews tend to be simplistic, which has some advantages – it’s easier to understand the world and relate to other people if you share simple stories about good and bad, right and wrong. But because worldviews are simple, and the world is complex, any one worldview necessarily misses a lot of nuance. Just about every worldview has some truths that it is good at seeing accurately, and some truths that it is systematically blind to. But you don’t have to be stuck in just one worldview. The more worldviews you understand, the more accurately you’ll see the world.

Occupying many snow globes lets you better understand the world and communicate more effectively

You might think, ‘Ok, but I know that my worldview is correct – otherwise, it wouldn’t be my worldview! Why should I waste my time understanding people whose beliefs are flawed or toxic?’ For instance, if you’re strongly committed to one of the progressive worldviews, you might not see the value in understanding the point of view of one of the conservative worldviews, and vice versa. However, it’s useful to know how other people think even if you believe that their worldview is deeply wrong. Governments, corporations, non-profits, religions, political parties, and other powerful groups are often guided by a particular worldview. If you don’t understand that worldview, then you’ll be unable to predict what these groups will do. You will also struggle to communicate with them in a way that they care about or persuade them to do things differently. When people engage with others who have a different worldview, they frequently make the mistake of relying too much on the stories and assumptions of their own worldview. But this is unlikely to work well, because the person they are talking to does not share these assumptions. To be really convincing to one another, you have to be able to see things from their perspective. To give a topical example: in abortion debates, pro-choice progressives often misunderstand the worldview of pro-life conservatives. We’re publishing this article only a few days after Roe v Wade was overturned; since then, abortion has been banned or restricted in several U.S. states.

We originally drafted this section before the overturning, and know that some of our readers will be feeling immense grief or distress at this ruling, and that abortion is an exceptionally fraught and emotionally-charged issue at the best of times. No matter how much you believe that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was harmful and wrong, and even if your only goal is to win a political victory, we believe it’s still going to be useful to understand what pro-lifers really think: that way, you’ll be better placed to predict what they’ll do, or persuade them of your own point of view.

When talking about abortion, progressives sometimes say things like this tweet by @leilacohan which has been retweeted more than one hundred thousand times:

“If it was about babies, we’d have excellent and free universal maternal care. You wouldn’t be charged a cent to give birth, no matter how complicated your delivery was. If it was about babies, we’d have months and months of parental leave, for everyone.

If it was about babies, we’d have free lactation consultants, free diapers, free formula. If it was about babies, we’d have free and excellent childcare from newborns on. If it was about babies, we’d have universal preschool and pre-k and guaranteed after school placements.”

From a progressive worldview, this tweet is powerful and persuasive; but it’s unlikely to be persuasive to U.S.-based Christian conservative pro-lifers – the group that it’s apparently discussing – because it misunderstands their worldview. The argument is that if conservatives cared about babies, they would support babies and children through funding and social programs. The subtext is that since conservatives don’t support those things, they are being dishonest about what they care about, and just pretending that they care about not letting fetuses die. But the idea that we should try to make good things happen through government intervention is itself a progressive belief. Conservatives tend to think that individual responsibility is more important, and to be skeptical that large government-run social programs produce good outcomes. While modern Christians have a variety of views on abortion (depending on factors such as their denomination), and the Bible doesn’t address the topic directly, within the first few hundred years of Christianity there were Christian scholars arguing that life begins at conception (rather than birth). In the U.S., many Christian conservatives who oppose abortion believe that fetuses should have the same rights as born babies: we polled 49 people in the U.S. who say that they’re “very happy” that Roe v Wade has been overturned. Of these, 90% said that they think abortion is wrong because it’s murder (i.e., similar to killing an adult human).

From within a U.S. Christian conservative worldview, there is no tension between (1) thinking that abortion is murder and (2) not supporting free diapers and childcare. If you momentarily step inside the snowglobe of this worldview, it becomes clear that you can oppose what you see as murder without believing that the government should fund large programs aimed at improving people’s quality of life. Another common misunderstanding (from the other side of the political spectrum) is that conservatives sometimes label anyone left-of-center as a “socialist”, and believe that liberals oppose capitalism (see the chart below which demonstrates the misunderstanding). But this is a misunderstanding of the average liberal’s worldview: in the U.S., most self-identified liberals (for example, Democrat voters) aren’t ‘socialists’ in the sense of ‘people who want to abolish capitalism and private ownership.’ Most support capitalism, but they differ from conservatives in that they support an expanded social safety net and favor moderate wealth redistribution through progressive tax policies.

