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Atlas Manual

Emotional Intelligence / Philosopher's Toolkit / Spiral Dynamics

28 terms across 7 themes — every definition in the Atlas sourced from this manual, with executive examples and counter-moves.

28 of 28 terms
Mental Models · Culture
Blue vMeme

Order, discipline, hierarchy, principle, and rule-based value system. The 'right way' to do things.

Mental Models · Logic
Burden of Proof

Whoever makes the positive claim carries the obligation to support it. Absence of disproof isn't proof.

Mental Models · Logic
Category Mistake

Treating one kind of thing as if it belonged to a different ontological category.

Mental Models · Social
Charitable Interpretation

Steelman the strongest version of the opposing view before critiquing it.

Mental Models · Social
Cognitive Empathy

Accurately modeling what another person is thinking and feeling — without merging with it.

Mental Models · Emotion
Emotional Hijacking

When the limbic system overrides higher cognition and behavior follows ancient circuits, not chosen values.

Mental Models · Emotion
Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

The capacity to recognize, understand, and manage emotions — your own and others'.

Mental Models · Culture
First-Tier Thinking

Each value system (Beige through Green) believes itself to be the only valid one and dismisses the others.

Mental Models · Logic
Gettier Problem

Justified true belief isn't always knowledge — luck can produce true beliefs from defective reasoning.

Mental Models · Culture
Green vMeme

The communitarian, egalitarian, consensus-seeking value system. Emerged strongly post-1960s.

Mental Models · Logic
Is-Ought Gap

You can't derive an 'ought' (value claim) from an 'is' (factual claim) without a smuggled premise.

Mental Models · Culture
Life Conditions (Graves)

The combination of historical, social, and existential pressures that activates the next vMeme.

Mental Models · Motivation
Marshmallow Effect

Children who delay gratification at age 4 show better outcomes across nearly every metric decades later.

Mental Models · Logic
Modus Ponens

If P then Q. P. Therefore Q. The most basic valid inference move in formal logic.

Mental Models · Logic
Modus Tollens

If P then Q. Not Q. Therefore not P. The logic behind every falsification test.

Mental Models · Logic
Necessary vs Sufficient

Necessary = required for X. Sufficient = enough on its own for X. Conflating them is a common error.

Mental Models · Culture
Orange vMeme

The achievement-driven, rational, strategic, market-oriented value system. Most of Western corporate life.

Mental Models · Culture
Red vMeme

Egocentric, power-driven, immediate-gratification value system. The will to dominate.

Mental Models · Logic
Reductio ad Absurdum

Assume the opposite of what you want to prove. Derive a contradiction. The opposite must be false.

Mental Models · Culture
Second-Tier Thinking

Yellow and Turquoise vMemes — first systems that recognize the legitimacy of all earlier value systems.

Mental Models · Cognition
Self-Awareness

The continuous, accurate recognition of your own emotions, strengths, limits, and impact.

Mental Models · Emotion
Self-Regulation

Channeling disruptive emotions and impulses into productive action.

Mental Models · Social
Social Skills (Goleman)

Managing relationships, inspiring, influencing, and coordinating others toward shared goals.

Mental Models · Culture
Spiral Dynamics

A developmental model of human value systems (vMemes) emerging in response to life conditions.

Mental Models · Systems
Supervenience

Higher-level properties depend on, but aren't reducible to, lower-level ones. Identical bases → identical higher properties.

Mental Models · Cognition
Thought Experiment

A controlled scenario, often impossible, used to isolate a variable and test an intuition or theory.

Mental Models · Culture
vMeme

A value system — a structured way of making meaning that emerges at a particular life-condition stage.

Mental Models · Culture
Yellow vMeme

The integrative, systemic, flexible value system — the first of second-tier.