Concepts
The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types
Structure long documents in three disclosure layers
When documenting information longer than one page, structure it in three disclosure layers: single-sentence summary (Layer 1), paragraph-per-section abstracts (Layer 2), and full detail (Layer 3), with each layer independently meaningful.
When content appears in 3+ contexts, extract a single…
When a contained item appears in three or more contexts requiring synchronization, extract it into a referenced shared source with a single canonical version rather than maintaining multiple copies.
Put critical instructions in the first 20% of system…
Position your system prompt's most important instructions in the first 20% of tokens, because transformer attention mechanisms allocate disproportionate processing to early sequence positions through positional encoding and causal masking.
Defensiveness about testing a schema IS the signal…
When a schema triggers defensiveness at the suggestion of testing it, treat that emotional response as a diagnostic signal of high psychological investment requiring especially rigorous validation.
Convert 'I am X' identity claims into 'In situation Y, I…
Rewrite personal identity schemas as behavioral predictions with specified conditions and thresholds to convert unfalsifiable identity claims into testable hypotheses.
Schema revisions must generate new predictions, not just…
When adjusting a schema after disconfirming evidence, require the adjustment to generate new testable predictions rather than merely explaining away the original failure.
Test schemas at the smallest possible scale first…
Before acting on a schema in any consequential way, test it through concrete action at the smallest possible scale first and observe actual results against pre-stated predictions.
Edge cases that break your schema reveal boundary…
When an edge case breaks your schema, extract the implicit boundary condition that the edge case revealed rather than dismissing the edge case as an irrelevant exception.
Ask 'tell me where this breaks' not 'do you agree' — get…
Before explaining your schema to another person, frame your request as 'tell me where this breaks' rather than 'do you agree' to shift the conversation from validation theater to genuine testing.
Test each component of a compound schema independently…
Validate each atomic component of a compound schema independently before trusting the complete structure, because compound failures provide no diagnostic information about which component broke.
Check if indirect indicators could agree for reasons other…
When using indirect evidence, assess whether indicators are genuinely independent by checking if they could agree for reasons other than the schema being true—if all evidence shares a common causal source, it counts as single evidence despite multiple data points.
Analyze validation records as a set — recurring failure…
After accumulating multiple validation records, analyze them as a set to identify recurring patterns in how your schemas fail—same blind spot, same overconfidence direction, same boundary condition—that no single test reveals.
Add boundary clauses to validated schemas
Reformulate validated schemas with explicit boundary clauses that specify the conditions under which they were tested and the conditions under which they remain untested.
Match review frequency to volatility
Schedule schema reviews at cadences matched to environmental volatility: weekly/biweekly for high-change contexts, monthly/quarterly for stable contexts, plus triggered reviews when surprises occur.
Surprise = automatic schema review — do not wait…
Treat surprising outcomes as automatic triggers for schema review rather than waiting for scheduled validation cycles, as surprise signals that at least one schema in your stack has drifted from reality.
Include external ratings alongside self-assessment…
When validating schemas about personal capability or performance, include external observer ratings alongside self-assessment to detect systematic overconfidence blind spots that introspection cannot reveal.
Pre-mortem your critical schemas
Run a pre-mortem on each critical schema by specifying what the early warning signs would look like if that model is becoming obsolete, then check whether you have already seen some of those signs.
Defuse identity from belief
Before attempting to update a deeply-held schema, explicitly restate it as 'I hold the belief that [X]. This belief is a model I use. It is not who I am.' to create cognitive distance between identity and the belief.
After updating a belief, find one decision the new model…
After updating a belief, identify one downstream decision where the revised model produces a different recommendation than the old one to ensure the update becomes operational rather than merely verbal.
Map all downstream dependencies before updating a schema…
When updating a schema, map all downstream dependencies (habits, commitments, tools, relationships, routines) before implementation and migrate high-friction dependencies first.
Before finalizing a schema update, verify the new version…
Before finalizing any schema update, list five situations where the old schema produced accurate results and verify the new schema handles all five to ensure backwards compatibility.
Sit with cognitive dissonance for 60 seconds before…
Set a tolerance window of at least sixty seconds to sit with cognitive dissonance before attempting resolution, as premature resolution systematically favors existing schemas over new evidence.
Pre-commit to prediction failure thresholds (X out of Y)…
Set prediction failure thresholds as numeric ratios (X failures out of Y recent predictions) for each schema before observing prediction outcomes to trigger review when the threshold is crossed.
For each schema, list its key assumptions…
Define environmental change triggers by listing key assumptions underlying each schema and specifying observable indicators that each assumption no longer holds.