(Please note that at the end of the pre-test are credible estimates for how many people in the US and in the world are currently proficient at even the Basic Guide level of rational thinking, problem-solving, and metacognition.)

Start the Basic Guide Pretest Here

Purpose: Complete this before starting the Basic Guide. It is a self-scoring baseline, so you can see where you are now.

Important note: Every question labeled [Introduction] comes from the Introduction to the Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced Guides. If you miss one or feel unsure, go back and read the introduction carefully before continuing with the Basic Guide.

Total points: 100

Section A: 20 multiple-choice questions x 2 points each = 40 points

Section B: 12 self-rating items x up to 5 points each = 60 points

How to Score This Pretest

Section A scoring: Give yourself 2 points for each correct answer and 0 for each incorrect answer.

Section B scoring scale:

0 = I almost never do this and do not really know how to do it.

1 = I rarely do this and would need a lot of help.

2 = I sometimes do this, but weakly or inconsistently.

3 = I can usually do this at a basic level.

4 = I do this fairly well in many situations.

5 = I do this consistently and clearly, even when it matters.

Section A Knowledge and Concept Check

1. 1. [Introduction] Before entering the guides, what practical first step does the introduction say to take?

      A. Memorize the glossary before doing anything else
      B. Write down your three most important current real problems
      C. Start with the Advanced Guide if your problems feel urgent
      D. Ask AI to choose your most important problem for you

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   2. [Introduction] Which statement best describes experiential knowledge?

      A. Being able to quote definitions from memory
      B. Knowing which philosopher first used a term
      C. Being able to actually use a method under real conditions
      D. Having strong opinions about a method

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   3. [Introduction] Which description best matches the guide’s recommended use of AI?

      A. AI should be treated as the final judge in difficult decisions
      B. AI should replace human judgment whenever facts are involved
      C. AI can help gather and organize information, but human judgment must still test and review it
      D. AI should be used only after the Basic Guide is complete

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   4. [Introduction] What is the guide’s basic rule for intuition?

      A. Ignore intuition and rely only on logic
      B. Trust intuition fully whenever it feels strong
      C. Use intuition only in emergencies
      D. Use intuition for noticing, analysis for testing, and mature intuition again for integration and action

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   5. [Introduction] Why does the guide say smart people should still start with the Basic Guide?

      A. Because the Intermediate Guide is only for teachers
      B. Because strong advanced thinking depends on strong basic thinking
      C. Because formal education always teaches these skills well already
      D. Because the Basic Guide is designed only for children

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   6. According to Page 1, rationality is best defined as:

      A. Winning arguments using confidence and facts
      B. Suppressing emotion completely
      C. Aligning beliefs with reality and actions with goals
      D. Trusting common sense instead of formal methods

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   7. Which option shows the difference between observation and interpretation?

      A. “He disrespects me” is an observation and “he arrived 25 minutes late” is an interpretation
      B. “He arrived 25 minutes late and did not text” is an observation and “he does not respect me” is an interpretation
      C. Both are observations
      D. Both are interpretations

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   8. What is the main purpose of tracking confidence levels?

      A. To sound more persuasive
      B. To match certainty to the strength of evidence
      C. To avoid making any decision at all
      D. To make every belief equally tentative

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   9. Which statement about validity is correct?

      A. An argument cannot be valid if any premise is false
      B. Validity means the conclusion follows from the premises, even if the premises later turn out to be false
      C. Validity means the speaker is trustworthy
      D. Validity and soundness mean the same thing

      Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   10. Abduction is best described as:

       A. Reasoning from a general rule to a necessary conclusion
       B. Repeating a study in a new setting
       C. Reasoning to the best current explanation while staying open to revision
       D. Attacking a weaker version of someone else’s view

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   11. If you hear an “either-or” claim, what is the guide’s recommended screening move?

       A. Accept the two options and choose quickly
       B. Ask which option is more emotional
       C. Ask only whether experts agree
       D. Ask whether the situation may be both-and, phased, conditional, temporary, or have a third option

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   12. Page 3 says good evidence is not merely persuasive. It should also be:

       A. Popular, vivid, and easy to repeat
       B. Relevant, accurate, traceable, proportionate, and open to critique
       C. Emotional enough to motivate action
       D. From a single highly confident source

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   13. What is a prediction in the scientific method?

       A. A summary of what already happened
       B. A statement of what you expect to see if the hypothesis is true
       C. A list of expert credentials
       D. A guarantee that your theory is correct

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   14. Why are controls or comparison groups important?

       A. They help isolate what actually made the difference
       B. They make all experiments faster
       C. They remove all bias completely
       D. They prove causation automatically

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   15. Falsification means:

       A. Proving a claim forever
       B. Exposing a claim to evidence or tests that could show it is wrong
       C. Rejecting every theory immediately
       D. Trusting only what has already been replicated

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   16. A base rate is:

       A. The background frequency of something in a larger population or reference class
       B. The strongest argument against your view
       C. A personal guess before evidence arrives
       D. A confounding variable

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   17. Which statement best fits the guide’s treatment of correlation and causation?

