Thinking Foundations · Lesson 2 of 4

Observation, interpretation, fact, assumption

Separating what you saw from what you concluded is the single move that most improves everyday reasoning.

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An observation is what you could point a camera at: she left the meeting after ten minutes. An interpretation is the story you attached to it: she was annoyed. The first is available to anyone in the room. The second came entirely from you, and you almost certainly did not notice adding it.

The same split runs through everything. A fact is something you could check. An assumption is something you are treating as true because you have not thought to check it. An opinion is your judgement about something. Evidence is what would let someone else reach the same judgement independently.

None of these four are bad. Assumptions are how you function without re-deriving the world every morning. The problem is only ever that they are invisible — you act on an assumption believing you acted on a fact, and when the outcome surprises you, you look for the wrong cause.

See it happen

A colleague has answered your last three messages with a single word each.

The read that arrives on its own

He is annoyed with me — probably about the deadline I moved last week.

The same situation, with this idea

Observation: three one-word replies over two days. Interpretation: he is annoyed. Things that fit equally well: he is on his phone, he is buried, he is unwell, he writes like that to everyone.

What changed

The observation is one line long. Everything after it came from you — and the version you were about to act on was the one you never noticed adding.

The takeaway

Separating what you saw from what you concluded is the single move that most improves everyday reasoning.

Easy to take the wrong way

Smuggling the story into the observation line with a loaded verb. "He ignored me" is already an interpretation; "he did not reply" is what happened.

Try this

Take a judgement you made this week about a person. Write the observation on one line and your interpretation on the next.