What is false binary?

False binary is a concept in personal epistemology: Dividing things into only two groups forces a false simplicity.

Example: Your team evaluates candidates as 'hire' or 'no hire.' One interviewer says no hire because the candidate lacked system design depth. Another says no hire because they seemed arrogant. A third says no hire because they want too much money. The binary output — no hire — hides three completely different signals. When the hiring manager reviews the pipeline, all they see is a row of rejections. They can't distinguish a compensation mismatch (easily fixable) from a skills gap (trainable) from a cultural concern (harder to change). The binary collapsed three dimensions of information into one bit.

This concept is part of Phase 12 (Classification and Typing) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for classification and typing.