Skills For Humanity

Approaches a problem from completely different fields to break the assumption blindness that comes from domain expertise. Triggers: 'fresh eyes', 'outside perspective', 'what would a [different expert] say', 'beginner's mind', 'approach from another field'.

Maps what genuinely drives different people — beyond stated reasons and job descriptions. Use when incentives seem misaligned or individual behaviour is hard to predict. TRIGGERS: 'what motivates them', 'motivation map', 'why are they behaving like this', 'what drives this person', 'understand the incentives'.

Maps what kind of knowing is actually in play for a claim or question. Distinguishes a priori from a posteriori knowledge; propositional (knowing that) from procedural (knowing how) from acquaintance (knowing of); and knowledge sourced from perception, inference, testimony, intuition, or memory. Use when you say 'what kind of claim is this', 'is this something we can reason our way to or do we need evidence', 'they're treating this as obvious but I don't think it is', 'is this really an empirical question', or when you need to assess what standards of justification apply before testing whether a claim is true.

Designs rules and incentive systems that produce desired outcomes even when players are self-interested. Triggers: 'mechanism design', 'incentive design', 'design a system that makes people do X', 'reverse game theory', 'incentivize honest behavior', 'design rules', 'how do I get people to reveal their true preferences', 'how do I align incentives', 'the current system produces the wrong behavior'.

Extracts the transferable principle from a specific historical case — separating the contingent surface details from the underlying rule that applies across contexts. TRIGGERS: 'what's the lesson', 'extract the lesson', 'what should we learn from this', 'generalise from this case', 'apply this to our situation'.

Evaluates the quality, strength, and completeness of evidence for a claim. Covers evidence type hierarchy, sample quality, methodological soundness, conflicts of interest, and what's notably absent. Use when you want to know how good the evidence is — 'is this evidence strong', 'evaluate the research', 'how solid is this', 'is this just one study', 'what kind of evidence supports this', 'what's missing from the evidence'.

Distributes limited resources across competing needs — making the trade-offs explicit rather than implicit. Triggers: 'resource allocation', 'how do we distribute this', 'competing priorities', 'trade-off analysis', 'how do we split this', 'allocation decision'.

Identifies what is actually constraining throughput — using Theory of Constraints logic: the system can only move as fast as its slowest point. Triggers: 'bottleneck analysis', 'what's actually slowing this down', 'where's the constraint', 'theory of constraints', 'find the bottleneck', 'why are we moving slowly'.

Calibrates writing for a specific reader by profiling their knowledge, concerns, and relationship to the topic — then rewriting for that reader without changing the substance. Use when content is too technical, too basic, or framed for the wrong audience. Triggers: 'write for a specific audience', 'audience calibration', 'this needs to work for non-technical readers', 'the audience isn't the right fit', 'calibrate this for', 'it's too technical / not technical enough', 'recalibrate this for'.

Finds the simpler version while preserving what matters — not arbitrary reduction, but finding the core and discarding what is not it. TRIGGERS: 'find the simple version', 'simplify this', 'what's the essence', 'less but better', 'strip it back', 'what could we remove'.

Finds paths around a fixed constraint without removing it — routing around a hard limit to reach the same goal. Triggers: 'work around this', 'given this constraint', 'path around the blocker', 'how do we do this anyway', 'constrained solution'.

Apply Edward de Bono's OPS (Other People's Shoes) tool to genuinely think from other perspectives. Use when the user needs to understand how others will respond to a decision, wants to anticipate objections, is designing something for other people, is in a conflict or negotiation, or needs to check whether they've considered the people affected by a situation. OPS is structured empathy — not sentiment, but reasoning.

Produces an honest, rigorous calibration of what you know vs. believe vs. assume vs. hope across a domain. Assigns explicit epistemic statuses to claims and flags when high-confidence claims rest on lower-confidence foundations. Draws from the rationalist tradition of explicit epistemic labeling. Use when you say 'how certain should I be', 'what do we actually know here', 'I want an honest read of our assumptions', 'separate what we know from what we're guessing', 'give me an epistemic audit', 'I want to stop conflating confident with correct', or when producing analysis where the confidence level matters as much as the content.

Applies the variation-selection-retention triad to understand how populations and strategies adapt over time. Triggers: 'how does this evolve', 'what gets selected for', 'why do some strategies persist and others die out', 'population dynamics', 'selection pressure', 'what survives in this environment', 'who wins over time'.

