Incentives Lab — More Models
179 terms across 9 themes — every definition in the Atlas sourced from this manual, with executive examples and counter-moves.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Inattention or forgetfulness caused by low attention, hyperfocus, or distraction.
The minimum energy needed to start a reaction; same idea for starting habits or initiatives.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
The brain evolved to reason adaptively, not always truthfully, to reduce the cost of errors.
We solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would be better.
Predicting how we will feel in the future, usually inaccurately.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Assuming that if one option is true, another must be false, when both can be true.
Someone who incites others to take illegal or rash action, often to expose or discredit them.
What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.
A finite set of well-defined instructions for solving a problem or performing a computation.
Every model simplifies reality; some are still useful.
Researchers favor conclusions aligned with their school, team, or sponsor.
Combining substances to create a new material stronger than its parts.
Outcomes that could have happened but did not.
Overthinking a situation so that decision-making stalls.
Using personal stories or isolated examples instead of evidence.
Assuming something is true because it is probable or possible.
Exploiting price differences between markets for risk-free profit.
Using an authority's opinion as evidence, regardless of its merits.
Claiming something is true because it has not been proven false.
Sun Tzu's ancient treatise on strategy, deception, and positioning.
Assuming qualities of one thing transfer to another because they are associated.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Conflict between belligerents with very different resources and tactics.
Our perception is shaped by what we selectively pay attention to.
Replacing a hard question with an easier one without realizing it.
We accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.
Ignoring general statistics in favor of specific, vivid information.
Novices experiencing early success, often due to variance and small samples.
Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
A color appears different depending on adjacent colors.
Unusual or bizarre material is more memorable than common material.
A persuasive message produces the opposite of its intended effect.
A single constraint limits the throughput of an entire system.
The energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
A substance that speeds up a reaction without being consumed.
Using a fake identity to deceive someone, usually for gain or manipulation.
Nonlinear systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
Every unnecessary element in a story must be removed, or it will be expected to matter.
The threat of retaliation suppresses legitimate speech or action.
Grouping information into familiar units to improve memory and processing.
The ability to focus on one voice in a noisy environment.
A mechanism that locks you into a future action to overcome present temptation.
Information that everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone knows.
We care less as the number of victims increases.
A system with many interacting parts that learn and adapt.
Remembering past attitudes and behavior as more consistent with present ones.
Avoiding contact with people or things perceived as 'contaminated'.
Environmental factors influence perception and judgment.
Removing a quote from its context to distort its meaning.
Believing previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected.
Renewed interest in a stimulus when a novel stimulus is introduced.
Innovation destroys old industries and creates new ones.
A conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes.
Groups sometimes behave as foolishly as the worst individuals.
Judging phenomena by the standards of one's own culture.
Reducing cognitive biases through training, structure, and process.
The idea that material conditions and contradictions drive historical change.
Incompetent employees are promoted to management to limit their workflow damage.
How much we value the present over the future.
The whole has properties that the individual parts do not.
Emotional states distort cognition and decision-making.
We believe we will change less in the future than we actually will.
Continuing a failing course of action because of prior investment.
Predicting more extreme outcomes than actually occur.
Growth whose rate becomes ever more rapid in proportion to the growing quantity.
Costs or benefits that affect third parties not involved in a transaction.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Presenting two options as the only possibilities when more exist.
Recalling something that did not happen or recalling it differently.
For a claim to be scientific, it must be possible to prove it false.
As more facts are learned about a topic, retrieving any one fact slows.
Outputs of a system are routed back as inputs, amplifying or dampening change.
A rough calculation using order-of-magnitude reasoning.
Mental discomfort from holding conflicting beliefs or values.
Algorithms show us content that reinforces our existing views.
Asking 'why' repeatedly to trace a problem to its root cause.
Believing abilities are static and cannot be developed.
IQ scores have risen substantially over generations.
We overweight one aspect of an event when predicting its impact.
We accept vague, positive personality descriptions as highly accurate.
After noticing something, we start seeing it everywhere.
Research outcomes tend to favor the interests of the funders.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system.
Making someone question their own reality or perceptions.
Experts believe news articles outside their field despite knowing their own field is misreported.
As online discussions grow longer, the probability of a Nazi comparison approaches one.
Bad money drives out good when both are legally equivalent.
