Mental Model
Complex Adaptive Systems
Systems composed of many interacting agents that adapt their behavior based on their interactions and environment
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Mental Model
Complexity Catastrophe (Kauffman)
Stuart Kauffman's concept from evolutionary biology applied to organizational and technical systems: beyond a critical threshold of interconnection and interdependency, adding more components or connections decreases rat…
Mental Model
Complicated vs. Normal Grief Distinction
Most grief—even intense, prolonged grief—is normal and resolves without clinical intervention
Cognitive Move
Components
One level below mechanisms: the physical or procedural parts a mechanism is assembled from. Ask what pieces have to exist for the mechanism to run at all. Pieces are things you buy, install, or schedule, not outcomes you want.
Cognitive Move
Composable syntax
Build the shorthand so its pieces snap together by rule. Define a small set of symbols and modifiers, then let combinations carry meaning you never defined separately, so a new case reuses old parts instead of needing a new symbol.
Mental Model
Compound Interest as Life Principle
Compound interest—earning returns on previous returns—extends far beyond finance
Mental Model
Compounding
Compounding applies each period's proportional change to the accumulated base
Mental Model
Compressed Morbidity
James Fries' compressed morbidity hypothesis (1980) proposes that the ideal aging trajectory compresses illness and disability into the shortest possible period before death, rather than extending the total lifespan
Cognitive Move
Computation
Computation carries exact calculation, search, simulation, and monitoring at speed and scale no human matches.
Mental Model
Computational Kindness
The design principle of reducing the cognitive burden on others in your communications and interfaces—making it easy for people to respond, decide, and act by doing the computational work for them
Cognitive Move
Compute / Compare
Let a tool calculate, sort, reconcile, or compare using explicit inputs and criteria.
Cognitive Move
Concentrated burdens
Ask where the costs land. Benefits often spread thinly across everyone while the price is paid repeatedly by one small, identifiable group. Averaging divides that concentrated cost across the whole population and makes it vanish.
Mental Model
Concentration vs. Mindfulness Distinction
Though often conflated, concentration (samadhi) and mindfulness (sati) are distinct attentional skills that serve different functions and require different training
Cognitive Move
concept map
The handmade version. You draw the boxes and invent the linking phrases as you go, which is why it works while you are still learning something: the phrase you cannot write is the part you do not understand yet. Loose in shape, often nearly a tree, and best kept small enough that every sentence on it still gets read out loud.
Mental Model
Concreteness Trap (Too Low-Level Thinking)
The opposite failure of the abstraction trap: making decisions at too concrete a level, where focus on specific details prevents seeing the larger pattern, strategic context, or systemic implications
Cognitive Move
Concretization
Keeps the quantity exactly and changes its clothing, so a number you can only say becomes a thing you can picture.
Cognitive Move
Conditional policy
A mapping from observable states to different actions or target levels instead of one fixed reference for all conditions.
Mental Model
Confidence determines Speed vs. Quality
A product-development heuristic that relates investment in speed and quality to evidence about both the importance of a problem and the suitability of a solution
Mental Model
Confidence Interval
A confidence interval is produced by a procedure with a specified repeated-sampling coverage rate under its assumptions
Mental Model
Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs)
Confidence-Building Measures are incremental, often reciprocal steps that adversaries take to reduce the risk of misunderstanding, miscalculation, or surprise attack
Mental Model
Configuration Management
Configuration management (CM) is the discipline of tracking and controlling the exact state of a system — knowing precisely what components are installed, in what versions, with what settings, at any point in time
Mental Model
Conflict Avoidance Death Spiral
The paradoxical pattern where avoiding conflict to preserve harmony actually destroys the relationship
Mental Model
Conflict Avoidance Trap
The Conflict Avoidance Trap describes the paradox where avoiding small, manageable conflicts leads to larger, unmanageable ones
Mental Model
Conflict Engagement Rules Protocol
A pre-agreed set of rules for how to fight fairly, established BEFORE conflict arises