There's a peculiar problem with the mental models you trust most: the better they've served you, the harder they are to question. Nagarjuna, the 2nd-century Buddhist philosopher, built an entire logical method — the Madhyamaka — around demonstrating that any framework, held too rigidly, will eventually contradict itself. He wasn't being nihilistic. He was being surgical. The point wasn't to discard your maps but to notice that a map which feels complete is the one most likely hiding blank territory. Gary Klein's research on expert decision-making found something parallel: experienced professionals don't fail because they lack models — they fail because their models become automatic, running below the threshold of scrutiny. Today, pick one lens you regularly use to read a situation — 'this person is resistant to change,' 'this problem is a resource issue,' whatever your go-to is — and ask what it would have to hide in order to feel so convincing.

Which belief about how things work do you almost never examine — not because it's unimportant, but because it keeps being 'confirmed'?

Drawing from Buddhist Philosophy (Madhyamaka) / Naturalistic Decision-Making — Nagarjuna and Gary Klein (synthesized)