       A. If two things move together, one of them must be causing the other
       B. Correlation is useless and should be ignored
       C. Correlation proves a mechanism exists
       D. Correlation can be informative, but it does not by itself establish what caused what

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   18. Which statement best matches the guide’s warning about big data?

       A. More data always means better truth
       B. Large datasets cannot be biased
       C. Large datasets can still be biased, incomplete, mismeasured, or stripped of context
       D. Big data matters only for scientists

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   19. What is the main purpose of a decision journal?

       A. To make every decision look rational afterward
       B. To record what you decided, why, how confident you were, what you expected, and what actually happened
       C. To avoid disagreements with other people
       D. To replace weekly review

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

   20. Which pattern is the clearest signal that a problem may need Intermediate tools?

       A. One simple cause with one clear fix
       B. A familiar low-stakes decision with immediate feedback
       C. Repeated failure, interacting causes, delayed consequences, or conflicting stakeholder incentives
       D. A minor disagreement that can be solved by defining one term

       Your answer: ________    Score: ___ / 2

Section B Current Habits and Baseline Application

Give yourself a score from 0 to 5 for each statement.

1. 1. I can state the real decision, belief, or question at stake in one sentence.    Score: ___ / 5
   2. I can separate direct observations from my interpretations of them.    Score: ___ / 5
   3. I define key terms before debating or analyzing a claim.    Score: ___ / 5
   4. I assign confidence levels honestly instead of using confidence as performance.    Score: ___ / 5
   5. I can name evidence, feedback, or results that would change my mind.    Score: ___ / 5
   6. I can break an argument into claim, premises, and conclusion.    Score: ___ / 5
   7. I can turn a vague complaint into a neutral question, a testable hypothesis, and a prediction.    Score: ___ / 5
   8. I ask “Compared with what?” before trusting a causal or improvement claim.    Score: ___ / 5
   9. I look for base rates, alternative explanations, confounders, or missing mechanisms before drawing conclusions.    Score: ___ / 5
   10. I can name at least one likely bias that may be distorting my current view.    Score: ___ / 5
   11. I write down predictions and later review what actually happened.    Score: ___ / 5
   12. I can tell when a problem is no longer just unclear thinking and may need Intermediate tools.    Score: ___ / 5

Section A Answer Key

1-B, 2-C, 3-C, 4-D, 5-B, 6-C, 7-B, 8-B, 9-B, 10-C, 11-D, 12-B, 13-B, 14-A, 15-B, 16-A, 17-D, 18-C, 19-B, 20-C

Pretest Score Summary

Section A subtotal: ________ / 40

Section B subtotal: ________ / 60

Total pretest score: ________ / 100

Interpretation:

0-24 = Very early baseline. You will likely benefit from reading slowly and doing every exercise.

25-49 = Emerging baseline. You already recognize some ideas, but practice habits are not yet solid.

50-74 = Functional baseline. You have meaningful starting strength, but the guide should still sharpen consistency and application.

75-100 = Strong baseline. Do not skip the guide. Use it to expose weak spots under pressure and strengthen real-world use.

Now that You Have Finished the Pretest, Here are the Current Credible Estimates for US and World Proficiency on the Tools of Our Basic Guide

We thought you might be interested in how many people in the US in the world are already proficient in the Basic Guide level of rational thinking and metacognition tools. From these estimates, it is clear that the world's rational-thinking and metacognitive capabilities need significant and immediate improvement.

The best estimate:

The single-number midpoint estimate would be about 6% of U.S. adults and about 2% of world adults. Humanity, in its usual commitment to making civilization unnecessarily exciting, has not broadly trained people in the very skills required to avoid being manipulated, overconfident, tribal, statistically confused, and causally reckless.

What counted as “reasonably proficient”

We did not count someone as proficient just because they have heard of “critical thinking,” can define confirmation bias, or once said “correlation is not causation” in a meeting and then immediately ignored base rates.

We counted “reasonably proficient” as someone who can regularly and practically use most of the Basic Guide tools in real situations:

They can define the actual claim or decision, separate observation from interpretation, track confidence, name what would change their mind, break arguments into claims/premises/conclusions, identify common fallacies and false dilemmas, test evidence, use basic scientific reasoning, understand sample quality and measurement issues, think probabilistically, avoid obvious causality errors, notice their own biases, and use some kind of feedback loop such as a decision journal or after-action review. That standard comes directly from the guide sequence: the introduction emphasizes moving from declarative knowledge to applied skill through practice and feedback, not merely admiring concepts from a safe intellectual distance.

