I don’t care what your position is. I care how you got to it, and how you present it.
That sentence is the reason this project exists. I am deeply worried about our relationship to information. Not about any one opinion winning or losing, but about the way we form opinions and the way we talk about them. Somewhere along the line we stopped asking how a conclusion was reached. We only ask which side it lands on.
Two people can hold the same opinion and arrive at it in completely different ways. One read widely, weighed the evidence and landed there. The other picked the opinion first and then went looking for reasons. On the surface they sound the same. Underneath, they are doing two different things, and only one of them is actually thinking.
This matters for anyone who reads the news, writes online or sits in a meeting. If you can see how a piece of writing or speech was built, you can judge it on something more useful than whether you agree with it.
The tool I use for this comes from Tim Urban’s book What’s Our Problem? He calls it the Ladder. This article explains it in plain words and then does something the book does not do in detail: it shows what each level of the Ladder sounds like when people speak about a real issue.
Two axes, not one
Picture any debate as a line. On the left end is one position, on the right end is the opposite position. Most people sit somewhere along it. Urban calls this the Idea Spectrum. It answers one question: what do you think?
Now add a second line, going up and down. This is the Ladder. It answers a different question: how did you get there?
The Ladder has four steps, called rungs. The two upper rungs are people whose main goal is to find out what is true. The two lower rungs are people whose main goal is to be right, or to feel right, or to stay loyal to their group. The line between the upper and lower half is the important one. Above it, evidence can change your mind. Below it, nothing can.
Here is the key point. Your position on the left-right line tells you nothing about your position on the Ladder. There are careful thinkers and closed-minded thinkers on every side of every issue. And the same person moves up and down the Ladder during a single day, depending on the topic and the mood.
Urban’s explanation for this is simple. Each of us has two minds. One is old and was built for survival in small tribes. It wants you to hold the beliefs of your group, with confidence, because that kept your ancestors safe. The other is newer and can step back and ask whether a belief is actually true. The Ladder measures which of these two minds is in charge at the moment.
The four rungs
Rung 1: The Scientist. The Scientist starts with “I don’t know.” They collect information from many places, including sources they expect to disagree with. They decide how much to trust a source by its track record, not by whether it agrees with them. Then they form a view and test it by saying it out loud and inviting people to attack it. If the attack lands, they change the view and are glad they did. Their confidence is usually lower than you would expect, because they know how much they still don’t know.
Rung 2: The Sports Fan. The Sports Fan still wants the truth. But they also want a certain answer to win. Think of a real fan watching a match: they want a fair game, they don’t want a corrupt referee, but they are rooting for one side. This leaks into their thinking. They notice the facts that help their side more than the facts that hurt it. When their view takes a hit, they call it a cheap shot. When it lands a hit, they overrate it. Still, if the evidence is strong enough, a Sports Fan will grudgingly change their mind. That is what keeps them in the upper half.
Rung 3: The Attorney. The Attorney does not start at “I don’t know.” They start at the conclusion. The client is innocent, now let’s find out why. Everything after that is building a case. They gather only the facts that fit, leave out the ones that don’t, and present the result as if it were an honest investigation. In a real court this is fine, because the other side gets to present too. In a single person’s head, or in a single article, there is no other side. The verdict was decided before the trial began. You can argue with an Attorney for hours and nothing you say will move them, and they will not notice that this is strange.
Rung 4: The Zealot. The Zealot does not build a case at all. They just know. Urban’s picture for this is a parent with a new baby: you don’t research whether your baby is lovable. For the Zealot, a belief is part of who they are. A challenge to the belief feels like an insult to them personally. People who agree are good people. People who disagree are bad people. The world looks simple and clear, with sharp lines between right and wrong, which is the opposite of how the world looks to a Scientist.
Two things to keep in mind. First, none of this says who is right. A Zealot can hold a true belief by luck. A Scientist can be wrong. The Ladder measures the process, not the result. Second, everyone spends time on every rung. The goal is not to live on the top rung. It is to notice when you have slipped, and to spend a bit more time up high than you did last year.
