INC 'Spend to Save' Promotions
Discount framing nudges people to buy things they wouldn't otherwise want.
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COG 10/10/10 Rule
How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?
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INC 15-Minute Appointments
Productivity targets compress visits, raising misdiagnosis and burnout.
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COG 3-Way Life Optimization
Basics first (health/finances), then depth (mastery/impact), then altruism (widening circle).
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INC 340B Discount Arbitrage
A federal mandate intended to lower drug costs for the poor became a profit engine for hospitals and contract pharmacies.
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COG Abilene Paradox
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
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COG Absent-Mindedness
Inattention or forgetfulness caused by low attention, hyperfocus, or distraction.
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COG Abstractions
Deriving general rules from specific examples; the leap from instance to concept.
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INC Acceptable Use Policy (AI)
Written rules about how AI may be used internally.
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COG Accountability
Clear ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.
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INC Acquisition Earn-Outs
Earn-outs designed to retain founders often demotivate the team they bought.
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INC Acquisition-Only Marketing
Funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value.
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COG Action Bias
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.
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BIO Activation Energy
The minimum energy needed to start a reaction; same idea for starting habits or initiatives.
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COG Acton's Dictum
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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COG Actor-Observer Bias
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
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COG Ad Hominem
Attacking the person rather than the argument.
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INC Ad-Supported Business Models
Free products monetize attention, structurally aligning incentives against user time well spent.
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COG Adaptability Quotient (AQ)
Your capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn faster than the environment changes.
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COG Adaptive Bias
The brain evolved to reason adaptively, not always truthfully, to reduce the cost of errors.
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COG Adaptive Challenge
A problem whose solution requires people to change their values, beliefs, or habits — not just apply expertise.
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COG Additive Bias
We solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would be better.
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INC Adjunctification
Tenure-track jobs replaced by low-paid adjuncts, lowering cost and quality.
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INC Adoption Curve (AI)
Innovators → early adopters → majority → laggards, AI-specific.
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COG Advantageous Divergence
Holding a different — and correct — set of tools than everyone else.
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COG Adverse Selection
Asymmetric information attracts the worst counterparties.
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INC Aesthetic-First Fitness
Training for appearance can crowd out mobility, longevity, and mental health.
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COG Affect Heuristic
Feelings act as shortcuts for facts.
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BIO Affect Labeling
Naming an emotion reduces its intensity.
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EMO Affective Forecasting
Predicting how we will feel in the future, usually inaccurately.
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COG Affinity / Liking Bias
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
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COG Affirming a Disjunct
Assuming that if one option is true, another must be false, when both can be true.
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COG Affirming the Consequent
If A then B; B happened; therefore A.
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ENV Affordances
What an environment offers an actor for action — handles to grip, surfaces to sit on, paths to follow.
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INC Agent
AI system that takes actions to achieve goals, often across tools.
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COG Agent Detection
Presuming a purposeful actor behind events that may have no actor at all.
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COG Agent Provocateur
Someone who incites others to take illegal or rash action, often to expose or discredit them.
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INC Agentic Liability
When the agent acts, who's responsible?
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INC Aggressive Cost-Cutting
Cuts that lift margin this quarter erode product quality and brand equity over years.
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INC Agricultural Subsidy Lock-In
Per-bushel subsidies reward overproduction of specific crops regardless of soil, market, or nutritional need.
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INC AI Agent Liability Vacuum
Autonomous agents deployed before liability frameworks exist.
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INC AI as Coach vs. AI as Replacement
Augmentation strategy vs. substitution strategy.
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INC AI Audit Trail
Logging of AI inputs, outputs, and decisions.
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INC AI Bill of Materials
Inventory of models, data, tools, and dependencies in an AI system.
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INC AI Bill of Materials Auditability
Tracing AI components for risk and compliance.
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INC AI Council / Committee
Cross-functional governance body for AI decisions.
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INC AI Governance Vacuum
Agents deployed before anyone owns the consequences.
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INC AI Maturity Model
Stages of organizational AI capability.
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INC AI Productivity Mirage
Individual productivity gains hide collective output degradation.
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INC AI Productivity Paradox
AI investment outpacing measurable productivity gains.
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INC AI Risk Tiering
Categorizing AI use cases by risk level.
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INC AI Strategy as Capability Strategy
AI strategy = decisions about which capabilities to build and where.
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INC AI Talent Premium
Scarce AI talent commands market-distorting compensation.
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INC AI-First Workflow Design
Designing processes from scratch around AI capability.
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INC AI-Generated Content Spam Loop
AI generates content; AI scrapes content; AI trains on its own output.
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INC AI-Native vs. AI-Augmented Teams
Teams built around AI from day one vs. teams adding it to existing workflows.
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COG Alder's Razor
What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.
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INC Algorithmic Aversion
Discounting algorithmic advice even when superior.
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COG Algorithms
A finite set of well-defined instructions for solving a problem or performing a computation.
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COG All Models Are Wrong
Every model simplifies reality; some are still useful.
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