Why is the estimate low?

The Basic Guide is broader than ordinary “critical thinking.” Page 1 includes defining terms, separating observation from interpretation, tracking confidence, and asking what would change one’s mind. Page 2 adds argument structure, validity, soundness, deduction, induction, abduction, scope conditions, fallacy detection, and false-dilemma/both-and screening. Page 3 adds evidence quality, scientific method, testable hypotheses, prediction, controls, comparison groups, replication, and falsification. Page 4 covers data literacy, measurement quality, signal versus noise, sample quality, big data traps, base rates, updating, calibration, expected value, causality, and bias. Page 5 then makes clear that proficiency means practice: decision journaling, prediction tracking, confidence scoring, weekly review, critique, and outcome learning.

That is a lot. It is not “can this person sound smart at dinner?” It is “can this person keep their reasoning connected to reality while under stress, uncertainty, incentives, emotion, and social pressure.” A grim little obstacle course, because apparently thinking had to be made difficult by having a brain.

The evidence anchors  used

There is no direct global survey asking, “Can you competently use the Universe Institute Basic Guide?” Tragic, but civilization continues limping forward. So we triangulated from nearby measured skills.

For the United States, the strongest anchor is the 2023 PIAAC adult-skills assessment. Among U.S. adults ages 16–65, only 44% reached Level 3 or above in literacy, 38% in numeracy, and 32% in adaptive problem solving. NCES also reports that low-proficiency rates rose between 2017 and 2023, with 28% of U.S. adults at Level 1 or below in literacy and 34% at Level 1 or below in numeracy. OECD’s U.S. adult-skills profile also says U.S. adults scored close to the OECD average in literacy but below average in numeracy and adaptive problem-solving, with only 12–13% reaching the top-performer range in literacy/numeracy.

That means the absolute ceiling for full Basic Guide proficiency is far below the number of people who are merely literate or educated. To be proficient in this guide, a person needs not just reading and numeracy skills, but also applied evidence testing, probabilistic judgment, bias detection, decision feedback, and metacognitive correction. So I treated the PIAAC 32% adaptive problem-solving Level 3+ figure as a generous upper-cap proxy, then cut it down sharply because most people at that level still will not consistently use calibration, falsification, base rates, decision journaling, and bias checks in real life. Hence, our 4–8% U.S. adult estimate.

Another useful U.S. anchor: HHS reports that only 12% of Americans have proficient health literacy, according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. Health literacy is not identical to rational thinking, but it is a real-world domain in which people must interpret evidence, instructions, risks, and consequences. That 12% figure supports the idea that applied reasoning proficiency in everyday consequential domains is much rarer than basic schooling would imply.

For the world estimate, the evidence is weaker because globally comparable adult metacognition/rationality data are sparse. The OECD Survey of Adult Skills covers 31 countries/economies, not the entire world, and those countries are generally more educated than the global average. OECD describes the assessed skills, literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving, as foundational for navigating employment, lifelong learning, and civic/personal complexity. But much of the world has far lower access to high-quality education. The World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, and partners estimated in 2022 that 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries were unable to read and understand a simple written text. That makes high-level adult rationality/metacognition proficiency globally a small minority by necessity, not because people are unintelligent, but because the training pipeline is brutally uneven.

The rough model

This is the rough filter used:

1. Basic cognitive access: literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving capacity sufficient to understand the guide.
2. Conceptual exposure: some education or training in logic, evidence, scientific reasoning, probability, bias, and decision quality.
3. Practical conversion: actually using the tools under real conditions, not just recognizing the vocabulary.
4. Metacognitive habit: tracking confidence, asking what would change one’s mind, reviewing outcomes, and correcting errors.

Most people fail at step 3 or 4. Not because they are hopeless, but because almost no educational system reliably teaches these as practiced life skills. Naturally, we instead built global systems where people can use powerful technologies while still being outmaneuvered by headlines, tribal identity, bad graphs, and emotionally satisfying nonsense. Very efficient, in the way a burning warehouse is “well-lit.”

Confidence level

Confidence in the U.S. estimate: moderate.
We put a credible range around 4–8% of adults, with a wider defensible range of 2–12%, depending on how strict the proficiency standard is.

Confidence in the world estimate: low-to-moderate.
WE put a credible range around 1–3% of adults, with a wider defensible range of 0.5–5%. The world estimate is necessarily rough because no direct global adult assessment measures this exact integrated skill set.

Bottom line

A credible estimate is that only about 1 in 12 to 1 in 25 U.S. adults are reasonably proficient in the full Basic Guide skill set, and globally, probably closer to 1 in 30 to 1 in 100 adults. The encouraging part, before despair starts putting on formalwear, is that the Basic Guide skills are highly teachable. The depressing part is that most institutions still treat them as optional enrichment rather than basic cognitive hygiene.