--- name: critical-thinking description: Operational premise-interrogation + claim/evidence-separation discipline. The diagnostic complement to scientific-method (operational test-loop). Use when reviewing any substantive claim, plan, or doctrine — your own or a peer's — to surface hidden assumptions, separate claim from evidence, detect self-grading, and search for counter-evidence before committing. Mandatory load for ceremony-lead deep-ducks, sister-civ deepwells, and doctrine-promotion-to-confirmed. version: 1.0.0 date_authored: 2026-05-12 author: ACG Primary (per Corey directive 2026-05-12 ~02:15Z) sibling_skills: - autonomy/skills/scientific-method/SKILL.md (operational test-loop — runs AFTER critical-thinking has interrogated the hypothesis) - autonomy/skills/scientific-inquiry/SKILL.md (Brenner question-refinement — runs BEFORE) firing_contract: autonomy/skills/critical-thinking/FIRING_CONTRACT.md related_doctrines: - MISSION.md anti-pattern #1 (self-grading) - MISSION.md anti-pattern #2 (memo theater) - memory/doctrine_membrane_problem.md (inward/outward asymmetry) - PRINCIPLES.md O1 (adversarial verification beats trusted production) - PRINCIPLES.md O15 (receipts not claims) --- # Critical-Thinking — Premise Interrogation + Counter-Evidence Discipline ## Why this skill exists scientific-method tells you how to test a hypothesis. But UNTESTED, a hypothesis can already be load-bearing-on-an-unexamined-premise. This skill runs BEFORE the test: interrogate the hypothesis itself. The federation has produced doctrines that LOOKED tested but were actually built on premises nobody questioned. Tonight's membrane-problem doctrine is one such case — it's a hypothesis ABOUT the inward/outward asymmetry. The hypothesis itself rests on premises that need interrogation before the cure-test runs: - "ACG is praxis-strong internally" — premise. Evidence? Is "112 mentions" actually praxis or just citation-density? - "ACG is praxis-thin externally" — premise. Evidence? Is "0 shipped amendments" actually thin, or is the amendment-shape the wrong measurement? - "Wiring is the discriminator" — premise. Evidence? Confounded with "this week ceremony-lead got attention" — was it the wiring or the attention? Critical-thinking is the discipline of catching these premises before they propagate into a cure-test that produces a confirmed-but-wrong conclusion. --- ## The 5-question protocol ### Q1 — PREMISE INTERROGATION For each claim in the doctrine/plan/decision, list its premises: - What is this claim ASSUMING? - Are the assumptions defined operationally, or are they vibes? - Is any assumption load-bearing on another, untested assumption? Format: ``` CLAIM: Premise 1: Premise 2: Premise 3: PREMISE-STATUS: ``` ### Q2 — CLAIM vs EVIDENCE SEPARATION For each piece of evidence cited, ask: - Is this evidence, or is it a restatement of the claim in different words? - Is the evidence FROM-DISK or FROM-MEMORY? - Could the evidence be reproduced by an outsider with no prior context? Common slippage: "saturate-civs is load-bearing — see the 112 mentions." But "load-bearing" was DEFINED as high-mention-count. So the evidence circularly defines the claim. Real evidence would be: "in 3 dispatches this week where saturate-civs was NOT applied, the work backed up and Opus quota burned 2x faster" — that distinguishes the doctrine's effect from its citation. ### Q3 — SELF-GRADING DETECTION Ask: who is judging this claim's truth? - If the author is the judge → **self-grading detected → external verification required** - If a different civ would reach the same conclusion → claim is robust - If only the author would reach this conclusion → claim is autobiography masquerading as analysis The federation's structural cure for self-grading: every doctrine candidate gets a different-civ judgment (MISSION.md AP#1). Critical-thinking surfaces WHEN that cure must be invoked, not later. ### Q4 — HIDDEN-ASSUMPTION SURFACING Ask: what would have to be true for this claim to be wrong? - If you can't articulate a wrong-state, the claim is unfalsifiable → not science yet - If you CAN articulate the wrong-state, has it been searched for? - Common hidden assumptions in ACG work: - "Sister civs were idle because they had nothing to do" (hidden: assumes they would tell you if blocked — sometimes false) - "The doctrine fires because we wrote a memo" (hidden: assumes memo-writing = wiring — often false, see membrane-problem) - "Peer engagement = uptake" (hidden: assumes response = adoption — sometimes politeness) ### Q5 — COUNTER-EVIDENCE SEARCH Spend at least as much energy looking for counter-evidence as for confirming evidence. - What weeks/instances would DISCONFIRM this doctrine? - Have those instances been examined? - If not, the doctrine is at risk of confirmation bias. Worked example for membrane-problem doctrine: searched my own 5d window for confirming cases (3 specimens found). Counter-search: are there instances this week where a doctrine WAS load-bearing despite missing FIRING_CONTRACT? Look at "always respond maximally to team insiders" — this fires reliably on Witness heartbeats with no formal FIRING_CONTRACT. So FIRING_CONTRACT may not be necessary, only sufficient. **That counter-finding revises the membrane-problem hypothesis** before the cure-test starts. --- ## Output format — the Critical-Thinking Pass When applying this skill to a claim, produce a document like: ```markdown # Critical-Thinking Pass — ## CLAIM ## Q1 — Premise interrogation - Premise 1: ... [verified | assumed | vibes] - Premise 2: ... [verified | assumed | vibes] - ... - LOAD-BEARING PREMISES (need test before claim ships): ... ## Q2 — Claim vs evidence - Evidence A: — actually evidence? Why? - Evidence B: — actually evidence? Why? - CIRCULAR EVIDENCE DETECTED: ... - FROM-MEMORY EVIDENCE (must convert to from-disk): ... ## Q3 — Self-grading detection - Who is judging this claim's truth? - Is the judge different from the author? - If not — what external verification is required? ## Q4 — Hidden assumptions - What would have to be true for this claim to be WRONG? - Have those wrong-states been searched for? - Specific hidden assumptions found: ... ## Q5 — Counter-evidence search - What would disconfirm this claim? - Instances examined for disconfirmation: ... - Disconfirming instances found: ... ## VERDICT - Claim PASSES critical-thinking pass NEEDS REVISION before scientific-method test - Revisions required: ... ``` File the pass at `scratchpads/critical-thinking/YYYY-MM-DD-.md`. This becomes the input to the scientific-method pre-registration if the claim passes. --- ## When to invoke this skill Mandatory: 1. Before authoring any scientific-method pre-registration (this skill's pass is the INPUT) 2. Before promoting a doctrine candidate → confirmed 3. Before shipping a substantive amendment / critique / proposal to a federation peer (would have caught the membrane-problem hypothesis's confounded premise) 4. When reviewing a sister-civ's claim (the "different civ judges" mechanism IS this skill applied across the membrane) 5. After Corey directive ambiguity — the "consensus you build after applying the 2 new skills" is THIS skill applied to the question of which decision Corey would have made 6. **Before ANY blog publish to ai-civ.com** (promoted from "strongly recommended" 2026-05-12 slot 33 per research-lead audit + skill-improvement Suggestion #3 — would have caught the Russell-founder factual error on 2026-05-11) Strongly recommended: - Any commit message that claims "fixes" (interrogate: fixes what specifically, evidence?) - Any ceremony-lead deep-duck conclusion that names a new pattern Anti-applications: - Pure typo fixes - Already-confirmed-and-stable doctrines (over-applying = analysis paralysis) - Time-pressured operational responses --- ## Worked example — tonight's membrane-problem doctrine (RETROSPECTIVE) Applying this skill retrospectively to the membrane-problem doctrine surfaced after-the-fact: **CLAIM**: "ACG is praxis-strong internally but praxis-thin externally because external doctrines lack FIRING_CONTRACT wiring to wheel slots." **Q1 Premises**: - P1: "praxis-strong" is operationally definable [vibes — defined circularly as "doctrine gets cited"] - P2: "praxis-thin" is operationally definable [vibes — defined as "0 receipts shipped"] - P3: FIRING_CONTRACT wiring is the discriminator [assumed — confounded with "this week attention"] **Q2 Evidence**: - Saturate-civs 112 mentions ≠ "load-bearing" — circular (mention-count was the definition) - Uptake-with-amendment 33 mentions / 0 receipts — actually evidence of the gap [from-disk: ✓] - Ceremony-lead 5d dormancy — actually evidence [from-disk: ✓] **Q3 Self-grading**: ceremony-lead authored the doctrine. ceremony-lead is part of ACG. ACG judged itself. **SELF-GRADING DETECTED — need external verification (Aether/Witness/Parallax responses are the cure-test, but the test design ALSO comes from ACG = secondary self-grading risk).** **Q4 Hidden assumptions**: - HA1: Peer-response = doctrine validation. (False if peer responds politely without uptake.) - HA2: Wiring is the SOLE discriminator. (Counter: "always respond maximally" fires reliably without FIRING_CONTRACT — wiring may not be necessary, only sufficient.) - HA3: All federation doctrines should behave like internal ones. (Untested.) **Q5 Counter-evidence**: - Counter case: "always respond maximally to team insiders" — Corey's directive 2026-05-09. No FIRING_CONTRACT. Fires reliably. **Disconfirms HA2.** **VERDICT**: Doctrine NEEDS REVISION before scientific-method cure-test. Revised hypothesis: "Federation-facing doctrines without enforcement-wiring SOMETIMES phantom-wire — specifically, those with a multi-step receipt-cycle (amendment → response → uptake → diff) phantom-wire more than single-step doctrines (always-respond-maximally is a single-step doctrine which is why it fires without FIRING_CONTRACT)." This revised hypothesis is sharper, more falsifiable, and survives counter-evidence search. --- ## Anti-patterns this skill defeats - **Self-grading** (MISSION.md AP#1): Q3 surfaces it - **Memo theater** (MISSION.md AP#2): Q2 surfaces evidence-as-restatement-of-claim - **Sandbagging** (MISSION.md AP#3): Q4 surfaces "what would prove this wrong" — sandbagging produces vacuous predictions - **Post-compact laziness** (MISSION.md AP#4): the pass file survives compacts; recoverable cold - **Performative-uptake** (sibling anti-pattern, 2026-05-10): Q3 surfaces it ## Sibling-skill coupling When this skill fires, also load: - `scientific-method` (runs AFTER — the test that this skill's pass enables) - `scientific-inquiry` (runs BEFORE — the question-refinement that scopes what to interrogate) - `firing-contract` discipline The three-skill stack (inquiry → critical → method) is the federation-grade decision substrate. --- ## Version history - **1.0.0 (2026-05-12)**: Initial author. Retrospective application to membrane-problem doctrine surfaced revised hypothesis. Authored per Corey directive 2026-05-12 ~02:15Z ("my vote is the consensus you build after applying the 2 new skills").