Mental Model
Privacy as Social Infrastructure
Privacy is not merely individual preference but social infrastructure enabling trust, experimentation, dissent, and identity development
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Cognitive Move
Privacy or security spill
You gave a person, app, or AI more data, access, storage time, or audience than the job actually needed, so harm can happen even when everything works correctly.
Mental Model
Privacy Rights Framework
Privacy is not a single right but a bundle of related interests: informational privacy (controlling what others know about you), decisional privacy (freedom to make personal choices without interference), spatial privacy…
Mental Model
Pro-Con List
The simplest decision framework: explicitly listing arguments for and against a course of action
Mental Model
Probabilistic Thinking
Probabilistic thinking expresses uncertainty through degrees of confidence about defined outcomes and updates those beliefs using evidence
Mental Model
Probabilities and Possible Outcomes
Thinking in probability distributions rather than point predictions—mapping the full range of possible outcomes and their likelihoods rather than focusing on the single most likely outcome
Mental Model
Probability The Basics
Probability provides coherent rules for uncertainty over defined events
Cognitive Move
Probe
The specific observation you commit to making before you look: what gets measured, on whom, over what window, by what method. It has to be able to tell your claim apart from the rival, not merely confirm the claim.
Mental Model
Problem Solving and Innovation
Problem solving and innovation can be analyzed as searches over possible actions, designs, or representations
Mental Model
Problem-Solution Firewall
The analytical discipline of keeping PROBLEM DEFINITION separate from SOLUTION GENERATION—ensuring that the problem is thoroughly understood and correctly framed before any solutions are proposed
Cognitive Move
Procedure for choosing within the region
Once several options clear every bound, you still need a rule for picking one. Decide that rule in advance: first qualifier wins, a rotating chooser, a vote, or one person decides. Otherwise qualifying options reopen the whole argument.
Cognitive Move
Process
Recast the thing as an activity that runs over time and can be started, repeated, tuned, or stopped. You stop asking what it is and start asking what steps produce it, how often you run them, and what improves each cycle.
Cognitive Move
Process and branching
Draws steps as boxes and conditions as branches, so you can see where a decision sits and where a path loops back.
Cognitive Move
Process objective
Grade the work on running a routine, not on what the routine produces. Choose it when the actions sit fully inside your control but results arrive slowly, noisily, or through other people, so scoring outcomes teaches you nothing.
Mental Model
Process vs Outcome Thinking
The discipline of evaluating decisions by the quality of the decision process rather than the outcome
Mental Model
Process vs. Content Distinction in Therapy
In therapy, 'content' is WHAT the client is talking about (their boss, their marriage, their childhood), while 'process' is HOW the conversation is happening (the emotional tone, the relational dynamics, what's being avo…
Mental Model
Procrastination (Akrasia)
The ancient Greek concept of akrasia—acting against your own better judgment—applied to the modern epidemic of delay
Cognitive Move
Producer
Ask what this entity actually makes that others downstream consume. Name the output, not the activity. If the entity vanished tomorrow, which specific artifact or supply stops arriving, and who is left waiting for it?
Cognitive Move
Product
Name the finished thing itself, not the activity that makes it. Describe the artifact or end state precisely enough that someone could hold it up: what form it takes, what it contains, and where it ends up.
Mental Model
Product-Market Fit
Product–market fit describes a product serving meaningful demand in a particular market
Mental Model
Productive Struggle Zone (Calibrating Difficulty for Growth)
The narrow band where challenge drives growth without overwhelming
Mental Model
Professional Development Plan Template Protocol
A protocol for creating a structured professional development plan that balances formal learning, experiential learning, and relationship-based learning — following the 70-20-10 model
Mental Model
Professional Ethics Boundaries
Professional ethics boundaries define the limits of acceptable behavior within a professional role, going beyond personal morality to include role-specific obligations: confidentiality (lawyers and therapists can't discl…
Mental Model
Professional Identity Construction
Your professional identity is constructed through narration, performance, and social validation—not discovered