Mental Model
Place-Based Knowledge (Land as Teacher)
Across Indigenous traditions -- Australian Aboriginal, First Nations, Maori, Andean -- knowledge is inseparable from place
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Mental Model
Placebo Effect as Expectation Model
Placebo effects are changes attributable to treatment context, expectations, learning, or related processes rather than a specific active component
Mental Model
Planning Fallacy
Kahneman and Tversky's finding that people systematically underestimate the time, cost, and risk of future actions while overestimating their benefits—even when they have direct experience with similar past projects that…
Mental Model
Planning Fallacy (Extended)
The extended model adds to Kahneman's planning fallacy by incorporating Flyvbjerg's finding that STRATEGIC MISREPRESENTATION (deliberate lying about project prospects) operates alongside genuine cognitive bias—and in man…
Mental Model
Planning Fallacy Pattern (Extended Buehler)
Roger Buehler's extended research on the planning fallacy shows it's not just optimism about time—it's a systematic failure to use base rates for comparable past projects, combined with a focus on the specifics of the cu…
Mental Model
Platform
A business model that creates value by facilitating exchange between two or more interdependent groups—producers and consumers—rather than by producing goods or services directly
Mental Model
Platform Cooperativism
Platform cooperativism (Scholz, Schneider) proposes digital platforms owned democratically by users and workers rather than venture capital
Mental Model
Platform Lock-in Assessment
Platform lock-in occurs when switching costs become prohibitive, giving vendors disproportionate power
Mental Model
Plausible
Plausibility means that a claim or explanation appears reasonable given current understanding
Mental Model
Play as Innovation Engine
Play is not a break from productive thinking—it is the primary mechanism through which novel combinations emerge
Mental Model
Play Taxonomy (Stuart Brown): Eight Play Personalities
Brown's original eight play personalities are Joker, Kinesthete, Explorer, Competitor, Director, Collector, Artist/Creator, and Storyteller
Mental Model
Playful Experimentation Mindset
A playful experimentation mindset treats real-world challenges as games to be explored rather than problems to be endured
Mental Model
Plea Bargaining Game Theory
Over 95% of criminal cases in the United States are resolved through plea bargains, not trials
Mental Model
Plot
In storytelling, plot is the causal sequence of events: not just 'what happens' but WHY things happen—the chain of cause and effect that gives events meaning and momentum
Mental Model
Pluralistic Ignorance
The social phenomenon where everyone privately disagrees with a norm but publicly complies because they assume everyone else genuinely supports it—creating a false consensus that nobody actually holds
Mental Model
Plus One Minus Two Rule
A subtraction heuristic that prompts review of existing commitments before adding another, with the ratio treated flexibly.
Cognitive Move
Point or setpoint
A particular desired value held with a small explicit tolerance rather than false exactness.
Mental Model
Poison Pill
A corporate poison pill commonly means a shareholder rights plan designed to deter an acquisition without board agreement
Mental Model
Poka-Yoke (Mistake-Proofing)
Poka-yoke, associated with Shigeo Shingo's manufacturing work, designs a specific error out of a process or makes it detectable before it propagates
Mental Model
Polarity
A framework associated with Barry Johnson for examining recurring tensions between interdependent benefits and managing the costs of neglecting or overusing either side.
Cognitive Move
Policy Boomerang
Trace how a reasonable rule changes behavior in ways that later defeat the rule.
Cognitive Move
Policy Boomerang
A hypothesis that a corrective policy is changing behavior in ways that later defeat the correction.
Mental Model
Political Opportunity Structure
Political opportunity structure (POS) theory explains why movements emerge when they do—not when grievances intensify but when political openings appear
Mental Model
Polyvagal Theory (Porges) — Health Applications
Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory identifies three hierarchical states of the autonomic nervous system: ventral vagal (social engagement, safety, connection—rest/digest/connect), sympathetic activation (fight-or-flight mo…