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Sources · Registry of first observers

Origins

The registry of the people who discovered, coined, or popularised the biases, effects and tools CogniqOS maps — each linked back to the concepts they put on the record.

  • 630Concepts
  • 207Originators
  • 258Discovered
  • 93Popularised
  • 7Coined
207 shown
Thomas Schelling

Thomas Schelling

1921–2016 · Harvard

Turned strategy and commitment into a science of focal points and credible threats.

Originated
PrecommitmentCoordination FailureCredibility TrapSchelling PointsIdentifiable Victim Effect

Scott Alexander

Writer · Astral Codex Ten

Blogger whose essays gave names to social-epistemic traps like the motte-and-bailey.

Originated
Concealed Ovulation (Cryptic Ovulation)Motte-and-BaileyThe Toxoplasma of RageScissor Statements
Robert Trivers

Robert Trivers

b. 1943 · Rutgers

Built the evolutionary logic of reciprocity, self-deception and parental investment.

Originated
Reciprocal Altruism (Trivers)AnisogamyParental Investment TheoryTrivers-Willard Hypothesis
Aristotle

Aristotle

384–322 BC · Philosophy

Catalogued the first fallacies and rhetorical appeals we still teach today.

Originated
The Ambiguity FallacyAppeal to EmotionBegging the QuestionThe Golden Mean
Leon Festinger

Leon Festinger

1919–1989 · Stanford

Discovered cognitive dissonance - the discomfort that quietly rewrites belief.

Originated
Commitment BiasDeindividuationSocial Comparison Theory

Sam Peltzman

b. 1940 · Chicago

Found that safety measures get partly cancelled by riskier behaviour.

Originated
Regulatory CaptureMoral HazardRisk Compensation (The Peltzman Effect)
Robert Axelrod

Robert Axelrod

b. 1943 · Michigan

Ran the tournaments that showed why cooperation beats defection over time.

Originated
Prisoner’s DilemmaTit for TatIterated Games vs One-Shot Games
Emily Pronin

Emily Pronin

Princeton

Documented the bias blind spot - we see bias in others, never in ourselves.

Originated
The Bias Blind SpotCompassion Fade
Solomon Asch

Solomon Asch

1907–1996 · Swarthmore

His conformity experiments showed how easily a group bends what we report seeing.

Originated
Negativity BiasConformity Bias

Jack Brehm

1928–2009 · Social psychology

Discovered reactance - the push-back that makes us want what we're denied.

Originated
Choice-Supportive BiasThe Boomerang Effect
Timur Kuran

Timur Kuran

b. 1954 · Duke

Explained preference falsification - why people hide their true beliefs until they cascade.

Originated
Preference FalsificationAvailability Cascade
Karl Popper

Karl Popper

1902–1994 · LSE

Made falsifiability the line between science and everything that only sounds like it.

Originated
UnfalsifiabilityThe Paradox of Tolerance
Henri Tajfel

Henri Tajfel

1919–1982 · Bristol

Showed the barest hint of a group is enough to trigger in-group favouritism.

Originated
In-Group BiasOut-Group Derogation
John Jost

John Jost

b. 1968 · NYU

Built system-justification theory - why people defend the very systems that fail them.

Originated
Outgroup FavoritismSystem Justification
Robert Cialdini

Robert Cialdini

b. 1945 · Arizona State

Codified the levers of persuasion, from social proof to authority.

Originated
Social ProofThe Messenger Effect
Charles Goodhart

Charles Goodhart

b. 1936 · LSE

Gave us Goodhart's law - a measure that becomes a target stops being a good measure.

Originated
Goodhart’s LawThe Noble Edge Effect
Robert Rosenthal

Robert Rosenthal

1933–2024 · UC Riverside

Demonstrated how an observer's expectations quietly shape the result they get.

Originated
Observer Expectancy EffectThe Pygmalion Effect
Richard Thaler

Richard Thaler

b. 1945 · Chicago

Built behavioural economics around mental accounting and the endowment effect.

Originated
The Endowment EffectMental Accounting
Robert Sapolsky

Robert Sapolsky

b. 1957 · Stanford

Traces how stress and biology quietly steer behaviour we call choice.

