The invisible dragon

If I can’t falsify it, how do I know it is true?

What’s the Difference Between an Invisible Dragon and no Dragon at all?

Chasing the Invisible Dragon: A Leadership Lesson in Critical Thinking

The Dragon in the Garage Story

Welcome to ‘Students of Leadership,’ today with a short essay inspired in the great Carl Sagan that illustrates the importance of being a skeptic and the need for evidence-based reasoning

In his book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,” Carl Sagan shared a thought experiment in the chapter “The Dragon in my Garage,” a great story with a powerful lesson. Imagine you visit a friend at their house and they loudly claim, “Come! there's a dragon in my garage!" You follow them inside with fear, confusion, excitement, curiosity and incredulity, but when the garage door opens, you see only empty space. Confused, you ask, "Where is the dragon?"

Your friend smiles and explains ‘the dragon is invisible.’

You think it may still be true, so you propose sprinkling flour on the floor to catch the footprints, that way you can see the dragon walking around the garage, but your friend now tells you “oh no! the dragon floats above the ground, you won’t be able to see any footprint.”

You take a moment to think what are the odds of an invisible floating dragon, but you give it another try and propose your friend to use an infrared sensor to detect the breath of fire coming out the dragon. No luck again, you seem not to understand the type of dragon we are dealing with here… your friend explains that this invisible floating dragon’s fire is heatless.

Confused but determined you make a final attempt and convince your friend you have the perfect solution, to spray-paint the invisible floating heatless dragon to make it visible, that should definitely work. Your friend looks at you as if you don’t really understand and explains that this very special dragon is non-corporeal, so pain won’t stick.

By now you have only one thought, you wonder: “What’s the difference between an invisible, floating, heatless, non-corporeal, non-interacting dragon and no dragon at all?”

The Power of Falsifiability

This story aims to illustrates the importance of the principle of falsifiability: any given claim must allow tests that could prove it false, or else how can we know it’s true? A dragon that leaves no trace is no different from an imaginary dragon.

In science, a hypothesis that can’t be tested isn’t useful. If we can’t design experiments to disprove an idea, we can’t have any real confidence that the idea can be true.

Why This Matters in Leadership?

The invisible dragon acts as a cautionary tale about decision-making and critical thinking. Have you ever asked yourself what are your own “invisible dragons?”

What are your unfounded assumptions, vague projections, or plans that rely on claims made by someone else that nobody has ever tested? What are those convictions on people you have that have not been put to the real test of character, stretch assignments or performance under pressure? Where is that project sold as a guaranteed success but with no real metrics to measure progress?

You owe it to yourself and those you lead to ask yourself: can this assumption be properly tested and potentially proven wrong? If not, you need to rethink its applicability? Great leaders seek evidence and encourage healthy skepticism, demand testability of claims. All assumptions, no matter how foundational, can be tested”

“What would it take to prove this idea false?”

Make every effort to avoid unfalsifiable beliefs, insisting on evidence, pressure thinking processes, challenge your own assumptions. Cultivate a culture of radical transparency and deep learning.

Save your teams from pursuing illusions.

The invisible dragon story pushes you to always shine a light into the dark garage, looking for footprints. If you don’t see them, you don’t buy that the dragon floats until someone can produce proof of it! A truth that survives good testing is the foundation of sound strategy.

Embracing falsifiability isn’t just about debunking invisible dragons, it’s about promoting sound decision-making.

P.S. Before I go, here you have “The Treat,” where I share some of the music that kept me company while writing … Enjoy as you bid farewell to this post

“Lead yourself, Learn to live. Lead others, Learn to Build.”

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