What If Scenarios

Origin. Counterfactual reasoning; scenario planning (Kahn, Wack).

Mechanism. Suspends one constraint of the current situation and propagates the consequences. The constraint that is dropped is chosen for being tacit rather than for being weak, so the propagation reaches conclusions that ordinary reasoning has never had to reach.

Procedure. Name a fact about the problem that is currently held fixed. Negate it. Ask what would have to be true downstream. Harvest the intermediate steps, not only the endpoint — the intermediate steps are often reachable without dropping the constraint at all.

Applies to. Early divergence; opening a space that feels closed. Strongest where the closure is felt rather than argued.

Limitations. Degenerates into fantasy when the negated constraint is a physical law rather than an assumption. The output is unfalsifiable and therefore unusable.