Originated
Sapolsky's FogThe Sapolsky Stress Model
C. Northcote Parkinson

C. Northcote Parkinson

1909–1993 · Naval historian

Coined Parkinson's law - work expands to fill the time available.

Originated
Parkinson’s LawBikeshedding (Law of Triviality)
John von Neumann

John von Neumann

1903–1957 · Princeton

Founded game theory - the maths of dominant strategies and zero-sum thinking.

Originated
Dominant StrategyZero-Sum vs Positive-Sum Framing
Paul Lazarsfeld

Paul Lazarsfeld

1901–1976 · Columbia

Founded the study of how influence flows through people, not just media.

Popularised
The Two-Step Flow TheoryHomophily

Irving Copi

1917–2002 · Logic

His textbook fixed the modern catalogue of informal fallacies.

Originated
The Composition and Division FallaciesArgument from Ignorance
Klaus Conrad

Klaus Conrad

1905–1961 · Psychiatry

Coined apophenia - seeing meaningful patterns in noise.

Originated
Herbert A. Simon

Herbert A. Simon

1916–2001 · Carnegie Mellon

Introduced bounded rationality - we satisfice within limits, not optimise.

Originated
Donella Meadows

Donella Meadows

1941–2001 · Dartmouth

Taught a generation to see leverage points and feedback in complex systems.

Popularised
Peter Wason

Peter Wason

1924–2003 · UCL

Invented the selection task that exposed confirmation bias in plain reasoning.

Originated

Abraham Luchins

1914–2005 · Psychology

His water-jar studies named the Einstellung effect - a learned method that blinds you to a simpler one.

Originated
Piotr Winkielman

Piotr Winkielman

UC San Diego

Showed processing fluency shapes judgements of truth, liking and risk.

Originated

Karl Duncker

1903–1940 · Gestalt psychology

His candle problem defined functional fixedness - we only see an object’s usual use.

Originated
Baruch Fischhoff

Baruch Fischhoff

b. 1946 · Carnegie Mellon

Discovered hindsight bias - the knew-it-all-along rewrite of the past.

Originated

Loren Chapman

Wisconsin

His studies named illusory correlation - seeing links in data that are not there.

Originated

Patrick Leman

Psychology

Proportionality bias - big events must have big causes, so we invent them.

Originated
John A. Swets

John A. Swets

1928–2016 · Cognitive psychology

Co-founded signal detection theory - separating true signal from noise and bias.

Originated

Anthony Patt

ETH Zurich

Action bias - the urge to do something even when doing nothing is better.

Originated
Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg

1931–2023 · Economics · Analysis

His paradox showed people flee ambiguity even when the odds are identical.

Originated
Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar

b. 1969 · Columbia

The jam-shelf study proved more choice can freeze rather than free us.

Originated

Donald Redelmeier

Toronto

With Kahneman, showed we judge episodes by their peak and end, not their duration.

Originated

Mark Spranca

Decision psychology

Documented omission bias - we judge harm by action more harshly than by inaction.

Originated
Anthony Pratkanis

Anthony Pratkanis

UC Santa Cruz

Mapped how a withdrawn option still warps the choice it left behind.

Originated

Gary Klein

b. 1944 · Cognitive psychology

Devised the premortem - imagine the failure first, then work back to prevent it.

Originated
Marcel Zeelenberg

Marcel Zeelenberg

Tilburg

Showed anticipated regret quietly shapes the choices we make now.

Originated

William Samuelson

Economics

With Zeckhauser, named status quo bias - the pull of leaving things as they are.

Originated
Cass Sunstein

Cass Sunstein

b. 1954 · Harvard

Co-built nudge theory - choice architecture that steers without forcing.

Popularised
Sendhil Mullainathan

Sendhil Mullainathan

b. 1973 · Chicago

Showed scarcity itself taxes attention, a bandwidth tax on the poor and busy.

Originated
Jerry Suls

Jerry Suls

Social psychology

False uniqueness - we underestimate how many people share our better traits.

Originated

Pauline Rose Clance

b. 1938 · Clinical psychology

Named impostor syndrome - competence that never feels like enough.

Originated
Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel

b. 1937 · NYU

Framed moral luck - we judge people for outcomes they did not control.

Originated

Dan Galai

Hebrew University

The ostrich effect - avoiding financial information when it might bring bad news.

