Cognitive Move
Refine the signal
Replace or clean up a noisy, distorted, or proxy-corrupted measurement.
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Mental Model
Reflexivity
In Soros's account, participants' beliefs can influence actions that change the conditions those beliefs describe, creating feedback between perception and the situation
Cognitive Move
Reflow
Trace how something scarce (money, attention, information, work) actually moves through the system, so leaks, queues, and overloaded handoffs become measurable.
Cognitive Move
Reformat
Re-render the same information in a different representation family (table, diagram, equation, simulation) matched to the operation you actually need to perform.
Mental Model
Regenerative Agriculture Framework
Regenerative agriculture goes beyond sustainability (maintaining conditions) to actively restore degraded ecosystems through farming
Mental Model
Regime Change (When the Rules of the Game Shift)
The concept that systems periodically undergo fundamental shifts where the underlying rules, relationships, and dynamics change—not just the variables within the existing framework
Mental Model
Regression Fallacy
The error of attributing regression to the mean to some causal intervention rather than recognizing it as a statistical inevitability
Mental Model
Regression to the Mean
Regression to the mean occurs when observations selected for extreme values on one measure have less extreme expected values on a related, imperfectly correlated measure under appropriate conditions
Mental Model
Regression Toward the Mean in Social Systems
In social measurements, selection on an extreme observed score can be followed by a less extreme score because temporary influences and measurement noise need not repeat
Mental Model
Regret Aversion
The tendency to avoid actions that might lead to regret, even when those actions have higher expected value
Mental Model
Regret Minimization Framework
Jeff Bezos's decision tool for major life choices: project yourself to age 80, then ask 'will I regret not doing this?' Bezos used it to decide to leave his Wall Street career to start Amazon
Mental Model
Regret Minimization Framework Protocol (Bezos)
A single-question decision protocol designed for major life decisions, attributed to Jeff Bezos when deciding to leave a Wall Street career to start Amazon
Cognitive Move
Reground
Reconnect abstract words to observable examples, measurements, and actions, so people can actually tell what counts as an instance.
Cognitive Move
Regroup by response
Sort cases by how they react when you push on them, not by what they are. Run the same intervention across everything, then put whatever reacts alike into one pile, even if the items look unrelated on the surface.
Mental Model
Regularization (Cross-Validation)
A set of techniques in machine learning that prevent models from overfitting—memorizing noise in the training data rather than learning the underlying pattern
Mental Model
Regulatory Capture
Regulatory capture occurs when regulated interests redirect a public institution's decisions toward their own interests at the expense of its public mandate
Mental Model
Regulatory Capture Pattern (Extended Stigler)
George Stigler's theory that regulatory agencies, created to protect the public interest, are eventually captured by the industries they regulate and begin serving industry interests instead
Mental Model
Regulatory Sandbox Concept
A regulatory sandbox is a framework where regulators allow businesses to test innovative products or services in a controlled environment with relaxed regulatory requirements, under the regulator's supervision
Cognitive Move
Rehierarchize
Sort your ideas into their proper levels (goals above functions above mechanisms) so you stop comparing things that were never peers.
Cognitive Move
Reinforcing
Check whether each trip around the circuit makes the next trip bigger. Every link pushes the same direction, so the result compounds instead of settling. Unlike the self-correcting kind, nothing in the circuit pulls back toward a resting level.
Mental Model
Reinforcing Feedback Loop
A systems dynamics structure where the output of a process feeds back to AMPLIFY further change in the same direction—creating exponential growth or exponential decline
Mental Model
Relapse Prevention Model (Marlatt)
Marlatt's Relapse Prevention reframes relapse from unpredictable catastrophe to predictable process with identifiable warning signs
Cognitive Move
Relate
Define the relationship between you and the carrier, because keeping, sharing, and automating are different bonds.
Cognitive Move
Relation
Recast the thing as a link between parties rather than a property sitting inside anyone. What you were treating as a trait becomes a fit, a match, or a mismatch, so the fix moves to changing one side of the pairing or the pairing itself.