About

Assumptology is the study and exploration of the assumptions that underlie our knowledge, reasoning, and decision-making.

I began with an earlier project, erotetics.com, focused on improving thinking by asking better questions. Over time I realised something deeper: assumptions are more fundamental than questions. Questions already contain a frame. Assumptions determine what the frame permits.

In one of my former roles, whenever a problem occurred and we ran a root-cause analysis, someone would inevitably say:

“Assumption is the mother of all f*ck-ups.”

At the time it was just a joke — a rule of thumb to explain oversight. But after several years of philosophical study, I started to suspect: maybe that statement isn’t only practical. Maybe it’s profound.

The importance of assumptions isn’t an idea I claim to have invented. Many intellectual giants have circled it. But only in recent years have I come to believe there’s something systematic and underdeveloped here — something that deserves formal exploration.

So that’s what I’m building: Assumptology — a framework for making the invisible structures of thought explicit, so they can be examined, tested, and improved.

If that sounds interesting, follow along. Because once you start noticing assumptions, you begin to see the world differently.