The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types and 2 molecules
During expertise development, explicitly document both what you now prioritize and what you have learned to ignore, as conscious articulation of ignored features is the operational test of signal efficiency.
When expert pattern recognition locks onto a familiar solution, force consideration of alternatives by asking 'I see X—but what if it is not X? What would I expect if it were Y?' before committing.
For decisions under genuine ambiguity, impose a mandatory 48-hour waiting period before acting unless you can specify concrete significant costs of delay.
Write explicit tripwire conditions specifying what observations would resolve ambiguity in each direction before entering any strategic waiting period.
Execute all identified cuts during the audit session itself rather than creating a deferral list, as audit outputs are decisions implemented immediately not intentions documented for later.
When using AI for signal detection, provide explicit goals and evaluation criteria first, then use AI to scale pattern recognition, because AI without human-defined goals produces generic output from noisy channels.
When angry, deliberately seek disconfirming evidence and independent risk assessments, as anger systematically inflates certainty, deflates risk perception, and increases risk-seeking behavior.
Deploy 5-minute cyclic sighing (prolonged exhalations at ~6 breaths per minute) before difficult meetings or after stressful news to reverse stress-induced perceptual narrowing.
When using AI during high stress, prompt with 'I am stressed and may be experiencing tunnel vision—what am I likely not seeing?' rather than 'prove my interpretation is right.'
When making frequency or probability estimates, pause and ask: 'Am I estimating actual frequency, or how easily I can picture this?' then look up the base rate before deciding.
Before any consequential decision, populate two mandatory fields: the recent event driving current feeling, and the base rate/historical trend across the full relevant time window.
When a vivid individual case makes you feel certain about probability, explicitly ask 'what is the actual frequency of this event in the relevant population?' before forming any judgment.
Frame pre-mortem prompts as 'It is [future date]. This has failed completely. Write why.' rather than 'What could go wrong?' to shift cognition from speculation to explanation.
When searching for disconfirming evidence, if your search could not have actually changed your mind, you performed a ritual not genuine disconfirmation—redesign the search until failure is possible.
Frame feedback requests as specific behavioral questions ('What do I consistently do that I probably don't realize?') rather than character evaluations to keep feedback at task level instead of identity level.
When new evidence arrives, classify it by diagnostic value before updating—ask whether you'd see this evidence regardless of belief truth versus only if belief were true/false.
After accumulating 15-20 judgments in the same domain, analyze whether errors cluster directionally (bias requiring correction factor) or scatter randomly (noise requiring aggregation).
Conduct a two-week bias journal recording significant judgments with confidence levels, then categorize errors by direction and type to build your personal bias profile.
For each identified bias in your profile, write a specific pre-correction question or procedure to execute before acting on judgments in that domain.
After identifying that you are systematically overconfident on timelines by X%, multiply your initial timeline estimates by (1 + X/100) before stating them publicly.
After four weeks of belief tracking, examine whether beliefs barely moved despite evidence (conservatism) or swung dramatically on single data points (base rate neglect) to identify domain-specific updating patterns.
Before interpreting any piece of information—a message, a metric, a statement, a data point—run a five-question context scan: What environment am I in? What role am I occupying? What just happened that might color my perception? What are the goals (mine and others')? What assumptions am I importing from a different context?
When switching between cognitive contexts, implement a three-step loading protocol: (1) close the current context by writing a one-sentence summary and noting open loops (30 seconds), (2) create a transition gap of deliberate non-engagement (60 seconds), (3) load the new context by reviewing relevant notes and orienting before producing (60 seconds).
Record decision context at the moment of commitment using five elements: (1) decision statement, (2) forces/constraints/emotions active at choice point, (3) expected consequences with timeline, (4) confidence level 1-10, (5) review trigger date—before hindsight bias can rewrite your reasoning.