Originated

John A. Nevin

1932–2018 · Behavioural psychology

Behavioural momentum - established habits resist disruption like a moving mass.

Originated
Charles Duhigg

Charles Duhigg

b. 1974 · Writer · The Power of Habit

Popularised the habit loop and commitment devices for a mass audience.

Originated
Ann Graybiel

Ann Graybiel

b. 1942 · MIT

Traced the basal-ganglia circuits that turn repeated acts into habits.

Popularised

George Ainslie

b. 1944 · Psychiatry · Behavioural economics

Mapped hyperbolic discounting - why the near reward always looms larger.

Originated

Timothy Pychyl

Carleton

Reframed procrastination as an emotion-regulation failure, not laziness.

Originated
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema

1959–2013 · Yale

Named rumination - the depressive loop of replaying what went wrong.

Originated
Richard E. Nisbett

Richard E. Nisbett

b. 1941 · Michigan

Showed we confabulate reasons for behaviour we can't actually introspect.

Originated
Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hermann Ebbinghaus

1850–1909 · Experimental psychology

Plotted the forgetting curve, the first hard law of memory over time.

Originated

Jeffrey Karpicke

Purdue

Showed retrieval practice beats rereading - the generation effect at work.

Originated

Nicholas Cepeda

York University

Quantified the lag effect - spaced study outlasts crammed study.

Originated

Scott Wetzler

Psychology

The reminiscence bump - we recall our teens and twenties most vividly.

Originated

Terence Mitchell

Washington

Named rosy retrospection - memory paints past events better than we felt them.

Originated

Henry L. Roediger III

b. 1947 · Washington U St Louis

Proved testing is not just measurement but one of the strongest ways to learn.

Originated

Shai Danziger

Tel Aviv

The hungry-judge study - parole rulings swing with the time since lunch.

Originated

Loran Nordgren

Northwestern

The restraint bias - we overrate our power to resist temptation.

Originated
Thomas Bayes

Thomas Bayes

c. 1701–1761 · Mathematics

His theorem is the maths of updating belief as evidence arrives.

Originated
Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman

1918–1988 · Caltech

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself” - the razor named for him.

Originated
Kenneth Savitsky

Kenneth Savitsky

Williams College

The illusion of asymmetric insight - we think we read others better than they read us.

Originated
Illusion of Asymmetric Insight

Ola Svenson

Stockholm

Found most drivers rate themselves above average - illusory superiority in one line.

Originated
Illusory Superiority
Adam Waytz

Adam Waytz

Northwestern

Motive attribution asymmetry - each side thinks the other is driven by hate.

Originated
Motive Attribution Asymmetry
Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

1856–1939 · Psychoanalysis

Named the narcissism of small differences - we reserve our fiercest disputes for near-neighbours.

Originated
Narcissism of Small Differences
Morton Deutsch

Morton Deutsch

1920–2017 · Columbia

Named normative social influence - conforming to be liked, not to be right.

Originated
Normative Social Influence

George Quattrone

1954–1984 · Social psychology

Outgroup homogeneity - they all look alike, we are all individuals.

Originated
Outgroup Homogeneity Bias
Elliot Aronson

Elliot Aronson

b. 1932 · UC Santa Cruz

The pratfall effect - a visible flaw can make the competent more likeable.

Originated
The Pratfall Effect
Muzafer Sherif

Muzafer Sherif

1906–1988 · Social psychology

His Robbers Cave study showed how fast groups form norms and rivalries.

Originated
Social Norms
Anthony Greenwald

Anthony Greenwald

b. 1939 · Washington

Built the Implicit Association Test that put implicit bias on the map.

Originated
Unconscious Bias (Implicit Bias)
G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton

1874–1936 · Writer

Chesterton’s fence - do not remove a rule until you know why it was built.

Originated
Chesterton’s Fence
Douglas Walton

Douglas Walton

1942–2020 · Argumentation theory

Formalised the straw man and the catalogue of everyday fallacies.

Originated
The Straw Man Fallacy
Kenneth Arrow

Kenneth Arrow

1921–2017 · Stanford

Proved no voting system can fairly satisfy every reasonable rule at once.

Originated
Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem

Daniel Yankelovich

1924–2017 · Social research

Named the McNamara fallacy - what cannot be measured is dismissed as unreal.