Groups make more extreme decisions than individuals would alone.
Desire for conformity leads to irrational or dysfunctional decisions.
People change behavior when they know they are being observed.
Neurons that fire together wire together.
In quantum mechanics, certain pairs of properties cannot both be precisely known.
People adopt behaviors and opinions because others do.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Everything takes longer than you expect, even when you account for Hofstadter's Law.
Systems should be understood as wholes, not just as collections of parts.
We overestimate how much others understand our thoughts and feelings.
We overestimate the intensity and duration of emotional reactions.
Doubt about one's abilities and fear of being exposed as a fraud.
We miss unexpected events when focused on something else.
One party has more or better information than another.
People copy the choices of others, assuming they have private information.
We favor members of our own group over outsiders.
We ignore sample size when judging probability.
Different agents pursue the same subgoals regardless of their ultimate goals.
Decisions involve trade-offs between costs and benefits at different times.
Bureaucracies tend to expand and protect themselves, regardless of their original purpose.
Keep it simple, stupid. Simplicity beats complexity in design and communication.
Once we know something, it is hard to imagine not knowing it.
As sample size grows, sample averages converge to expected values.
We expect small samples to reflect population properties.
Organizations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.
Giving up after repeated exposure to uncontrollable negative events.
Performance improves with practice, but gains slow over time.
When quality is hard to verify, bad products drive out good ones.
Expecting change to happen at a constant rate.
Optimizing in a small region while missing a better global solution.
Customers become trapped in a product due to switching costs or network effects.
Treating real-world uncertainty like a game with clear, known rules.
Each additional unit of a good provides less satisfaction than the previous one.
Markets fail to allocate resources efficiently on their own.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Relying solely on metrics that are easily quantified while ignoring what matters.
Combining results from multiple studies to find robust conclusions.
Thinking about one's own thinking.
People will obey authority even when asked to harm others.
The simplest version of a product that can test a core hypothesis.
A consistent minority can shift the majority's views over time.
Past good behavior makes us feel entitled to later bad behavior.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
We prefer stories over raw facts, even when the story is misleading.
A symmetric bell-shaped distribution where most values cluster around the mean.
A bias against ideas or products that originated outside the group.
Judging a decision by its outcome rather than by the quality of the process.
A model that explains historical data too closely will fail on new data.
The range of policies or ideas that are politically acceptable at a given time.
People are promoted until they reach a position where they are incompetent.
Structuring actions so that responsibility can be denied.
The moment after which reversing a course becomes impossible or extremely costly.
Discrediting a source or person before they make their argument.
We tend to remember pleasant information more accurately than unpleasant information.
A relationship where a small number of inputs account for most outputs.
We ignore probability when outcomes are emotionally charged.
People value gains and losses asymmetrically, and judge relative to a reference point.
A group assigned to challenge plans and find weaknesses.
Extreme outcomes tend to be followed by more average ones.
We judge probability by how similar an event is to a prototype.
People take more risks when they feel safer.
A quick way to estimate how long it takes an investment to double at a given growth rate.
Choosing a good-enough option rather than optimizing for the best.
In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes.
Projects gradually expand beyond their original goals.
A belief that becomes true because people act as if it is true.
What is considered normal changes gradually, making degradation invisible.
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
The ratio of useful information to irrelevant information.
A trend appears in different groups but disappears or reverses when groups are combined.
Small changes that are not noticeable can add up to a significant change.
Effects of an intervention spread to other areas beyond the intended target.
Stocks are accumulations; flows are rates of change that affect them.
Past investment should not influence future decisions.
Accidents occur when multiple layers of defenses fail simultaneously.
Knowledge that is hard to transfer because it is personal and experience-based.
Goals become the focus, sometimes at the expense of the underlying purpose.
Cherry-picking data to fit a pattern after the fact.
A neutral account of a conflict that both sides can agree on.
Our decisions are influenced by when events occur or when we evaluate them.
A small group can dominate when the majority is silent or divided.
Negative behavior of outgroup members is attributed to character; positive behavior to situational factors.
Binding yourself now to avoid future temptation.
Actions have effects that were not planned or anticipated.
Items that stand out are more likely to be remembered.
Aggregated independent judgments can be more accurate than individual experts.
One party's gain is exactly another party's loss.