You may think your idea is amazing and world-changing—and frankly, I believe you. But unless and until it survives first contact with a skeptical (or even just vigilant) mind, it’s probably not going to change the world the way you want it to.
In my last post, I talked about why ideas need standing: credibility that belongs to the idea itself, not just to you as the source. Standing is what gives your idea the right to be heard in the first place.
But standing doesn’t just appear—and it can be destroyed by predictable reasons, the “Three I’s.”
Three Entirely Avoidable Errors
Irrelevance. People perceive the idea as having nothing to do with who they are, what they care about, or what they’re trying to achieve. This is both super common and super easy to fix. At the risk of being obvious: Don’t anchor your idea in a problem somebody doesn’t know they have. Your job is to tie it to something they’re already actively and knowingly pursuing. IF you want this outcome, THEN here’s the idea. Relevance has to be established first, or nothing else lands.
Incomprehensibility. People don’t really perceive your idea at all…because they don’t understand it. Cause #1: You’re using words or concepts they’ve never heard before. (And contrary to popular belief, unfamiliar language doesn’t create curiosity—it repels it.) Cause #2: Your idea is understandable, but incompatible with what they already believe to be true or right or good, and thus inconceivable that it could or would work. (And directly challenging someone’s beliefs is usually not a great way to get your idea heard. Working with what someone already believes is much more likely to keep them listening.)
Indefensibility. This one’s the most subtle. It sounds like: “I hear you. I understand what you’re saying. I even care about some part of it. But what you’re claiming—what this idea will get me, or what it actually does — just doesn’t track. It doesn’t seem like a likely or probable solution based on what I know right now.” This is where overclaiming kills you. There needs to be a strong likelihood, from a skeptic’s point of view, that your idea could actually deliver on the outcome you say it will.
All three of these errors can be identified very early in your idea’s life. The problem is when they’re identified first by your audience, rather than by you.
Three Symptoms, One Solution
Here’s what I’ve noticed: irrelevance, incomprehensibility, and indefensibility aren’t actually separate problems. They’re all signs that your idea lacks one BIG thing:
Coherence.
Now, coherence here has two distinct meanings. Both matter to spotting and solving for the “three I” errors.
The first is coherence TO. This is the comprehensibility dimension: your idea is intelligible enough to be processed in the first place. It has all the parts (like both the “if” and the “then”—the approach AND the outcome it delivers) to be understood correctly and well. People can understand it. They can follow it. It uses words, concepts, beliefs, and principles they already already agree are true.
The second is coherence WITH: coherent with what someone believes is likely, coherent with what they believe is true, coherent with what they already care about. This is where all three I’s really start to have an important relationship with one another.
Irrelevance is a coherence-with problem (it doesn’t cohere with what they want).
Incomprehensibility can be a coherence-to problem (they can’t follow it) or a coherence-with problem (it conflicts with what they believe).
Indefensibility is always a coherence-with problem (it doesn’t cohere with what they think is possible).
Put it all together, and it comes down to this: Idea coherence is the key to idea credibility.
How to Check for It
Run your idea through each of the Three I’s. Not to grade yourself, but to catch what your audience’s brain will catch before they do.
For irrelevance: Is the relevance to this specific person established quickly and clearly, right up front? Not “this is a problem in the world” — but “IF you want this outcome, THEN here’s the idea.” If you can’t finish that sentence cleanly, you haven’t found the relevance yet.
For incomprehensibility: Two checks. First, are you using terms or phrases that someone would have to already be inside your world to understand? If yes, swap them for the concept underneath, explained in language they already have. Second, does your idea require someone to stop believing something they currently believe is true? If yes, dig deeper until you find common ground. Find the belief you share, and start there.
For indefensibility: Are you overclaiming? The fastest, strongest way to defend an idea—without needing data, credentials, or case studies—is to support it with simple principles the people you’re talking to already agree are true from their own experience. Those shared principles are what make an idea feel like it could or would work, intuitively, before you’ve proven it works empirically.
Checking for coherence means checking to make sure your idea is understandable enough, agreeable enough, and urgent enough for someone to pay attention, align, and ultimately, act.
Your job is to convey that coherence, so that your idea gets the standing—and the path to impact—it deserves.
Until next time,
Tamsen
Go Deeper
Each of the Three I’s has a body of research behind it. A few threads worth following:
On why your audience is already running an evaluation before you finish your sentence — Sperber, Mercier, and colleagues identified the cognitive machinery behind this. Humans don’t default to trust or skepticism — they calibrate incoming information in real time against what they already know and believe. They called it epistemic vigilance. An idea with standing is one that passes that calibration.
On why relevance isn’t optional — it’s logical — The philosopher Ramsey showed that when an IF doesn’t apply to someone — when they don’t see themselves in the antecedent — their degree of belief in the whole conditional isn’t low. It’s void. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on the logic of conditionals covers the Ramsey test clearly; Sloman’s work on causal conditionals shows how this plays out in the way people evaluate real cause-and-effect claims.
On why working with existing beliefs is faster than fighting them — when you explain an idea using concepts and language your audience already has, it literally feels more true to them. Not because you’ve tricked them — because processing fluency is a real signal of coherence. Reber and Schwarz’s foundational study on processing fluency and judgments of truth is where this idea is grounded.
