A rough self-check, built on the framework in Misbelief by Dan Ariely.
Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to believe something false. People slide — pulled by ordinary, universal machinery: stress, the way we search for information, our own personalities, and the people around us. The book calls that slide the funnel of misbelief.
The point of the funnel is that it is not a character flaw. Every force in it operates on all of us, all the time. What differs is how hard each one is pulling right now.
This tool gives you a rough reading of those four forces — for yourself, or for someone you're worried about.
This changes the questions and what you get at the end.
These are the four elements of the funnel. Each one gets its own thermometer, and every thermometer starts at 0%. Your answers move them up, down, or not at all.
Stress — especially the unpredictable kind — is the entry condition. It shrinks the mental room we have to think, and it makes a story that explains the pain feel like relief.
Once we're looking for answers, our machinery decides what we find: we search for what we already suspect, and we're far more confident in our understanding than we have any right to be.
Some traits make the slide easier — trusting your gut over checking, seeing patterns in noise, and low intellectual humility. These are differences of degree, present in everyone.
The part that seals it. Being frozen out by your old circle and welcomed by a new one is a powerful engine — and it makes leaving expensive.
Skipping is fine and never judged — the number you skipped is shown at the end, for you.