Issue 4
The Way We Think...and the Way We Thought We Think
It feels like ancient history now, but in 1977 I took a class at MIT in Artificial Intelligence. We approached the issue as one would expect of engineers —by applying formal critical thinking techniques commonly used by scientists and engineers. We used logic to construct a series of yes/no questions designed to distinguish cats from dogs from bears, much like the game of 20 questions. For example:
Is it an animal? Yes -> Is it often a pet? Yes. -> Does it have 4 legs? Yes -> Does it have whiskers? Yes. -> It must be a cat.
Needless to say, it didn't really work—because that's not the way our brains actually work. Human brains do not work like computers, or encyclopedias, or engineering students. We don't simply remember facts and apply them, we also make inferences and educated guesses based on limited information. We use reason and logic, but we also use imagination, intuition and guesswork. We work backward and forward and sideways. Our beliefs are not always completely factual, but we treat them as if they are. Getting to a "good enough" answer quickly is more important than a perfect answer. We're influenced by history and the immediate environment. The most recent or prominent information tends to take priority. That's why two different people might draw different conclusions from the same information. What might seem like "common sense" to one, may seem neither common nor sensical to another.
Stories and Pictures
A good analogy is to think of our knowledge as more like historical novels than textbooks. We construct stories. These stories are mostly true—but they’re rarely precise, and certainly not complete. They’re shaped by personal perspective. Hearsay is admissible evidence. Details are added or omitted to make the story more memorable. We reconstruct what we’ve forgotten, fill in gaps, and weave in threads from other stories.
Our brains don’t store information in neatly separated “books.” Instead, we have one vast, interconnected volume with elaborate indexes and hyperlinks to other pages and narratives. We don't think in words. Rather, we rely heavily on imagery—after all, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
We can’t remember everything. But with just a few details, our brains are remarkably good at reconstructing what we don’t specifically recall. We lean on patterns, chronology and cause-and-effect to make sense of things. We remember not only what happened, but also why we think it happened.
We use mental tools like analogy and abstraction to fill in missing pieces and sharpen fuzzy memories. For example, I remember my first car. I don’t need to recall explicitly that it had four wheels—I can infer that from my general knowledge that all cars have four wheels. Most of this happens so subconsciously that we’re unaware it’s even happening.
With just the barest outline, we can conjure vivid mental images. If I ask you to think of your tenth birthday, a scene probably comes to mind—even if you don’t have a specific memory of that day. Your brain draws from other knowledge: birthday cakes and candles, friends and relatives who were probably there, the kinds of gifts you might have received. The result feels like a memory, even if it’s mostly reconstruction.
Problem Solving as Story Completion
Problems are like incomplete stories or unfinished pictures—and our task is to fill in what’s missing, to figure out how the story ends. Often, the ending lies in the future, so we’re not just solving—we’re predicting, using the past to guess what might come next. Sometimes we work backwards — given an ending, we construct a beginning.
Some problems, like puzzles or math equations, have definite answers that everyone can agree on. But many others don’t. Their solutions can vary from person to person, or even from one day to the next for the same individual. Even seemingly trivial questions like “What should I wear today?” or “What should I eat for lunch?”—are deceptively complex, involving many variables. There is no objectively single correct answer to such questions, no single correct path. We just pick an option that feels “good enough” and move on. Most of this happens subconsciously, but there’s always a story behind the decision—always a reason. Some reasons are clear and concrete (e.g., “I had leftovers that needed to be eaten”), while others are fuzzier (e.g., “I just had a craving”).
Our ability to think in stories makes evolutionary sense. For over 95% of human history, there was no writing. Everything had to be remembered— and a good story is easier to recall than an isolated fact. There were no libraries—knowledge was passed down orally, generation to generation. Storytellers were the historians, the teachers, and the librarians of their time.
The Role of Memory
The more a specific memory is indexed—that is, referenced in other stories or linked to related ideas—the more likely we are to recall it. Some research suggests that we don’t actually lose memories over time; rather, we lose access to the indexes that point to them. The memory is still there—we just can’t find it.
Fortunately, if we can recall the basic outline of the story, we can often reconstruct the rest. Our minds are surprisingly good at filling in missing pieces, even from fragmentary or jumbled inputs.
This isn't just a conscious function, but our subconscious is amazingly adept at reconstruction and correction.
Chronology, patterns, cause and effect, and fairness all play critical roles in how we build and remember stories. There’s a reason why books and movies often end on a satisfying note—we crave closure and fairness. We want the story to have a moral. Villains should be punished. Heroes should be rewarded. Conflicts should be resolved.
Even when life doesn’t work out that way, we may unconsciously adjust the story to impose meaning, to make order out of chaos.
Where Does the Story Start?
Most stories are incomplete. Not every event makes it into the narrative—many things happen before the story “starts.” And where we choose to begin the story can dramatically shape how it’s perceived.
Take, for example, the concept of fairness embodied in the phrase “an eye for an eye.” If someone punches you, and you punch back, that feels fair and just. But what if the story starts with the second punch? Suddenly, the person retaliating seems like the aggressor.
