Where Logic Hides

Since the Unified Behavior Model went public (preprint 7/8/2025), the same critiques keep returning. Most aren’t objections to the model — they’re misconceptions about what a foundational framework is.

👋 Hey, Martin Grunburg — U at the end. Not the FDIC chair. Ha! 😄 Author of the Habit Factor® trilogy, creator of the Unified Behavior Model™ (UBM), and host of the Habits 2 Goals podcast.

"Narrative imagining — story — is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining."— Mark Turner, The Literary Mind

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Humans are NOT logic machines.

We are primarily STORY machines that happen to have the capacity for logic.

Mark Turner’s work makes this undeniable — and it’s precisely why the third book in The Habit Factor® trilogy was titled EVERYTHING is a Fcking Story.* (Pardon the French.)

Story dominates our behavior.

Logic rides shotgun — and sometimes it doesn’t even make it into the car.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: if stories are running the show, where is the logic hiding?

Welcome to the Behavior Echo-System audit.

Case 1 — The Greatest Mind of the 20th Century

Albert Einstein smoked. Heavily. Consistently. For decades.

Here was arguably the most logical human being alive — a man who rewrote the laws of physics — doing something every shred of available evidence condemned as lethal. Even by the standards of his era, the data pointed clearly toward early death and a compromised cardiovascular system.

His story? “It helps me relax. It helps me think.”

Not logic. Nothing logical about it.

Einstein: Story 1. Logic 0.

Case 2 — The Man Who Outsmarted the Seatbelt

I know an old man. Graduated high school at 16. Chemical engineering degree. Harvard MBA. Decades as a senior executive — entertainment, finance, international consulting. He even helped establish government infrastructure in Kazakhstan.

Far from stupid.

Eighty-six years old. Still drives — just to the store, maybe three miles. And he categorically refuses to wear his seatbelt.

In fact, so annoyed by the automated ding, ding, ding — he keeps the seatbelt permanently plugged in and simply sits on top of it.

The joke is, he’s the man who outsmarted the seatbelt. 😄

Never mind physics. Never mind statistics. Never mind that at 86, a fender-bender is a very different proposition than it was at 46.

His story? We can only guess — but it probably sounds something like: “It’s a nuisance. Takes longer to buckle and unbuckle than to drive. It’s just three miles.”

To him, the story is airtight. Internally consistent. Completely comfortable.

Where’s the logic — for one of the smartest men I’ve ever known?

Harvard MBA: Story 1. Logic 0.

Case 3 — Me: A Cat, a Golf Tee Time, and an Idiotic Move

My wife leaves town to...

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