Cognitive scientists call it 'model blindness' — the point at which a mental framework stops being a tool you use and starts being a lens you can't remove. Martin Seligman's early work on learned helplessness revealed something striking: the rats who stopped trying to escape weren't broken or weak. They had simply built an airtight model that said 'escape is impossible' — and that model became more real to them than the open door. The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce called this 'the fixation of belief': once a mental model reduces uncertainty, the mind actively resists evidence that would reopen it, because uncertainty feels worse than a wrong answer. Your mental models are doing their job — they're keeping you sane and efficient. The question is whether the ones you built during harder or simpler times are still serving the situations you're in now.

In the last 48 hours, which decision did you make on autopilot — and what model of the situation were you running without checking it first?

Drawing from Pragmatism — Charles Sanders Peirce