If we’ve seen the whole sequence, the second punch feels like resolution—a warning to deter further aggression. But if we only witness the second punch, it becomes the beginning of a new conflict. Then comes a third punch, and a fourth, and so on. Hence the warning: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” can leave a lot of people blind and toothless.
This highlights how stories can mislead us. We don’t always know—or even care—what came first. We focus on what we do know: what we’ve seen, what we remember, what fits our current perspective. We automatically and often subconsciously fill in the story, we add cause and effect. That’s not laziness—it’s pragmatic. We can’t remember everything. We can’t go back to the beginning of time. And we don’t have time to explore every possible version of every story.
Often, key elements are simply missing. We don’t know the motivation behind either punch—so we supply one. If we know and trust the person throwing the punch, we assume it was justified. If the other person is unknown or "looks aggressive," we assume they started it.
It gets even trickier because it is efficient to trust our first impressions. We rely on them—along with what we see—to construct new stories. For instance, if we see a homeless person on the street, we automatically generate a story about how they got there. One person may imagine a series of unfortunate events; another may assume laziness, or danger, or something else entirely. Each version is shaped by prior experiences, beliefs, and the stories we’ve heard and told ourselves.
This makes critical thinking in everyday life difficult. We don’t have the time—or sometimes the capacity—to rigorously investigate every situation. So we lean on intuition and on stories we've heard from sources we trust. Complex problems are exactly that: complex. Too complex to fully research in every moment.
What might be dismissed as hearsay in a courtroom is often essential in our daily reasoning. Our subconscious minds excel at creating coherent stories from incomplete information and fleeting impressions.
The Value of Multiple Stories
Each of us follows a particular narrative thread—a single line through a complex web of experience. But our stories are all incomplete. The value of living in a society is that we’re exposed to other stories. Other threads. Different people, different perspectives, different experiences. Together, these overlapping and intersecting stories form a rich, textured fabric, and a more complete, more truthful, and more nuanced story.
The evolution of societies—and even the survival of our species—has depended on this diversity of stories. There’s a reason that students are taught to use multiple sources when writing research papers. We don’t just consult a single encyclopedia entry. We read different biographies, explore varied accounts, and weigh perspectives to build a fuller picture.
But in daily life, we rarely have that luxury. We don’t have the time—or the bandwidth—to dig deep into every story we encounter. When searching for information, we often stop at the first Google result. Or the first social media post. Or the first entertaining TikTok that seems to explain things well enough. We get our news from a single media source, and we move on.
And in most cases, that’s enough. We’re not chasing perfect answers—we’re looking for answers that are good enough to let us get to the next thing. The first story seems good enough for the task at hand.
The Danger of the Single Story
The Danger of the Single Story
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Stories connect two points—not just narrating what happened, but also offering a sense of why it happened. They don't merely recount events; they interpret them. And depending on who’s telling the story, that interpretation—the meaning—can change dramatically.
For example, a successful entrepreneur might be portrayed as a brilliant innovator, a shrewd manager, or a privileged rich kid—depending on the storyteller. Each of those versions may contain truth, but none of them tells the whole truth. Stories can reinforce stereotypes, but hearing multiple stories can help us mitigate them.
As author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wisely notes, "The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete." Her TED Talk, "The Danger of the Single Story", is a powerful exploration of this idea. (It’s well worth watching—over 3 million others already have.) Adichie explains how a single story can come to define a person, a culture, or a situation—leading us to overlook the full complexity of what’s really there.
Even when we do hear multiple stories, they’re often ranked or filtered in ways that elevate one version as the definitive account. As Adichie points out, power is not just the ability to tell someone else's story—but the ability to make that story the one everyone believes.
Imagine how differently we might see Alexander Hamilton if his story had been told by Aaron Burr. In fact, the musical Hamilton ends with a haunting question: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”
Adichie also emphasizes how the starting point of a story changes our perception. She quotes author Mourid Barghouti, who observed that the Native American story is interpreted very differently “if you start with arrows instead of the arrival of the Europeans.” Starting with what happened second, she suggests, is often the simplest way to dispossess a people.
It’s a powerful reminder: every story begins in the middle. Something always came before—something that shaped what we’re seeing now. Those of us of a certain age were taught that Christopher Columbus “discovered” North America. But of course, the continent was already home to millions of people. That’s a textbook example of a story that begins with what happened second.
Even that framing can be misleading. “What happens second” implies that we can know what happened first. But in a world as complex as ours, beginnings are rarely so clear. Most “befores” have another before. It's like trying to decide where a circle starts—or whether the chicken or the egg came first. All we can really say is: before the chicken, there was an egg. And before the egg, a chicken.
In Summary
In the end, our minds are not machines—they are storytellers. We navigate the world through stories: incomplete, biased, beautifully imperfect narratives that help us make sense of what we see, feel, and remember. Recognizing the power, and the limitation, of those stories is a key part of thinking clearly, compassionately, and critically. The more stories we’re willing to hear, the richer and more accurate our understanding becomes. And while we may never know exactly where a story begins, we can choose to stay curious about what came before—and open to what might come next.
