Format Shapes Cognition
The tool you use to present information determines what information survives and how it’s weighted.
PowerPoint’s slide-by-slide structure fragments continuous reasoning into discrete chunks. Its hierarchical bullet format privileges headlines over qualifications. Its low resolution demands abbreviation, which breeds ambiguity. These aren’t bugs, they’re the format working as designed for its intended purpose (pitching). The problem is using pitch tools for analytical work.
This isn’t limited to PowerPoint. Every presentation format has cognitive affordances and constraints:
- Dashboards emphasize current state over trends
- Chat interfaces privilege recency over completeness
- Bullet points imply equivalence between items
- Summaries lose minority viewpoints
- Visualizations hide the data they don’t show
The format shapes what questions get asked, what evidence gets considered, and what conclusions feel justified. Choose formats deliberately.
Related: 02-atom—hierarchical-bullets-bury-uncertainty, 07-molecule—ui-as-ultimate-guardrail, 05-atom—uniform-confidence-problem