Problem Identified
There is a significant lack of understanding of reasoning itself in the general public, particularly due to a lack of awareness about developmental psychology stages and how cognition works. People often do not have a clear framework or map for understanding the stages of their reasoning, leading to disorganized thinking. Without this map, individuals cannot effectively place their reasoning within a larger context, making it difficult to solve complex problems or engage in productive discourse. This gap in understanding contributes to poor communication, ineffective evaluation of narratives, and flawed decision-making across sectors. Bringing developmental stage theory into the public discourse is critical for individuals and societies to confront the complexity of their thinking and push toward more advanced levels of reasoning. INSIGHT is a software tool being designed to bring a scientific framework that both educates and supports individuals in understanding the stages of reasoning and behavioral development in real world sense-making.
Approach
While large language models (LLMs) can evaluate text, they struggle with accurately assessing behavioral complexity due to the limitations of tokenization and inference. INSIGHT goes beyond this. INSIGHT uses explicit coding for developmental stages, analyzing the language, grammar, and logic used in narratives to identify where reasoning falls within the developmental spectrum. By measuring the intellectual complexity of texts, INSIGHT uncovers gaps in understanding or reasoning, allowing users to see not just what’s being said, but how it’s being processed at different stages of behavioral development.
Transformational Thesis
INSIGHT will offer anyone the ability to assess the complexity of any narrative, breaking down reasoning and offering detailed, sentence-by-sentence and paragraph-by-paragraph analysis. By revealing the levels of reasoning involved, it provides clear insights how the development stage of reasoning is stratified across a text. This will bring greater awareness of the complexity involved in effective communication, sense-making, discussion, and problem-solving.
What’s at Stake
Society is more divided than ever, with people entrenched in opposing narratives across nearly every major issue. The challenges we face are associated with specific stages of behavioral development, and without individuals or groups operating at a given necessary stage, a problem requiring a specific stage of behavioral development cannot be adequately solved. This level of fragmentation threatens decision-making at all levels, from local communities to global governance. INSIGHT is being built to identify where individuals and groups are in their developmental transitions, helping to pinpoint where reasoning is stuck and offering insights on how to move forward. By raising awareness of developmental stages and their role in reasoning and decision-making, INSIGHT offers the potential to break cycles of misunderstanding, ineffective problem-solving, and increasingly polarized discourse.
Success Benchmarks
The success of INSIGHT will be gauged by its widespread adoption across key sectors, including debates, policymaking, and education, as well as its use by individuals in discussions. Critical milestones will include enhancements in the tool’s accuracy and its ability to effectively identify gaps in reasoning, output to various stage theory models preferred by users, and offer automated suggestions for improving narratives in diverse contexts, and eventually real-time conversational evaluations. As INSIGHT evolves, it will continue to deliver valuable insights by mapping the complexity of reasoning in narratives, pinpointing areas for improvement, and supporting individuals and groups in advancing their behavioral development toward more effective reasoning and mutually agreeable outcomes.