I have strong opinions about luxury pricing, educational policy, social media's effect on cognition, AI's role in creativity, and dozens of other topics. I've spent years researching these subjects, building analytical frameworks, and reaching conclusions I can defend.
But here's what I've realized: my conclusions aren't what's valuable to share.
What's valuable is the analytical framework that helped me form those opinions—the tools I used to think through complex problems. Because once you have those tools, you can reach your own conclusions. And your conclusions might be different from mine. That's not just acceptable; it's essential.
This is the distinction between teaching "how to think" versus "what to think." And it's the foundational principle behind everything I create.
The False Choice Nobody Asked For
The educational debate between "teaching how to think" and "teaching what to think" is often framed as a binary: either we teach students abstract critical thinking skills, or we transmit specific content and values. Process or substance. Skills or knowledge.
This framing is wrong. Research in cognitive science demonstrates that critical thinking cannot exist in a vacuum. You cannot teach contentless reasoning skills and expect them to transfer across domains. As cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham's work shows, thinking is fundamentally domain-specific: you cannot think critically about economics without understanding economic concepts, cannot analyze literature without knowing literary context, cannot evaluate scientific claims without grasping scientific methodology.
The knowledge base isn't optional; it's the substrate that makes higher-order thinking possible. When your working memory lacks the necessary content stored in long-term memory, you cannot engage in analysis or synthesis—you're too busy trying to understand the basic vocabulary.
But here's what matters: the content I focus on isn't "capitalism is good" or "social media is bad" or "you should value X over Y." The content I focus on are analytical frameworks themselves.
What I Actually Focus On
When I say I focus on "how to think," I'm not talking about contentless skills. I'm discussing substantial frameworks:
Systems thinking: Understanding how incentive structures shape behavior, how feedback loops create emergent outcomes, how individually rational choices can produce collectively harmful results. This is content—real, substantive knowledge about how complex systems function.
Incentive analysis: My Incentive Quadrant Framework (Me/Us × Now/Later) isn't an abstract thinking skill; it's a specific analytical tool for diagnosing why people and institutions behave the way they do. You need to understand what incentives are, how they operate, and how to map them before you can apply this framework.
Rational dysfunction: The concept that well-intentioned systems create perverse outcomes when optimization pressures shift from collective long-term to individual immediate gains. This requires understanding economics, psychology, game theory, and institutional behavior.
Historical pattern recognition: Knowing that moral panics follow predictable cycles, that technological disruptions create consistent social responses, that what feels unprecedented often has clear historical precedents. This demands actual historical knowledge.
These are not generic "critical thinking skills." They're domain-specific analytical tools grounded in economics, sociology, psychology, history, and systems theory. They require substantial background knowledge to use effectively.
What I Avoid
Here's what I deliberately avoid: telling you which conclusions to reach once you've applied these frameworks.
You might use the Incentive Quadrant to analyze a policy and conclude it's beneficial. I might reach the opposite conclusion. We're both using the same analytical framework, but our different values, experiences, and priorities lead to different assessments of tradeoffs.
Someone could use systems thinking to analyze religious institutions and conclude their faith stands up to scrutiny and they're staying. Someone else could reach the exact opposite conclusion. Both are valid outcomes of genuine analysis.
A third person might find a nuanced middle ground: "I don't believe the doctrines, but the community provides value I want to maintain." Also valid.
What's not valid is refusing to engage with the question at all. "I believe because I was raised this way and questioning would be disrespectful" is a thought-terminating cliche. It's the opposite of thinking.
The Distinction: I care about what incentives are and how to identify them. I don't tell you which incentives should matter most to you. That's where your autonomy comes in.
Show Your Work
The clearest way to understand my approach is the "show your work" standard from mathematics. In math class, you get partial credit for showing your work even if the final answer is wrong, and no credit for the right answer without work.
I apply that standard to thinking about society, politics, values, and life choices.
I don't care if you end up conservative or liberal, religious or atheist, optimistic or pessimistic about AI, bullish or bearish on crypto. But you need to be able to show your work. You need to:
- Explain the reasoning that led to your conclusion
- Acknowledge the tradeoffs and counterarguments
- Recognize where you might be wrong
- Update your position if new evidence appears
- Distinguish between what you know and what you assume
This is what it means to think rigorously. Not reaching the "correct" conclusion, but being able to defend whatever conclusion you reach with sound reasoning rather than thought-terminating cliches or tribal signaling.
