Negative Capability is the capacity to live with ambiguity and uncertainty without demanding clear answers or rational explanations.

Multipotentiality is the ability—and curiosity—to do many different things well.

Premortem thinking is a way to spot problems before they happen. Instead of asking, “What could go wrong?”, you imagine that your project or plan has already failed—and then ask, “What caused it to fail?”

Dual wielding symbolizes balancing two powerful forces or skills at once—like strength and precision, speed and strategy, creativity and discipline.

Intersubjectivity is the invisible bridge that lets separate minds share a single piece of reality.

Sonder is the sudden realization that every passer‑by is living a life as rich, messy, and meaningful as your own.

The Adjacent Possible is the set of new combinations that become reachable the moment something novel appears.

Kankyakka is a Japanese concept that means “cooling the fire of anger.”

Ubuntu is an African philosophy that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all human beings.

Hysteresis is a phenomenon in which the current state or output of a system depends not only on its present conditions but also on its past experiences.

Escalation of Commitment describes the tendency to continue investing time, money, or effort into a failing venture solely because of the resources already spent.

The Münchhausen Trilemma questions whether we can ever ground our knowledge in absolute certainty, suggesting that our foundations for “truth” hinge on shared consensus rather than unassailable proof.

Knightian Uncertainty claims that risk can be quantified—outcomes carry known or estimable probabilities—while uncertainty is fundamentally unmeasurable, involving unknown or unknowable probabilities.

The Paradox of Hedonism suggests that the single-minded pursuit of pleasure or happiness often leads to dissatisfaction rather than fulfillment.

Cryptomnesia is a phenomenon where a person remembers information but forgets its source, leading them to believe that it’s an original idea of their own.

The Backfire Effect is a cognitive bias in which direct evidence contradicting a person’s beliefs actually strengthens—rather than weakens—those beliefs.

In chess, Zugzwang occurs when a player is forced to move, but any possible move will worsen their position.

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon where our minds perceive recognizable shapes—often faces or objects—within random or vague stimuli.

Hyperbolic Discounting is a cognitive bias in which people disproportionately prefer smaller, immediate rewards to larger rewards in the future, even when waiting would yield a better outcome.

Priming is a psychological phenomenon where exposure to one stimulus influences how we respond to a subsequent stimulus.