Climbing the Ladder of Inference

A commonplace in management training is The Ladder of Inference.  The ladder was described by Chris Argyris, and later included in The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization , by Peter Senge. The ladder is used when teaching problem-solving,
management decision-making, and similar skill sets.  The awareness of
the ladder and the errors it leads to serve to warn against "jumping to
conclusions."



A better phrase, in keeping with the metaphor, might be "climbing too fast."

What the Ladder of Inference tells us about science and science fiction