The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types and 2 molecules
Stated values: the values you claim to prioritize or believe are important, which represent aspirations or beliefs about what matters rather than actual behavioral optimization patterns
Cognitive dissonance: the psychological discomfort experienced when there is inconsistency between one's beliefs and behavior, which triggers defensive mechanisms that reduce the discomfort without actually resolving the contradiction
Values clarification: a methodology that distinguishes genuine values from mere preferences, beliefs, or aspirations through seven criteria including choosing, prizing, and acting
Reflection-in-action: concurrent reflection that happens during an experience when something surprises you or disrupts your expectations, revealing values that operate automatically
Narrative identity: the internalized and evolving life story that each person constructs to make sense of their experience, which encodes values through specific narrative patterns and themes
Behavioral evidence: records of priorities such as calendar, bank statements, browser history, and time allocation that reveal consistent patterns of choice and resource allocation
Emotional evidence: emotional responses that contain information about what matters to you, with specific emotional signals indicating boundary violations, alignment, mismatch, and internal conflict
Counterfactual evidence: imagined futures that reveal values through emotional pull and resistance when considering trade-offs between different values
Peak experience: a moment of unusual aliveness, deep engagement, or profound satisfaction that reveals core values by stripping away daily noise and social performance, where the experience is self-validating and carries its own intrinsic value rather than being produced by external accomplishment
Resentment: a sustained, specific emotional response that functions as a diagnostic signal indicating a value violation, where the emotional system alerts the individual to a pattern violation that threatens their moral standing as a full agent, distinct from momentary frustration or explosive anger
Value provenance: the systematic examination and tracing of the origins of one's values to determine whether they were deliberately chosen or absorbed through socialization, cultural transmission, or personal experience
Inherited values: values that were absorbed from environmental sources before an individual had the cognitive capacity to evaluate them, operating as invisible defaults until consciously examined
Value change: the natural evolution of values over time as individuals gain experience, encounter new perspectives, and move through different life stages, occurring through automatic environmental adaptation and effortful reflective revision mechanisms
Core values: terminal values that define what a good life means to you, serving as ends in themselves rather than means to other outcomes
Means-ends inversion: the structural vulnerability where an instrumental value absorbs so much attention and identity that it functionally replaces the core value it was meant to serve
Terminal values: desirable end-states of existence that describe what you are ultimately living toward, constituting conditions that would constitute a life well-lived
Value pluralism: the philosophical position that great human values are genuinely plural, often incompatible, and sometimes incommensurable — meaning they cannot be measured on a single scale
Lexicographic ordering: a formal structure for ranking values where each value is strictly prioritized over all lower-ranked values, such that no amount of benefit from a lower-ranked value can justify sacrificing a higher-ranked value
Values hierarchy: a strict, written ordering of one's values that tells which value takes precedence when two values cannot both be fully satisfied simultaneously
Value conflict: the inevitable consequence of having a rich, multi-dimensional value system where genuine ends pull in opposite directions, not an error or failure to think clearly
Operative hierarchy: the actual ranking of values within an individual that is revealed through simulated trade-off scenarios under pressure, as opposed to the abstract hierarchy stated in verbal declarations
Sacred value: a value that possesses transcendental significance that precludes comparisons, trade-offs, or mingling with secular values, and is genuinely non-negotiable even under sufficient pressure
False consensus effect: the cognitive bias where individuals overestimate how many others share their choices, attitudes, and values, and perceive those who disagree as more extreme and revealing of character flaws, with the mechanism being anchoring on one's own values and insufficient adjustment
Perspective-taking: the cognitive skill of constructing a model of another person's viewpoint including the values that generate it, which is distinct from empathy (feeling what someone feels) and enables understanding of different value hierarchies without surrendering one's own values