Analyses cooperation problems where individual rationality produces collective irrationality. Triggers: 'cooperation problem', 'prisoner's dilemma', 'everyone defects even though cooperation is better', 'race to the bottom', 'should I cooperate or defect', 'why won't anyone cooperate', 'collective action failure', 'why do we all end up worse off'.

Finds and applies genuinely similar historical situations to inform a current decision — distinguishing true precedents from superficial analogies. TRIGGERS: 'historical precedent', 'has this happened before', 'what does history say', 'find a precedent', 'what did others do in this situation'.

Surfaces and tests actual operative values — distinguishing what is stated from what decisions actually reveal. Triggers: 'values clarification', 'what do we actually stand for', 'is this consistent with our values', 'values alignment check', 'test the values', 'what do our decisions reveal'.

Engineers psychologically compelling characters by mapping want vs. need, wound, defence mechanism, and defining contradiction. Use when a character feels flat, underdeveloped, or unconvincing. Triggers: 'my character feels flat', 'character development', 'make this character feel real', 'this character isn't working', 'character work', 'how do I develop this character'.

Matches the message to the right channel and format — the same content in the wrong medium loses most of its effect. Triggers: 'which channel', 'email vs meeting', 'should this be async or sync', 'medium fit', 'how should I deliver this'.

Diagnoses why people are resisting — finding what's underneath the pushback. Resistance is information, not obstruction; it always has a source. TRIGGERS: 'why are they resisting', 'diagnose the pushback', 'they won't get on board', 'people aren't buying in', 'resistance diagnosis'.

Assigns explicit probabilities to distinct scenarios before making a decision. Use when asked to 'assign probabilities', 'scenario weighting', 'how likely is each outcome', 'quantify the uncertainty', or 'probability distribution'.

Applies disciplined observation to a situation — suspending interpretation to see what's actually there before deciding what it means. Triggers: 'observe this carefully', 'structured observation', 'what do you actually see', 'suspend interpretation', 'look more carefully'.

Maps what the audience currently believes, actually cares about, and fears before communicating — because communication fails at the receiver, not the sender. Triggers: 'model the audience', 'audience analysis', 'who am I talking to', 'what do they care about', 'why aren't they getting it'.

Maps likely objections before delivering a proposal — objections that are anticipated feel addressed; objections that land as surprises derail. Triggers: 'anticipate objections', 'what will they push back on', 'steelman the opposition', 'prepare for resistance', 'objection mapping'.

Surface and challenge the hidden assumptions in any problem, plan, or framing. Use when the user feels stuck despite trying multiple approaches, a problem seems intractable, a plan keeps failing for unclear reasons, something 'obvious' keeps producing unexpected results, or before using any other creative thinking tool when the problem itself might be wrongly framed. This is the prerequisite skill — run it when the ground itself might be wrong.

Categorises a decision by reversibility and applies the appropriate level of process rigour. Triggers: 'is this reversible', 'how much should I think about this', 'one-way door', 'two-way door', 'decision type', 'how committed is this'.

Anchors estimates in historical base rates before adjusting for specific factors. Use when asked 'what's the base rate', 'am I being too optimistic', 'outside view', 'reference class', 'how often does this actually happen', or 'historical frequency'.

Generates the best alternative explanations for the same observations. Use when you have a claim or explanation and want to know whether something else could explain the evidence just as well — 'could there be another explanation', 'what else could cause this', 'am I sure this isn't something else', 'steel-man the alternative', 'what would a skeptic say', 'rival hypotheses'.

Apply Edward de Bono's Plus/Minus/Interesting (PMI) tool for balanced evaluation of any idea, proposal, plan, or decision. Use when the user wants to evaluate something fairly, is tempted to immediately accept or reject an idea, needs to think through pros and cons more carefully, or wants to avoid snap judgments. Plus/Minus/Interesting is the antidote to confirmation bias in evaluation.

Breaks a complex claim into its smallest independently verifiable parts, classifies each sub-claim, and identifies which parts carry the most logical load. Use when a claim feels too big to verify as a unit — 'what exactly is this claiming', 'break this down', 'what are the hidden assumptions in this statement', 'this seems like multiple claims at once', 'what would I need to verify to believe this'.

Tests whether stated confidence levels match available evidence — catching overconfidence and underconfidence. Use when asked to 'calibrate my confidence', 'am I overconfident', 'confidence check', 'how sure should I be', or 'is this as certain as it seems'.

Calculates expected value to compare options under uncertainty. Use when asked about 'expected value', 'is this risk worth taking', 'EV calculation', 'compare these options', 'worth the risk', or 'asymmetric risk'.