What is model updating?

Model updating is a concept in personal epistemology: Surprise indicates a gap between your model and reality — always worth noting.

Example: You walk into a one-on-one expecting your usually disengaged report to ask about deadlines. Instead, she pitches a restructured workflow that solves a problem you hadn't even named yet. Your stomach does a small flip — that's surprise. If you don't write it down, you'll remember she 'had a good idea' but lose the specific gap it revealed: your model of her capabilities was wrong, and your model of the problem space was incomplete. Both of those gaps are more valuable than the idea itself.

This concept is part of Phase 3 (Capture Systems) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for capture systems.