Mental Model
Power Laws in Complex Systems
The mathematical pattern where a few items account for a disproportionate share of the total—and this distribution follows a specific mathematical function (power law) rather than a bell curve
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Mental Model
Power Mapping in Negotiation
Power in negotiation comes from multiple sources beyond formal authority: information (knowing what others don't), alternatives (having options if this deal fails), expertise (being the recognized authority), legitimacy…
Cognitive Move
Practice and valued quality of participation
Name the activity itself and the specific quality of doing it that carries the worth, so success is judged by how you show up rather than by outcomes, streaks, or how often you managed it.
Cognitive Move
Practice or participation
A destination defined by repeatedly enacting a valued practice, where the value lives in the doing, not a finish line.
Mental Model
Pragmatic Communication (Grice's Maxims)
Grice's cooperative principle and maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner describe expectations that help people interpret conversation
Mental Model
Pragmatism (William James)
James's pragmatic method clarifies claims through their consequences for possible experience
Mental Model
Pratityasamutpada (Dependent Co-Arising)
Pratityasamutpada is the Buddha's core philosophical insight: nothing exists independently; everything arises in dependence on conditions
Mental Model
Pre-Mortem Analysis
Gary Klein's technique of imagining that a project has already failed, then working backward to identify the most likely causes
Mental Model
Pre-Mortem Protocol (Klein)
A structured protocol developed by psychologist Gary Klein for stress-testing decisions before implementation
Mental Model
Pre-Suasion (Cialdini)
Pre-suasion is the practice of arranging for recipients to be receptive to your message before they encounter it
Mental Model
Precautionary Principle
The principle that when an action carries the potential for SEVERE, IRREVERSIBLE harm, the burden of proof falls on those proposing the action to demonstrate SAFETY—rather than on opponents to demonstrate danger
Mental Model
Precedent and Stare Decisis
Courts decide cases by looking at how similar cases were decided before—the doctrine of stare decisis ('to stand by things decided')
Cognitive Move
Precommit in the Calm Time
Choose your boundary, trigger, and escape clause before the hot state that will impair your judgment arrives.
Mental Model
Predatory Pricing
Predatory pricing describes a proposed strategy of sacrificing returns through low pricing to weaken competition and later recoup losses through market power
Cognitive Move
Predicted trajectory / return-path effect
Write down, before you act, the immediate effect, the path it takes over time, what happens once the consequence loops back to you, how long that round trip takes, and what doing nothing or the best rival explanation would produce instead.
Mental Model
Prediction
Prediction is a testable statement about an outcome, with a defined horizon and uncertainty
Cognitive Move
Prediction
Find out whether your explanation can call a future or unseen outcome before it happens.
Cognitive Move
Prediction & Evidence Ledger
Write down what you expect to happen, and when, before you look, then log what actually happened next to it, so you can tell whose explanation was right instead of arguing from memory.
Cognitive Move
Predictions
Write down, before anyone looks, the exact number each rival explanation expects on one shared measure. If two rivals expect the same result, the test cannot tell them apart, so keep rewriting until their forecasts diverge.
Cognitive Move
Predictions
Each rival on the list gets committed, before results arrive, to a specific number or outcome on the same measure everyone will look at. Vague expectations do not count, because vague ones survive any result.
Mental Model
Preference Aggregation
Preference aggregation combines individual preferences into a collective ranking or choice under an explicit rule
Mental Model
Preferential Attachment (Cumulative Advantage)
The mechanism by which 'the rich get richer' in networks: new nodes preferentially connect to already well-connected nodes, creating power law distributions where a few hubs dominate
Mental Model
Preferred Stock vs Common Stock
Common and preferred stock are equity classes whose rights depend on their terms
Mental Model
Premature Closure (Heuer)
The tendency to stop searching for answers once a satisfying explanation is found, even when further investigation would reveal better explanations or critical nuances