how to spot a cognitively dangerous writing

do you ever question the author of a book or blogpost, not just the facts they present or claims they make, but observing how, if at all, the piece is constructed to land as obviously correct? how it's built to make you feel like it's true?

let me explain why this article (on LSP: how X × Y became X + Y) is "cognitively dangerous" for you as a passive reader and if you didn't notice - you should have.

(give it a read before moving forward. it's short, ~480 words)
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next up, i'll be giving you 3 examples of the sections in this article that could be termed as "cognitively dangerous" depending on the reader. see if you can identify 3 of them (or more) yourself.

the primary issue is not the use of metaphors to explain engineering concepts or that the information is untrue but it's the manner in which it delivers some absolute statements that sounds nice and logically true.

here's the first example:

"....a magical pack should only do what it's supposed to do - perform magic. that's all. anything more than that is a violation of its boundary and overreach - overreach is exactly how systems rot......"

notice how the author (a.k.a me) doesn't tell you what overreach is. they just tell you what it does - it rots the systems. that's the whole definition you get and it works because the reader will conclude "overreach rots the systems, overreach is bad!"
now try this:
"in what context overreach has been used?"
"why a component crossing its boundary is exactly bad?"
"a component crossing its boundary can be the most viable solution sometimes, right?"

the article never answers these. because you, as a reader didn't question the "feel-good" intuitive conclusion you arrived on your own, the statement now feels like a declaration - something one must always follow.

and this is what i mean by cognitively dangerous - it's not a lie, it's not incorrect - it's a sentence that feels like a verified claim. you read it, something in you clicks and you move on without questioning the click. that click or nodding along is the dangerous part. it's the moment certainty washes over you and you might try to verify that claim to check if its true or not. but it's not the way to go. here are somethings worth keeping in mind:

1. don't ask what's wrong, ask for what's missing.
   every time a piece hands you a conclusion and the moment you start feeling certain, read for the gaps - dig in deeper to see if the certainty comes from a valid premise or not.

2. look for counterexamples
   most people's instinct when they agree with something is to look for more evidence that supports it. a good claim is one where you can imagine, at least in theory, what would prove it wrong. if someone claims "water boils at 100ºC", you can imagine the possibility of what can break it - go to a higher altitude, a vaccum or at a high pressure - the claim will be falsified. "overreach rots systems" - you cannot prove it wrong, you cannot prove it right. it's a hollow statement.

   an important thing to note here - searching for counterexamples is only true when somebody is making a claim about something related to scientific domains. the moment someone states a value, belief or ideology - the test stops being true. those are opinions and unverifiable opinions don't belong to a rational system. "be kind to people" isn't falsifiable nor it was ever trying to be. it's a stance someone is choosing to hold and the claim stems from personal beliefs. you cannot test it unless it's your own.

3. notice when a word is doing a job a sentence should be doing.
   "overreach", "discipline", "debt", "evil", "rot" and the list is long. these words show up in a lot of writing because they are compact and already carry a verdict that most people are familiar with. they let the writer skip most of the explaining part. so anytime these type of words are a load-bearing term in the sentence, slow down there. unpack it in your head. usually you do so by turning it into multiple sentences the writer chose not to write.

let's move onto the second example:

".....a well designed component should have exactly one reason to exist in a system, any responsibility bolted onto it beyond that reason is a debt the system as a whole will have to pay....."

this one is not hollow like the previous one. it has a good idea behind it - many times it makes life easier to split a tangled thing into clean separate parts, maintaining clear boundaries is helpful that's true. but the problem is - it has been phrased like a rule with no exceptions without defining the conditions under which it will hold up.

"...exactly one reason, any responsibility bolted on is a debt the system will have to pay..."

the phrase has been written so confidently to make it feel like a wisdom. no room for "sometimes," no room for "depends" and this phrasing is how the entire machinery of emotional engineering works - whether its a tech blog, self-help books (eww) or random write-ups that you read online - majority of them hand you statements that are conditionally true, strip off the conditions and state it as absolute. so here are some more things worth keeping in mind:

4. everytime an absolute statement is made, question it
   always, never, exactly, should - whenever you come across words similar to these, you need to ask: under what conditions does the statement hold true? look for the counterexamples and search for the gaps.

5. be aware of the tone that has been used
   the tone does something different, separate from the words. read out the 2nd example once again. that's not an engineering language anymore, it sounds like a preaching. debt, boundary, violation - all these words are borrowed from morality to make you feel like straying away from it would cost you something.

let's see the final example - the last line of this article. it's the kind of line that is meant to outlive everything else, get screenshotted and remembered after you've forgotten what a LSP even is:

"... stop trying to understand everyone's internals and just build a clean way to communicate."

i doubt i'll need to further explain where it goes wrong. apply the above mentioned 5 points and it's not hard to realise.

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in the schools nobody is taught to question the author of a book. we are taught to read it, remember it, maybe write an essay on what the author meant, we grow up trusting the pages because they are printed and they come from a book and books are "sacred".

like how a dumb man doesn't become wise by only growing up in age, that old habit doesn't go away after school, it simply grows. rather than printed books, it's blogs, tweets and random online posts now. anything written with a enough certainty comes out as a valid claim on surface, being an active reader isn't to only understand what has been written but to question your own understanding and to question the ideas that a writing convinced you into believing.