Cognitive Move
Arms-Race Mirror
A hypothesis that each actor's protective escalation is functioning as the other actor's trigger.
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Cognitive Move
ARRIVE - the quality gate
A 6-letter check, Aligned, Reconciled, Reality-readable, Inside bounds, Viable, Evolvable, that decides whether the destination is good enough to act on.
Mental Model
Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem
Kenneth Arrow's mathematical proof that no voting system can simultaneously satisfy all fairness criteria for aggregating individual preferences into group decisions when there are three or more options
Mental Model
Asabiyyah (Social Cohesion - Ibn Khaldun)
Asabiyyah is Ibn Khaldun's foundational concept from the Muqaddimah (1377) describing the group solidarity, collective will, and social cohesion that enables a people to achieve political power and civilizational greatne…
Mental Model
Asch Conformity Experiment
Solomon Asch's 1951 study demonstrating that people will deny the evidence of their own eyes to conform with a group's incorrect answer
Cognitive Move
Ask the Missing Expert
Name the competence your system lacks and ask one scoped question of a qualified source.
Cognitive Move
Ask what must already be true
Instead of mapping steps toward the goal, you check the preconditions the goal quietly assumes are in place right now. List what has to hold for the target to be reachable at all, then test each one against reality. Failed preconditions kill the plan early.
Mental Model
Asking for Help Script (TASK Framework)
A four-step protocol for requesting help effectively, overcoming the common barriers of pride, fear of imposition, and vagueness that make most help requests fail
Mental Model
Asset Allocation Mental Models
Asset allocation—dividing capital across stocks, bonds, real estate, cash—determines roughly 90% of portfolio return variation (Brinson, Hood, Beebower)
Cognitive Move
Assign / Delegate
Another actor performs a bounded packet and returns the output to a named owner.
Mental Model
Association (Power of Context)
The psychological principle that the mind automatically links stimuli that occur together—creating associations that shape judgment, emotion, and behavior outside conscious awareness
Cognitive Move
Assumptions
Beliefs you treat as facts without ever checking them, which quietly narrow your options: what your body responds to, what your boss will accept, how long a thing takes. Write each as a testable claim, then probe the shakiest.
Cognitive Move
Assumptions and state
Write down the context the work carries: where things stand right now, what was already decided and why, which constraints are fixed, and what nobody knows yet. Anything living only in your head has to be said out loud.
Mental Model
Assumptive World Theory
Ronnie Janoff-Bulman's Assumptive World Theory proposes that humans operate on three fundamental assumptions: the world is benevolent, the world is meaningful and predictable, and I am worthy
Mental Model
Asymmetric Risk/Reward
Asymmetric risk/reward refers to unequal possible gains and losses
Mental Model
Asymmetric Warfare
Military conflict between parties with dramatically different resource levels—where the weaker party uses unconventional strategies to offset the stronger party's advantages
Mental Model
Asymmetric Warfare Thinking (The Weak Actor's Playbook)
Asymmetric warfare thinking is the strategic logic of how weaker actors defeat stronger ones by refusing to fight on the stronger actor's terms
Mental Model
Athletic Identity Management (When Who You Are Is What You Do)
Addresses psychological risks of deeply identifying with a performance role
Mental Model
Atomic Theory
Atomic theory describes matter in terms of atoms and their structure and interactions
Mental Model
Attachment Styles in Adult Relationships (Secure, Anxious, Avoidant, Disorganized)
Adult attachment concerns differences in expectations and behavior around closeness and availability, often measured along anxiety and avoidance dimensions
Mental Model
Attachment Theory (Bowlby/Ainsworth)
The developmental psychology framework showing that early relationships with caregivers create internal 'working models' of relationships that persist into adulthood—shaping how people approach intimacy, trust, conflict,…
Mental Model
Attachment Theory in Sexuality
Attachment theory, applied to sexuality, reveals how early attachment patterns shape adult sexual behavior, desire, and satisfaction
Mental Model
Attachment to Outcomes
The psychological tendency to fixate on desired results rather than the process that produces them—creating suffering when outcomes don't match expectations and paradoxically reducing the quality of action that would pro…