Scientific Definition
Test → Operate → Test → Exit. Any skill is a loop of testing against a criterion, operating to close the gap, retesting, and exiting when met.
Plain-English Definition
Test → Operate → Test → Exit. Any skill is a loop of testing against a criterion, operating to close the gap, retesting, and exiting when met.
Feynman Explanation
Expertise is just a really fast, really specific TOTE loop.
Core Principle
Test → Operate → Test → Exit. Any skill is a loop of testing against a criterion, operating to close the gap, retesting, and exiting when met.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Test → Operate → Test → Exit. Any skill is a loop of testing against a criterion, operating to close the gap, retesting, and exiting when met.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Process design, sales-call playbooks, training systems.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Expertise is just a really fast, really specific TOTE loop.
Examples
- Miller, Galanter & Pribram's TOTE adopted as NLP's strategy elicitation backbone.
- Process design, sales-call playbooks, training systems.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- When modeling an expert, elicit the test, the criterion, and the exit — not just the 'operate.'
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- When modeling an expert, elicit the test, the criterion, and the exit — not just the 'operate.'
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Combining substances to create a new material stronger than its parts.
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A system's throughput is constrained by its single slowest step.
Small visible disorders signal that bigger ones will be tolerated.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Adding people to a late project makes it later.
A substance that speeds up a reaction without being consumed.
Nonlinear systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
Inputs combine under conditions to produce new outputs — sometimes irreversibly.
Software architecture mirrors org structure.
Working together has a cost that scales with the number of people.
The threshold at which a system becomes self-sustaining.