The map: one issue, two sides, four rungs
Here is the Ladder in action. The issue is one most people have an opinion on: should schools ban phones during the school day? The left column is someone who says yes. The right column is someone who says no. Each row is a rung. Read down a column and you will hear the same opinion get worse and worse as a piece of thinking, without the opinion itself changing.
The map
Should schools ban phones during the school day?
“I lean toward a ban, but I’m not sure. The studies I’ve seen show small gains in attention and less bullying, but a lot of them are weak and some show nothing. I’d want to see what happened in the countries that already did it. If the results are flat, I’d drop the idea.”
“I lean against a ban, but I could be wrong. Kids need to learn to manage distraction at some point, and I haven’t seen strong evidence that bans help long term. If a well-run trial showed real gains in learning, I’d change my view.”
“I’m pretty convinced a ban is right. Look at the Dutch results, big improvement in focus. Yes, I know some studies are mixed, but the ones that count are clear. Honestly, I’d be surprised if anyone could show me a downside that outweighs that.”
“I’m pretty convinced bans are a mistake. Kids are going to have phones their whole lives, you can’t just hide them. The schools that banned them had problems too, people just don’t report those. Fine, show me the study, but I doubt it will change much.”
“Phones are destroying a generation. Every teacher I’ve spoken to agrees. Teen anxiety has gone up since smartphones arrived, and that is not a coincidence. The only people who oppose bans are tech companies and the parents they’ve fooled.”
Facts here are true. Studies with no effect are left out. The timing claim is treated as proof. Opponents are given one motive.
“Phone bans are just adults blaming a device for their own failures. Schools that ban phones are the same schools that fail at everything else. Kids use phones for safety, for learning, for staying in touch with working parents. People pushing bans have never met a teenager.”
Also built from true pieces. Benefits of bans never mentioned. Supporters reduced to one type.
“Anyone who lets kids have phones in class doesn’t care about children. There is nothing to discuss.”
“Anyone who wants to ban phones is a control freak who hates young people. There is nothing to discuss.”
Notice a few things. The Scientist on each side sounds almost like the Scientist on the other side. They disagree, but they could have a useful conversation and either one might move. By the Attorney row, the two are not really talking about phones anymore. They are talking about what kind of person the other one is. By the Zealot row, there is nothing left to discuss, and both say so.
Notice also that the Attorney columns contain no lies. Every claim in them is true or at least defensible. The problem is what was left out and how the pieces were arranged. This is the kind of writing that passes every fact check and still misleads.
Now put the same eight people back on the two axes from earlier. Left and right is what they think. Height is how they got there. The two columns of the map become two columns of dots, and the pattern is easier to see: the two Scientists are far apart horizontally but at the same height, and height is what decides whether a conversation is possible.
The map on the two axes
Should schools ban phones during the school day?
Click or hover a dot to hear that person. Same rung, opposite sides: the two Scientists could trade evidence, the two Zealots could not.
A second map, on a hotter issue
Phones in schools is a mild topic. The Ladder matters most on topics where feelings run high, because that is where people slide down fastest. So here is the same exercise on nuclear power: should a country build more of it, or phase it out?
The map
Should a country build more nuclear power, or phase it out?
“On the numbers I’ve seen, nuclear is one of the safest and lowest-carbon ways to make electricity, so I lean toward building more. The real problems are cost and build time, and I don’t know if those can be fixed. If the next few plants come in as late and expensive as the last ones, that would change my view.”
“I lean against new nuclear, mostly because of cost and how long it takes. Solar, wind and storage are getting cheap fast. But I take the safety record seriously, it is better than most people think. If storage turns out harder than expected, I would reconsider.”
“Nuclear is clearly the answer. Deaths per unit of energy are tiny, far below coal and even below some renewables. The cost problem is mostly regulation, and people who worry about waste don’t understand how small the volume is. Show me a country that went fully renewable without gas backup. You can’t.”
“Renewables are clearly the answer. Every nuclear project in the West is years late and billions over budget. Nuclear fans keep pointing to safety stats but ignore that one accident can empty a region. Sure, there are grid challenges, but those are engineering problems. The nuclear ones are deeper.”
