Nagarjuna, the second-century Buddhist logician, built an entire philosophical method around a simple but devastating move: before evaluating any argument, first examine whether the categories the argument uses can bear the weight placed on them. He called this finding the 'empty' foundations beneath apparently solid concepts — not to destroy the argument, but to understand exactly how much it can carry. Secondary thinking models face precisely this problem. The model you use to check your first-level thinking is itself made of categories — 'margin of safety', 'base rate', 'reversion to mean' — that were forged in particular historical conditions and may not transfer cleanly to whatever you're analyzing today. The discipline Nagarjuna points toward isn't skepticism about your models; it's the habit of asking, before you deploy a second-order check, whether the terms inside that check actually apply here, or whether you're using a well-worn label as a substitute for genuine inspection.

Name a secondary model you reached for in a recent decision — what specific assumption does that model require to be true, and did you verify it before using the model's output?

Drawing from Madhyamaka Buddhist Philosophy — Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, c. 2nd century CE)