Assumption Surfacing
category
Assumption surfacing is the deliberate practice of identifying and making explicit the invisible premises on which any argument, plan, or belief rests — the unstated 'if this is true...' conditions that most reasoning takes for granted without examination, and whose falsity would collapse the entire conclusion built on top of them.
Role
Most catastrophic decisions in business, policy, and personal life are not caused by bad reasoning from correct premises — they are caused by correct reasoning from false assumptions that no one stopped to question. The majority of people never develop the habit of asking 'what would have to be true for this plan to make sense?' before committing to it. Those who do catch fatal flaws before they become expensive disasters.