Scientific Definition
Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.
Plain-English Definition
Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.
Feynman Explanation
The middle is where you die.
Core Principle
Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Portfolio construction and innovation funding.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The middle is where you die.
Examples
- 90% in cash, 10% in venture; almost nothing in 'medium-risk medium-return.'
- Portfolio construction and innovation funding.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Audit your portfolio for the slow death of medium.
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.
- Audit your portfolio for the slow death of medium.
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.
Game theory adjusted for how humans actually play — including fairness, reciprocity, and limited reasoning.
Allocating finite resources across many fronts when the opponent does the same — no dominant strategy exists.
Coordinated action that produces outcomes unavailable to individual actors.
Designing organizations to ride doubling curves — AI, data, compute, biotech — rather than linear improvement.
Decisions depend on what other strategic actors will do.
Individual rationality produces collective irrationality.
Causal chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes to impact.
Start cooperative; copy your counterpart's last move thereafter.
Where, how, what — in that order.
One party's gain is exactly another party's loss.
Reverse-engineering the internal sequence — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — an expert uses to produce a result.
Unconscious psychological strategies that protect self-image.