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People, books, and breakthrough ideas—connected to the mental models and moves you can use.

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Cognitive Move

Re Enter

Come back to the task at the smallest reversible dose: restate the goal, set a tiny scope, run one move, notice results separately from comfort, tune, and keep an exit.

Mental Model

Reactive Devaluation

The automatic tendency to devalue a proposal, idea, or concession simply because it comes from an adversary or perceived opponent

Mental Model

Reading Regression Output

Read regression output by connecting each coefficient to the model's units and specification, interpreting its uncertainty, and checking diagnostics and study design

Cognitive Move

Reality-readable

Ask whether progress will actually show up in observable life. You need four kinds of signal, not one number: a lagging result, an early advance, a counter-signal that catches damage, and a raw reality check. Then audit how each could be gamed.

Cognitive Move

Rearrange / Provision

Change layout, proximity, and prepared resources before demanding more willpower.

Cognitive Move

Rearrange Before Resolve

Change the layout and availability of things before demanding more motivation from yourself or others.

Mental Model

Reason-Respecting Tendency

People are much more likely to comply with requests when given a reason, even if the reason is trivial or circular

Mental Model

Reasonable Person Standard

Legal systems judge behavior not by what a specific individual thought was appropriate, but by what a hypothetical 'reasonable person' would have done under the same circumstances

Cognitive Move

Rebasis

Change the coordinate system or denominator (per-capita, log scale, indexed to baseline) so the real pattern stops hiding behind raw numbers.

Cognitive Move

Recausalize

Replace 'these things go together' or 'this person is to blame' with a testable mechanism of what would change what.

Mental Model

Reciprocal Altruism

Reciprocal altruism is an evolutionary explanation for some helping behavior in which costs can be offset by benefits associated with later interactions

Mental Model

Reciprocation Tendency

The deep human drive to repay in kind what another has provided—gifts, favors, concessions, and even harm

Mental Model

Reciprocity

The deep social norm and psychological tendency to RETURN what we receive—favors for favors, concessions for concessions, gifts for gifts, hostility for hostility

Mental Model

Reciprocity Balance in Friendship

Healthy adult friendships maintain a rough balance of reciprocity over time — not transactional tit-for-tat but a general sense that both parties invest, initiate, and support at comparable levels

Mental Model

Reciprocity in Indigenous Economics (Gift Economy)

Indigenous economic systems across the Americas, Pacific Islands, and Africa operated on principles of generalized reciprocity -- the obligation to give, receive, and reciprocate -- rather than market exchange based on p…

Mental Model

Reciprocity Principle

Reciprocity is a tendency to respond to help, gifts, or concessions with something in return

Mental Model

Recognition Heuristic

Gigerenzer's finding that when choosing between two options—one recognized and one not—people (and organisms) infer that the recognized option scores higher on the criterion of interest

Mental Model

Recombination

Recombination models explore how new candidates can arise from arrangements of existing ideas or components

Cognitive Move

Recompare

Change the baseline or comparison class behind a judgment, because every evaluation secretly depends on what it is being compared to.

Cognitive Move

Reconciled

Names the people affected and the values pulling against each other, then asks whether a stated rule decides the tie, who holds that authority, and whether the clashes you cannot settle get raised out loud instead of buried in a blended compromise.