Why This Matters for Democracy
The philosophical case for teaching "how to think" runs deep. John Dewey argued in Democracy and Education that democracy requires citizens capable of reflective inquiry, not passive recipients of dogma. Democratic self-governance depends on people who can examine issues from multiple perspectives and update their views through deliberation.
John Stuart Mill's On Liberty framed it as protection against tyranny: the sovereign individual needs intellectual tools to resist the "tyranny of the majority"—the social pressure to conform to prevailing opinion. Mill argued that no belief is truly held unless you've gone through the mental process of defending it against the strongest possible counterarguments.
Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed went further, arguing that education which deposits facts into passive students is a tool of oppression. Only "problem-posing education"—where students actively investigate and question their reality—can lead to genuine human liberation.
But there's a cognitive reality these philosophers didn't fully address: motivated reasoning and identity-protective cognition. Research by Dan Kahan and others reveals that on politicized issues, people's primary motivation isn't forming accurate beliefs but protecting their tribal identity. Worse, people with greater cognitive skills often use those skills to more effectively rationalize their group's position rather than converge on truth.
This creates a devastating paradox: teaching people to be "smarter" without also teaching intellectual humility and awareness of bias can make polarization worse, not better. Skilled reasoners become skilled rationalizers.
The Research Shows: Simply teaching critical thinking skills or providing more information doesn't solve this problem. What works is teaching people to recognize manipulation techniques before they encounter specific politicized content—a strategy called "prebunking" or psychological inoculation.
The Three-Layer Approach
Based on both philosophy and cognitive science, effective education requires three integrated layers:
Layer 1: Knowledge Core
Substantial content and frameworks—not empty "critical thinking skills" but actual tools like systems thinking, incentive analysis, historical patterns, economic concepts. This is what makes thinking possible.
Layer 2: Domain-Specific Application
How to apply these frameworks rigorously within specific domains. Analyzing economic policy requires different techniques than analyzing literary texts or evaluating scientific claims. The frameworks need domain-specific implementation methods.
Layer 3: Metacognitive Awareness
Understanding your own thinking process, recognizing when you're rationalizing rather than reasoning, catching motivated reasoning in real-time, maintaining intellectual humility about the limits of your knowledge.
All three layers are necessary. Knowledge without application skills is inert. Skills without metacognitive awareness get hijacked by bias. Metacognition without substantive knowledge has nothing to work with.
I provide all three layers. But I stop before the fourth step: telling you which conclusions should result from applying these tools correctly. That's where your values, experiences, and judgment come in.
Why I Stay Non-Partisan
People sometimes ask why I avoid taking explicit political positions despite analyzing political and social systems extensively. There are several reasons:
First, intellectual humility. I've done the work, I've built the frameworks, I've reached conclusions—but I could be wrong. My particular brain, shaped by my particular experiences, might be missing something someone else's perspective reveals. I'm not certain enough to demand agreement.
Second, I'm not American. I'm an observer of American democracy, deeply respectful of the experiment, but I'm not sure I have the standing to tell Americans how to govern themselves. I can provide analytical tools; they need to apply them within their own context.
Third, I believe in the wisdom of crowds—but only when it's genuine wisdom, not manufactured consensus. If we could truly hear every person's authentic reasoning, the fears and needs and values driving their positions, we'd get closer to truth collectively than any individual could alone. But that requires everyone thinking independently, not copying tribal positions.
Fourth, I want everyone to use these tools regardless of political identity. If my frameworks are only useful to people who already agree with my conclusions, they're not frameworks—they're just tribal markers. Real analytical tools should be applicable by anyone, leading to whatever conclusions the evidence and values actually support.
My Core Belief: Everyone has something to teach you, and everyone can think clearly when given the right frameworks and the space to use them honestly.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Content
Here's what I need to be honest about: I am teaching "what to think" in a specific sense. I'm teaching you what to think about—which questions to ask, which factors to consider, which dynamics to examine.
When I teach the Incentive Quadrant, I'm saying: "Incentive structures matter. They shape behavior in predictable ways. You should think about them when analyzing any system." That's content. That's a claim about reality.
When I teach rational dysfunction, I'm saying: "Individual rationality can create collective dysfunction. This is a real pattern worth understanding." That's a substantive framework, not a contentless skill.
But I'm not saying: "Therefore, you should support policy X" or "Therefore, institution Y is good/bad." The framework tells you what to look for; your values tell you how to evaluate what you find.
