Meta-Creativity

The process of creatively designing or manipulating the very conditions, constraints, and processes that lead to creative breakthroughs. It's not about having a new idea, but about engineering the personal habits, environmental triggers, and mental states that make novel ideas more likely to emerge. This includes techniques like deliberate constraint-setting, cross-disciplinary immersion, or ritualized "idea incubation" periods.

Example: A writer suffering from block doesn't just stare at a blank page. They practice Meta-Creativity: they change their physical environment (works in a café), imposes a strange constraint ("write a scene using only dialogue"), and schedules "non-thinking" walks. They are creatively hacking their own creative process to force new connections.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Meta-Rationality

The application of rational principles to the question of when and how to be rational. It recognizes that blind adherence to formal logic or cold cost-benefit analysis can be irrational in contexts involving human values, emotions, or deep uncertainty. Meta-rationality chooses the appropriate cognitive tool for the job, knowing that sometimes intuition, storytelling, or moral commitment are more "rational" paths to good outcomes than pure deduction. It's rationality about rationality.

Example: Deciding to trust your gut feeling about a person's character, despite a clean resume and logical pitch, is an act of Meta-Rationality. You recognize that your subconscious pattern-recognition for deceit is a valid data-processing system in social contexts, and that an overly analytical approach here would be less rational because it ignores a powerful evolved tool.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Meta-Thinking

The practice of thinking about how you are thinking. It's stepping back from the content of your thoughts to examine the patterns, assumptions, biases, and frameworks shaping them. Meta-thinking involves asking: "What mental model am I using? What goal is driving this line of thought? What am I not considering?" It is the cognitive equivalent of looking at the source code of your own mind to debug flawed logic and upgrade your processing algorithms.

Example: During an argument, instead of just defending your point, you pause and engage in Meta-Thinking: "Why am I so emotionally invested in winning this? Is my goal to find truth or to protect my ego? Am I using a binary win/lose framework when a more nuanced one is needed?" This shifts the conflict from a battle to a collaborative debugging session.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Meta-Research

The study of research itself—its methods, reporting, biases, incentives, and cultural practices. Also called "research on research," it’s the science of how science gets done (and often goes wrong). Meta-research audits disciplines for problems like publication bias, p-hacking, low statistical power, and irreproducibility. It doesn't discover new facts about the universe; it diagnoses the health of the processes we use to make those discoveries, acting as the immune system for academia.

*Example: A Meta-Research project analyzes 1,000 published psychology studies and finds that 90% of them used sample sizes too small to reliably detect the effects they were looking for. This doesn't debunk any specific psychological theory, but it casts doubt on the entire evidentiary foundation of the field, prompting a credibility crisis and reform.*

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Meta-Fallacies

Errors in reasoning that occur not within an argument itself, but in the process of identifying, analyzing, or dismissing other fallacies. They are mistakes made one level up, in the "meta" layer of argumentation. The classic example is the Fallacy Fallacy (dismissing a claim as false solely because it was argued for with a fallacy). Meta-fallacies are the pitfalls of being a fallacy detective—getting so focused on catching logical errors that you commit new ones by misapplying labels, being overly pedantic, or using fallacy calls to avoid engaging with the substance of an argument.

Meta-Fallacies Example: Person A makes a valid point about economic inequality but uses a slightly emotional analogy. Person B triumphantly declares, "Aha! Appeal to emotion! Your entire point is invalid!" Person B has committed the Fallacy Fallacy, a primary Meta-Fallacy. They incorrectly believe identifying a flaw in the argument's delivery automatically negates its factual content.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Informal Meta-Fallacies

Meta-fallacies that arise from the misapplication or abuse of informal fallacy labels (e.g., ad hominem, straw man, slippery slope) within discourse. These are tactical errors in rhetorical analysis. They happen when someone slaps an informal fallacy label on an argument incorrectly, uses the label as a conversation-stopper without justification, or employs fallacy accusations in a one-sided, partisan way to protect their own side from criticism. It’s using the vocabulary of critical thinking to avoid the practice of it.

Informal Meta-Fallacies Example: In a debate, someone accurately summarizes an opponent's position to show its weakness. The opponent shouts, "Straw man!" even though the summary was fair. This incorrect accusation is an Informal Meta-Fallacy; it weaponizes the name of a fallacy to falsely claim misrepresentation and derail the refutation.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Formal Meta-Fallacies

Meta-errors related to the realm of formal logic and deductive reasoning. This involves incorrectly asserting that an argument's formal structure is invalid when it is valid, or valid when it is invalid. It can also include the mistake of treating a formally valid but utterly unrealistic syllogism as a serious argument, or dismissing a formally invalid argument whose conclusion nonetheless happens to be true based on other evidence. It's pedantry or confusion at the level of logical syntax.

Formal Meta-Fallacies Example: Someone presents a logically valid deductive argument: "All cats are reptiles. Fluffy is a cat. Therefore, Fluffy is a reptile." A critic, missing the point about the false premise, attacks it by saying, "That's affirming the consequent!" This is a Formal Meta-Fallacy—they've incorrectly identified the formal structure. The argument is actually valid but unsound due to the false first premise.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026