The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types and 2 molecules
Anomaly: a specific instance where reality contradicts an expectation generated by a mental schema, which becomes significant when it clusters with other similar instances, signaling that the underlying schema requires revision
Shared schema: an emergent cognitive structure that exists across people, embedded in their habits, language, tools, and coordination patterns, and which changes more slowly than individual schemas due to the need for synchronized updates across all members who rely on it
Schema rigidity: the systematic bias produced by maintaining outdated mental models that do not update in response to environmental change, resulting in increasingly suboptimal decisions that compound over time
Zero-base test: a diagnostic tool for detecting schema rigidity that determines whether you would adopt the same belief as a newcomer encountering the situation fresh, with no prior commitment
Schema evolution log: a written record that traces the exact moment when a major belief or model changed, the specific evidence that initiated the revision, the prior belief as it was originally held, and the new belief, maintained in real time before hindsight rewrites the narrative
Proactive schema evolution: the practice of regularly reviewing and refining mental models before they fail catastrophically, involving scheduled maintenance, stress testing, and automated monitoring to prevent costly reactive updates
Meta-schema: a schema about schemas, operating one level up from regular schemas to examine, evaluate, and improve the process by which schemas are formed, updated, and applied
Schema inventory: a systematic registry of an individual's most important schemas that govern decision-making, including each schema's statement, source, last tested date, confidence level, and domain of application, functioning as a living system rather than static list
Schema conflict: a situation where two schemas produce contradictory outputs for the same input due to structural incompatibility, requiring a meta-schema for resolution rather than automatic dissonance reduction.
Schema about change: an implicit theory of what causes things to shift, how long shifts take, what resistance means, and when a change has actually landed, which determines how you approach change and influences the method you choose for creating change
Systems model of change: a schema about change that reframes change as occurring within and through systems rather than to entities, where what changes is the system and entities are part of that system, and where change requires understanding feedback loops and leverage points
Risk schema: a constellation of assumptions about what can go wrong, how bad 'wrong' gets, whether recovery is possible, and whether potential gain justifies exposure, which filters every opportunity through a lens of potential loss
Meta-cognition: the cognitive process of observing, monitoring, evaluating, and regulating one's own mental processes and thinking, which operates through two distinct levels: an object level where cognitive processes occur and a meta level that monitors those processes through upward signals and regulates them through downward control
Bounded rationality: the concept that human decision-making is constrained by limited information, limited time, and limited cognitive resources, leading to satisficing rather than optimizing behavior, where the act of modeling one's own cognition competes for the same finite processing resources that are being observed
Links are first-class citizens: Links between ideas are not metadata about knowledge, but are themselves knowledge objects that deserve the same attention, craft, and intentionality as the notes themselves.
Typed links: Links between ideas that carry explicit relationship labels (such as causes, contradicts, extends, supports, exemplifies) that encode the nature and direction of the connection, making them computationally and cognitively more informative than untyped links.
Bidirectional awareness: the cognitive and system property where connections between knowledge elements are visible from both directions, enabling the system to surface emergent patterns and relationships that were not consciously planned, with each element knowing about all elements that reference it
Graph density: the measure of how richly interconnected a region of a knowledge graph is, calculated as the ratio of actual connections (edges) to the maximum possible connections between nodes, where high density indicates deep understanding and structural coherence
Orphan node: a note or data element in a knowledge graph that has zero incoming or outgoing links, making it structurally present but functionally absent from the network's connectivity and unable to contribute to graph traversal or insight generation.
Hub node: a concept or idea in a knowledge graph that has a disproportionately high number of connections (inbound and/or outbound links) relative to other nodes, serving as a core structural element that holds together clusters of related ideas and represents high-value, well-integrated concepts.
Bridge node: a concept that connects two otherwise separate clusters of knowledge in a knowledge graph, having structural correspondence between domains rather than mere metaphorical similarity, and generating predictions or insights in both directions
Knowledge graph: a structured network of interconnected ideas where each concept is a node and each relationship is an edge, organized through honest linking rather than imposed categorization
Structural hole: a gap between clusters in a knowledge graph that represents a blocked channel for insight, where the absence of connections between concept domains prevents access to non-redundant information and combinations that others cannot see
Accretion: the daily practice of adding nodes and edges to a knowledge graph that produces nonlinear growth through compound connections, where each new node can potentially link to every existing node and creates increasing value over time