• Operant Conditioning

    Learning through association of a behavior with rewards and punishment. We tend to do more of the things that make us feel good rather than feel bad.

    See also:

    • Atomic Habits which talks about designing for establishing good habits and stopping bad habits as a way of piggybacking off of operant conditioning (although I don’t think the term is ever mentioned in the book).

  • Gravity Model of Trade

    Trade flows can be predicted based on the proximity of two places and size of their respective economies. While not very detailed, it has shown to be very successful in it’s predictions that it is still used today, more than 50 years after it was introduced.

    Distance makes some intuitive sense, if trade costs anything, merchants would aim to reduce that cost. But, what underlies that is also potentially cultural similarities and language for doing business.

    See also:

    • A-Star algorithm which computes the shortest path between two points based on a cost function. (Could this be used along with the gravity equation as a predictor of trade routes?)

  • Two's Complement

    A common way of representing signed integers (can be positive or negative) in computers. You can invert the sign of any number (except 0) by taking the complement of the number and adding 1.

    For example using 4 bits:

    • 1011 is the binary representation of -5
    • The complement is 0100 (flip 1s to 0 and 0 to 1)
    • Adding 1 to the complement is 0101
    • 0101 is the binary representation of 5

  • Sketch Storm

    A team explores the solution space of a set of pre-prepared problem statements or scenarios by sketching out different approaches that solve it. This helps to kick start the product discovery phase by exploring many different solutions simultaneously with minimal effort. Sometimes this reveals new problems or constraints that have not been uncovered yet.


  • Zoom Fatigue

    Being on video conference calls repeatedly is exhausting. This phenomena is believed to be caused by the brain working overtime because we can tell the other person is an imperfect projection and reading body language is difficult.

    This became into the national consciousness during COVID-19, where much of the workforce was forced to work from home and use video conference tools to communicate.


  • Meta Habit

    A habit that helps make acquiring new habits easier. For example, the habit of removing the option of not doing something you need to do decreases the mental energy to take the desired action and thereby create the habit.

    This is related to the ‘make it easy’ concept in Atomic Habits, but rather than designing changes to per habit, it’s an overall discipline which makes everything easier.


  • Trust Is an Important Factor of Economic Prosperity

    In order for an economy to prosper, there must be a high degree of trust in the system. For instance, without trust that someone will uphold their side of a contract, only limited kinds of transactions can occur. If there is trust that a contract will be enforced then there is higher assurance the other party will make good, making it possible for more complex arrangements and entities outside the system can more easily participate.

    See also:

    • In trust models, contract enforcement would be 1 of 1 there is reliance on the legal system (judges, lawyers, courts) to act as expected.

  • The Passenger Pigeon Saved the Bison

    Prior to the 1900s, people did not believe an animal could go extinct–they assumed nature was endless. It wasn’t until the passenger pigeon disappeared that the U.S. public became aware and top of mind. When President Theodore Roosevelt complained that he spent months without seeing a bison during his many hunting expeditions it kicked off an unheard of conservation movement to prevent the extinction of bison. It’s believed this was only made possible because of the public recognition of the passenger pigeon’s demise that the movement was made possible.


  • Straussian Reading

    Refers to the Leo Strauss notion that serious writers communicate ideas through many layers of meaning and abstraction which simultaneously protects the author from the ruling regime and attracts the right readers. A ‘Straussian reading’ or interpretation is extracting the hidden subtext and stating it openly.

    See also:

    • Learning how to read which discusses multi-layer recursion to understand certain texts.
    • Tyler Cowen often refers to this when asking interviewees for a more full interpretation of a piece of writing that includes the context of the author and environment in which it was written.

  • Deep Time

    The conceptualization of long periods and how they fit into our lives which was originated from studying geological strata.

    Realizing that time is longer than we think was problematic in the 18th-19th century–the earth is not ~6,000 years old, there are no artifacts of humans in geological strata that were uncovered during the industrial revolution, even the dinosaurs had to be conceived of.

    Darwin once said time is inconceivable, yet articulated evolution as the product of small changes over long stretches. It can be powerful to grasp inconceivable lengths of time.

    See also:


  • Slowness Begets More Slowness

    A product team or organization that moves slowly (e.g. reviews, gatekeepers, heavy process) in introducing changes moves slower over time. As slowness increases and the chance of success remains constant, then each failure is more expensive. This leads to a negative feedback loop where more slowness is introduced to try and guarantee a positive outcome.


  • No Zero Days

    Make a little progress on your most important goals every day, even if it’s something small. Any time you let things slip, it’s easier to slip again and eventually it becomes a habit. The rule of no zero days prevents that and provides evidence of your changing identity every day.

    See also:

    • This reddit thread where the phrase ‘no zero days’ originated
    • Atomic Habits talks about ‘showing up’ as an important factor for initially forming a positive habit and how actions reinforce one’s identity.