Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 6402 answers
Small self-contained pieces can be assembled into new structures that monoliths cannot. Atomicity is what makes recombination possible — and recombination is how almost all innovation actually works.
Small self-contained pieces can be assembled into new structures that monoliths cannot. Atomicity is what makes recombination possible — and recombination is how almost all innovation actually works.
When you resist writing something down, examine what you are avoiding. The resistance itself is data about what matters most.
Update the strength of your beliefs proportionally to the strength of new evidence.
Your fully integrated collection of schemas is your functional worldview.
Resistance to certain feedback signals it touches an important blind spot.
Reviewing what happened after completing a task surfaces errors for future correction.
An efficient agent achieves results with minimal energy expenditure — cognitive, emotional, or physical.
An efficient agent achieves results with minimal energy expenditure — cognitive, emotional, or physical.
Sometimes you should improve an existing agent; sometimes you should replace it entirely.
Define clear criteria for when an agent should be retired rather than maintained. Without explicit retirement criteria set in advance, you will hold onto agents long past the point where they serve you — because the sunk cost of building them, the identity you attached to them, and the absence of.
The forgetting curve describes how memory decays exponentially — you lose most of a new thought within minutes unless you capture it externally.
Your most novel thinking arrives as fleeting signals. Without a capture practice, you are systematically destroying your own cognitive raw material.
Not all thoughts decay at the same rate. A fleeting architectural insight has minutes before it degrades beyond recovery. A stable reference fact has weeks. Treating every thought with the same urgency — or the same patience — guarantees you lose the wrong ones.
For most decisions good enough is better than perfect because the search cost exceeds the improvement.
Your emotions create self-reinforcing cycles — anxiety begets more anxiety.
Ordered series are built by linking atoms together not by writing one long document.
Your emotions are data, not noise. Recording them creates the only dataset that reveals what your conscious reasoning consistently misses.
Temporarily releasing the need for certainty improves the quality of your observations.
Temporarily releasing the need for certainty improves the quality of your observations.
Strong feelings about an observation usually mean it touches something important.
True humility is not thinking less of yourself but having an accurate model of your capabilities.
If you cannot point to a written list you do not have priorities you have reactions.
When retiring an agent ensure its responsibilities transfer to a new agent or are consciously dropped.