Thought Experiments

Thought Experiments is one of the named models in The Great Mental Models Volume 1 — General Thinking Concepts, defined there as “devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.” The book stresses they are “more than daydreaming” — a useful thought experiment “requires the same rigor as a traditional experiment,” following the scientific method’s steps (ask a question, research, hypothesize, test, analyze, compare, adjust). Everyday prompts like “if money were no object” or “if you had all the time in the world” are framed as thought experiments because actually removing the variable is physically impossible.

The model’s major use cases in the book are re-imagining history and ethical reasoning. The historical counter-factual and semi-factual (“If Y happened instead of X, what would the outcome have been?”) is flagged as the area demanding the most caution, because history is a chaotic system where small changes in initial conditions cascade — a frame Kyle repeatedly maps onto evaluating climate-policy alternatives. The chapter also walks through the trolley problem (Philippa Foot, extended by Judith Jarvis Thomson) and John Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance from A Theory of Justice as worked examples of thought experiments.

Context: Thought experiments are a long-standing method in philosophy and physics — from Einstein’s relativity scenarios to Schrödinger’s cat — using imagined situations to reason about consequences that cannot (or need not) be tested empirically.

Where this appears

• The Great Mental Models Volume 1 — General Thinking Concepts — defined as a rigorous “device of the imagination,” covering counter-factual history, the trolley problem, and Rawls’s veil of ignorance.