What would I have to believe for this to be true?

Evaluating a claim, a strategy, or an argument you can't immediately fault.

Take the claim below and work backwards from it.

1. List the assumptions that must hold for this claim to be true. Include the hidden ones, the assumptions so obvious to the claimant that they were never stated.
2. For each assumption, rate it: clearly true, probably true, contested, or unlikely.
3. Identify the load-bearing assumption: the one that, if false, makes the whole thing collapse.
4. Tell me what evidence would settle that one, and whether it is obtainable.
5. Steelman the claim: state the strongest version of it, granting the most defensible assumptions.
6. Then give your own view on whether it holds, and how confident you are.

Claim:

Scrutinising ideas. Where a concept stops working, what people get wrong, and whether a claim holds up.