Mental Model
Simple Physiological Reward-Seeking
Reward-related learning and motivation can make immediate consequences strongly influence behavior
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Cognitive Move
Simplify
When a part of your setup costs more upkeep than it gives back, delete it instead of trying to fix it.
Mental Model
Simpson’s Paradox
Simpson's paradox is a reversal or disappearance of an association when groups are combined, often because the compared alternatives have different mixtures of subgroups with different outcome rates
Cognitive Move
Simulate / Test
Explore scenarios and prototypes before committing, so reality's surprises show up cheaply first.
Mental Model
Simulated Annealing
An optimization algorithm inspired by metallurgical annealing—heating metal then slowly cooling it to reduce defects
Mental Model
Simulation
Simulation executes a model under specified rules and inputs to explore behavior or hypothetical outcomes
Cognitive Move
Simulation
Turn the information into something you can run forward with changeable inputs, so you watch consequences play out over time instead of reading them. Use it when the question is "what happens if" and how sensitive the answer is to your assumptions.
Cognitive Move
Simulation
Play the situation forward over time, many runs, with the uncertain quantities varying. Unlike a static calculator it shows how outcomes drift, compound, or blow up across scenarios, and which single assumption the answer is most sensitive to. Watch out: unknown mechanisms hiding as tidy parameters.
Cognitive Move
Simulation
Runs a model forward from parameters you set, so the consequence of a setting shows up instead of being argued about.
Mental Model
Simultaneous Invention (Multiple Discovery)
The historical pattern where the same invention or discovery is made independently by multiple people at roughly the same time: calculus (Newton and Leibniz), evolution (Darwin and Wallace), telephone (Bell and Gray, sam…
Mental Model
Single Metric Obsession (Personal Goodhart's Law)
When a person reduces their life's success to a single measure—net worth, body weight, follower count, GPA, publication count—and optimizes ruthlessly for it at the expense of everything unmeasured
Cognitive Move
single panel with a caption
One frame, one drawing, one line of type under it. The frame holds the situation and the caption delivers the verdict, and neither half works alone. The economy is brutal, because whatever is inside the panel is the entire argument, so the exaggeration has to read at the size of a phone screen. Reach for this shape when the judgment is a single sentence you already know how to say.
Mental Model
Single Point of Failure (SPOF Pattern)
A component whose failure causes the entire system to fail, creating catastrophic vulnerability disguised as efficient design
Mental Model
Single Source of Truth Principle
The data architecture principle that every piece of critical information should have exactly one authoritative source, with all other references pointing back to it
Cognitive Move
Single variables to interactions
Stop scoring one factor at a time and ask which factors only matter in combination. Some causes do nothing alone and everything together, so a description that tracks each separately will keep missing the pattern that actually predicts the outcome.
Cognitive Move
Situated
The physical environment itself, through layout, cues, defaults, and triggers, can carry parts of your cognition.
Mental Model
Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a structured process-improvement approach commonly using Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control
Cognitive Move
Skill
Of the six things you can invest in, this one lives in you: a capability you can demonstrate. Ask which competence, if you had it, would make you a plausible candidate for work that currently will not even interview you.
Mental Model
Skill and Luck
Skill-and-luck models examine how persistent capability and variable circumstances contribute to outcomes
Mental Model
Skill Audit and Gap Analysis Protocol
A systematic self-assessment protocol for identifying your current skills, mapping them against your career goals, and prioritizing skill development investments
Mental Model
Skill Decomposition for Teaching (Breaking Complex Skills into Learnable Parts)
The analytical process of breaking complex skills into component sub-skills, sequencing for instruction, and designing isolated practice tasks
Mental Model
Skill Stacking (Adams)
Scott Adams proposes that you don't need to be world-class at any single skill—instead, combine two or three 'pretty good' skills that rarely overlap
Mental Model
Skin in the Game
Taleb's principle that decision-makers should bear the consequences of their decisions—both upside and downside
Cognitive Move
Slack, Safety, and Reversibility
Build in margin, staged commitment, and rollback so a failed assumption doesn't sink the plan.