Image Source

If a popular argument seems irrational or evil, see if you understand the worldview behind it

When you read an argument that you know is popular, but it seems clearly wrong to you, check with yourself: do you understand the worldview motivating it? Here are some questions you can ask to understand another person’s worldview:

• What are this person’s intrinsic values?
• What is their theory of what makes the world better?
• What is their theory of what makes the world worse?
• Can I understand why someone with their values would think this?
• Can I understand why someone with their theories of what makes the world better and worse would hold the position they do?

If your answers would be insulting to the person holding that worldview, you probably haven’t understood your interlocutor’s worldview deeply. For example, if you think ‘this person’s intrinsic value is to oppress people,’ it’s likely that you haven’t found what truly motivates them. All worldviews feel right from within their own snow globe. While some worldviews do lead people to do great harm, reality has few cartoon villains; worldviews make sense internally and are aimed at making things better, even if (from an outsider’s perspective) they can seem deeply misguided. If you want to understand how other people work, or even just persuade them more effectively, try leaving your snow globe and visiting theirs for a while.

Many worldviews at a glance

Every identity group label is somewhat ambiguous, and within each worldview there will be people with differing beliefs. But that being said, identity groups tend to have specific worldviews attached. As we’ve discussed, different worldviews have different causal theories of how good or bad things come about. Rarely are any of these causal theories totally correct or totally false. There are things to be learned from each worldview about why people behave the way they do, and how the world functions. We recommend trying to understand worldviews that are very different from your own – the more snow globes you master, the more clearly you’ll see the world, and the more you’ll understand others (even if you still think your snow globe is the best). Below we list what we think are the critical elements of various worldviews. If you notice any mistakes, please let us know so that we can correct them.

✟ American Christian Conservatives

✞ American Christian Leftists

☭ American Communists

+ Effective Altruists

‘Family Values’ American Conservatives

Libertarians

New Atheists

Silicon Valley Techno-Optimists

Social Justice Advocates

Trumpers (fervent Donald Trump supporters)

Further reading and listening

See this article and spreadsheet for the idea of “memetic tribes” – a slightly different framing that partially overlaps with ours.

Thanks

Thanks to Elizabeth Kim for helping Spencer develop the ‘snow globes’ metaphor for worldviews. You can listen to their conversation on this topic here.

Thanks to Lovkush Agarwal, Corinne Clinch Gray and Lisa Greer for helping us write our infoboxes on (respectively) New Atheists, American Christian Conservatives, and American Christian Leftists.

And thanks to Richard Ngo for suggesting that we add a “view of history” to our article for each worldview.

Thanks to Holly Muir and Adam Binks for helpful edits and comments.

This essay was first posted on the Clearer Thinking blog on June 29, 2022, and first appeared on this site on July 15, 2022.

1. Focus: We have experience in different domains. One person spends their time cooking, another training in martial arts.
   
   
2. Wideness: Most have experience in more than one domain, and there can be cross-domain synergies as well. Perhaps the martial artist cook has an advantage.
   
   
3. Time: Some have more hours in a single domain than others. The cook who cooks daily will usually have better cooking intuition than the occasional cook.
   
   
4. Diversity: Some have more diverse experience in one domain. The cook who makes a different meal daily has an advantage.
   
   
5. Feedback: Some of us get more feedback on consequences than others — feedback accelerates the speed at which your intuition improves. Martial arts stagnates without a resisting opponent. A cook needs to taste their creations.
   
   
6. Aptitude: There may be some aptitude differences in how quickly our intuition gets trained. It’s not a fully level playing field.
   
   
7. Mistakes: Some people are more likely to notice mistakes of intuition, and then are more motivated to analyze them, learn from them, and adapt.
   
   
8. Attention: Some people simply pay greater attention to what happens around them, and to the details of experience — which makes it easier for them to notice what’s happening and pick up on patterns that others may miss.
   
   
9. Models: Some people are also better at learning (or forming their own) mental models, then noticing where they can be used, and applying them. This almost looks like intuition and serves a similar purpose in many cases, but may or may not be considered part of it.

It seems that many factors go into the quality of our intuition!  As a consequence, some people have much more reliable intuitions than others (in any given domain).

This piece was first written on October 5, 2020, and first appeared on my website on August 17, 2026.