Capstone: evaluate an explanation

Week 1: reason ยท capstone

Capstone: evaluate an explanation

Given a real-world claim, run the full hard-to-vary + criticism workflow and rate it.

In this lesson

  1. Read the core idea (2 min).
  2. Walk through one worked example.
  3. Take the 4-question quiz; pass with 4/4 or better.

Hook

You now have the full Phase 1 toolkit: paths to knowledge, the real role of evidence, hard-to-vary explanations, the four failure modes, fallibilism, the conjecture-and-criticism loop, and the three branches. The capstone is the move that puts them all together.

Given a real-world claim, you should be able to run the entire workflow in your head: name the path the claim took to reach you, surface its rivals, ask whether the explanation is hard to vary, label its failure modes, design a severe test, and check it on each branch of criticism. This lesson walks through the workflow on a single sustained example, then asks you to apply it.