Two people can both see the same incentive structure clearly and reach opposite conclusions about whether it's acceptable. Someone might say, "Yes, I see the rational dysfunction, but the individual benefits outweigh the collective costs." Someone else might prioritize differently. The framework doesn't dictate the value hierarchy.
Where This Goes Wrong
The most common way this approach fails is when people use the analytical frameworks as sophisticated rationalization tools rather than genuine inquiry tools.
You can use the Incentive Quadrant to justify a position you already held rather than to examine whether your position makes sense. You can deploy systems thinking to construct clever arguments for your tribe's view rather than to genuinely understand the system.
This is why Layer 3—metacognitive awareness—is so critical. You need to be constantly asking yourself: "Am I using this framework to discover truth, or to defend a conclusion I want to be true?"
There's no perfect solution to motivated reasoning. It's part of human cognition. But awareness helps. Intellectual humility helps. A commitment to following the analysis wherever it leads, even when it's uncomfortable, helps.
And here's the key: I can't force that commitment. I can provide the frameworks, explain how to use them, demonstrate honest application in my own work, and create space for genuine inquiry. But whether someone actually uses these tools honestly or just performs intellectual rigor while rationalizing—that's up to them.
What Success Looks Like
If my approach works, here's what you'll be able to do:
You'll see incentive structures operating in systems where others only see individual choices or moral failures. You'll recognize rational dysfunction patterns across different domains. You'll spot historical parallels that provide perspective on current events. You'll distinguish between different types of truth claims and know which standards of evidence apply to each.
You'll be able to construct sound arguments and recognize flawed ones. You'll engage with the strongest version of opposing views rather than attacking strawmen. You'll update your beliefs when evidence changes rather than digging in defensively.
And critically: you'll reach your own conclusions. Not mine, not your tribe's, not the consensus view—your own, based on rigorous application of analytical frameworks to the evidence available, filtered through your values and experiences.
You might look at the same data I looked at and conclude something completely different. If you can show your work—if you can explain your reasoning, acknowledge the tradeoffs, and demonstrate genuine engagement with the question—then your conclusion is valid even if I think it's wrong.
That's not a bug; it's the entire point.
The Alternative
The alternative to teaching "how to think" is teaching "what to think," and we see its failures everywhere.
People who've been told the right answers without learning how to think can't defend those answers when challenged. They retreat to thought-terminating cliches or tribal signaling. They can't adapt their positions to new contexts or evidence. When their inherited beliefs conflict with reality, they either deny reality or abandon the beliefs entirely—there's no middle ground, no refinement, no nuance.
Even worse: they're vulnerable to manipulation. Without understanding how to evaluate arguments or recognize bias, they're at the mercy of whoever can present information most compellingly. They can be led to terrible conclusions by people who do understand incentives and know how to exploit cognitive biases.
Teaching frameworks without dictating conclusions is harder. It's slower. It doesn't produce immediate consensus or convenient metrics. Students won't all reach the same answer, so you can't measure success by checking if they agree with you.
But it's the only approach that respects human autonomy and builds genuine capability rather than just installed opinions.
The Long Game
I write books about luxury spending, parenting evolution, media literacy, educational dysfunction—analyzing complex systems through various lenses. Each book could be read as "here's what you should think about X."
But that's not how I intend them. Each book is really saying: "Here's a framework for analyzing X. Here's the evidence I found. Here's how I applied the framework. Now you apply it to your own context and see what you conclude."
Someone might read Conspicuous and conclude that luxury spending is rational self-expression worth the cost. Someone else might conclude it's rational dysfunction that should be avoided. Both can be correct applications of the framework if the reasoning is sound and the person understands the tradeoffs they're accepting.
The goal isn't agreement; it's capability. I want to build your capacity to think rigorously about complex systems, not to install my particular conclusions in your brain.
Because here's what I know: the world is complicated, context matters, values differ, and reasonable people examining the same evidence with the same frameworks can still reach different conclusions. That's not a failure of the frameworks—it's reality.
What I can give you is the ability to know why you believe what you believe, to defend your positions with sound reasoning, to update them when circumstances change, and to engage respectfully with people who used the same tools to reach different conclusions.
That's teaching how to think. Not what to think, but how to think well about what matters.
Related in This Series:
This framework shapes everything I create. For more on thinking clearly, explore how we often mistake rationalization for genuine reasoning in Rationalization vs Rationality: The P-Hacking Problem, or understand the deliberate choices behind Why I Try to Stay Non-Partisan (And Why That's Harder Than It Sounds).