counterfactual

name	counterfactual
description	Reason rigorously about "what if X had been different" — isolate the minimal change, propagate consequences forward step by step, and separate what almost certainly follows from speculation. Use for historical what-ifs, post-mortems, decision regret, and attributing causes ("did X actually matter?").
compatibility	Created for Zo Computer
metadata	{"author":"rob.zo.computer"}

Counterfactual

Use this skill to reason about alternate histories with discipline: change one thing, hold everything else fixed, and propagate consequences forward honestly — including the forces that would have pushed events back toward the same outcome.

Purpose

Counterfactuals are how causes are actually tested — "did X matter?" means "would the outcome differ without X?" But casual counterfactual talk cheats: it changes many variables at once, propagates only the convenient consequences, and ignores equilibrium pressures that make many outcomes overdetermined. This skill imposes the discipline.

Procedure

1. State the actual history and the outcome of interest.
2. Define the minimal intervention: the single, precise change to consider. Reject vague interventions ("if things had gone better") — demand one lever at one moment.
3. Check plausibility: was the intervention genuinely possible at the time, or does it smuggle in hindsight?
4. Propagate forward in explicit steps:
   • First-order: what immediately changes?
   • Second-order: how do other actors and systems respond?
   • Equilibrium check: what forces push back toward the original outcome? Was the outcome overdetermined (many paths led there) or contingent (this path was necessary)?
5. Grade each propagation step: near-certain / probable / speculative. Stop propagating when everything downstream is speculative.
6. Conclude: how much did X actually matter? Assign the outcome to contingent on X or overdetermined regardless of X.

Output format

Use this concise structure unless the user asks otherwise:

## Actual history
...

## Minimal intervention
...

## Propagation
| Step | Consequence | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| 1st order | ... | Near-certain |
| 2nd order | ... | Probable |
| 3rd order | ... | Speculative |

## Equilibrium pressures
...

## Verdict: contingent or overdetermined?
...

Guardrails

• One intervention at a time. If the user's question bundles several, split them.
• Always run the equilibrium check — most naive counterfactuals fail by ignoring restoring forces.
• Label speculation as speculation; the honesty of the confidence grades is the whole value.
• Do not use the counterfactual to relitigate blame; use it to measure causal weight.

Canonical questions

• "Would the 2008 crisis have happened without Lehman failing?"
• "If we had launched 6 months earlier, would we have won the market?"
• "Did hiring that VP actually cause the turnaround, or was it already underway?"
• "What if I had taken the other job offer?"
• "Would the project have shipped on time if we hadn't switched frameworks?"

Poor fits: future hypotheticals (that's scenario planning, not counterfactual reasoning), and questions where no outcome of interest is specified.