“Germany shut its reactors and burned more coal. Electricity prices in anti-nuclear countries are the highest in Europe. France has had clean, cheap power for decades. Opposition to nuclear comes from fear, not facts, and it is funded by people who profit from gas.”
True pieces. Cost overruns at recent plants are absent. Opponents get one motive.
“Chernobyl. Fukushima. Decades of waste with nowhere to go. The new plants in Finland and the UK are monuments to delay and overspending. Nuclear is a dying industry kept alive by lobbyists and governments that won’t admit a mistake.”
True pieces. Safety-per-unit data is absent. Supporters get one motive.
“If you oppose nuclear you are anti-science and you are the reason the climate is in trouble. Full stop.”
“If you support nuclear you are willing to risk poisoning children for profit. Full stop.”
Same pattern as before. The two Scientists disagree but share a method and could trade evidence. The two Attorneys are each telling a true story with half the facts missing, and each has already decided why the other side believes what it believes. The two Zealots are not discussing energy at all. They are declaring who the bad people are.
A useful test. Take the Attorney text from either column and ask what fact, if it were true, would make the writer change their mind. Usually there is no answer. That is the sign you have left the upper half of the Ladder.
How to spot the rung in a text
Urban’s Ladder describes what is going on inside a person’s head. You can’t see that. But you can see what they write and say, and the rungs leave marks on the page. These are the ones that show up most reliably.
Signs of the upper rungs
- The writer says what they are unsure about, and how unsure.
- The strongest version of the other side appears, in words its supporters would accept.
- Facts that hurt the writer’s own position are included, not hidden.
- Facts and interpretation are kept apart. You can tell where the reporting ends and the opinion begins.
- The writer says, or makes clear, what would change their mind.
- Disagreement is treated as a disagreement about the world, not as a sign of bad character.
Signs of the lower rungs
- The conclusion comes first and every fact after it points the same way.
- Well-known facts that cut the other way are simply missing.
- The other side is described by its worst members or by a motive, such as money, fear or stupidity.
- Loaded words do the arguing: “admitted”, “claimed”, “so-called”, “finally”, “of course”.
- The confidence of the language is higher than the evidence shown can support.
- Nothing in the text could possibly turn out to be wrong, because nothing is stated in a way that could be tested.
- Questions are treated as things you should not ask, rather than things that have a wrong answer.
None of these signs settles the matter on its own. A careful writer can use a loaded word by accident. But when several appear together, you are reading an Attorney, and the text should be read as a brief for one side, however well sourced it is.
The last point is worth repeating. A text can be fully accurate and still be low-rung. Checking facts is necessary, but it is not enough. The question this article asks of any piece of writing is different: not “is this true?” but “was this built to find out, or built to convince?”
What this does not claim
This article should pass its own test, so here are its limits.
The Ladder is a model, not a measurement. People do not sit on one rung. They move, and they move differently on different topics. Someone can be a Scientist about medicine and a Zealot about football. The map above is a snapshot of a way of talking, not a label for a person.
The signs listed above are judgments, not a formula. Two careful readers will sometimes disagree about whether a text is a Sports Fan or an Attorney. The signs narrow the disagreement. They do not remove it.
The person doing the judging is also on the Ladder. It is very easy to call a text an Attorney’s brief because you dislike its conclusion. The only defence is to apply the same signs to texts you agree with, and to be ready to find that your own side does it too. Both maps in this article were written so that the two columns commit the same faults in the same rows. If the fouls only ever appear on one side, the judge is the problem.
Finally, the Ladder itself is not original to this article. It comes from Tim Urban’s What’s Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies (2023), and before that from his Wait But Why series The Story of Us. The excerpt of the chapter that defines the four rungs is free to read at waitbutwhy.com. The two-mind model, the four rungs, the Idea Spectrum and the Idea Lab and Echo Chamber ideas are his. What is added here is the translation from how a person thinks to what their writing looks like, and the two worked maps. Where this article goes wrong, the fault is in the translation, not the source.