Originated
The McNamara Fallacy
Garrett Hardin

Garrett Hardin

1915–2003 · UC Santa Barbara

The tragedy of the commons - shared resources ruined by rational self-interest.

Originated
The Tragedy of the Commons

Maya Bar-Hillel

Hebrew University

Documented the base-rate fallacy - vivid detail drowns out the odds.

Originated
The Base Rate Fallacy

David M. Eddy

b. 1941 · Medicine · Decision science

Showed how a rare disease turns a positive test into a likely false alarm.

Popularised
The False Positive Paradox

Scott Feld

Purdue

The friendship paradox - on average your friends have more friends than you do.

Originated
The Friendship Paradox

Steve Selvin

Berkeley

Posed the Monty Hall problem, the switch that our intuition always gets wrong.

Popularised
The Monty Hall Problem

Vladimir Vapnik

b. 1936 · Statistics · Machine learning

His theory pinned down overfitting - a model that memorises noise, not signal.

Originated
Overfitting

Uri Simonsohn

Esade

Named p-hacking - torturing data until it confesses a false result.

Originated
P-Hacking
Francis Galton

Francis Galton

1822–1911 · Statistics

Discovered regression to the mean, the trap behind most illusory trends.

Originated
Regression to the Mean Blindness
Abraham Wald

Abraham Wald

1902–1950 · Statistics

His wartime bullet-hole analysis is the founding case of survivorship bias.

Originated
George Akerlof

George Akerlof

b. 1940 · Berkeley

The market for lemons showed how hidden information wrecks a market.

Originated
Adverse Selection
Drazen Prelec

Drazen Prelec

MIT

Showed cards make us spend more - the pain of paying is deferred.

Originated
The Cashless Effect

Joel Huber

Duke

The decoy effect - a third, worse option flips which of two you prefer.

Originated
The Decoy Effect

Priya Raghubir

NYU

The denomination effect - we spend small coins faster than one large note.

Originated
The Denomination Effect

Hermann Heinrich Gossen

1810–1858 · Economics

First stated diminishing marginal utility - each extra unit is worth less.

Originated
Diminishing Marginal Utility
Hersh Shefrin

Hersh Shefrin

b. 1948 · Santa Clara

The disposition effect - we sell winners too early and ride losers too long.

Originated
The Disposition Effect

Chip Heath

Stanford

Extrinsic incentive bias - we assume others work for money more than we do.

Originated
Extrinsic Incentive Bias

Shlomo Benartzi

UCLA

Naive diversification - splitting evenly across options rather than wisely.

Originated
Naive Allocation
Mark Lepper

Mark Lepper

Stanford

The overjustification effect - paying for play can kill the love of it.

Originated
The Overjustification Effect

Else Frenkel-Brunswik

1908–1958 · Psychology

Named intolerance of ambiguity, later tied to the authoritarian personality.

Originated
Ambiguity Tolerance
Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle

1900–1976 · Oxford

Named the category mistake - treating one kind of thing as another.

Originated
Category Error
Alfred Korzybski

Alfred Korzybski

1879–1950 · Philosophy · Semantics

“The map is not the territory” - our models are never the thing itself.

Originated
Map vs Territory

Vincent Felitti

b. 1937 · Medicine

The ACE study tied childhood adversity to lifelong health outcomes.

Originated
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE Score)
Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov

1849–1936 · Physiology · Nobel laureate

Classical conditioning - the reflex that learns to fire on a cue.

Originated
Classical Conditioning (Pavlovian Association)
Raymond Cattell

Raymond Cattell

1905–1998 · Psychology

Split intelligence into fluid and crystallised - raw problem-solving vs stored knowledge.

Originated
Crystallised Intelligence
Robin Dunbar

Robin Dunbar

b. 1947 · Oxford

Dunbar’s number - the ceiling on how many real relationships a mind can hold.

Originated
The Grooming Gap
Donald O. Hebb

Donald O. Hebb

1904–1985 · McGill

Neurons that fire together wire together - the rule behind learning in the brain.

Originated
Hebb’s Rule
Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich

1926–2002 · Social critic

Named iatrogenesis - the harm caused by the very system meant to help.

Originated
Iatrogenesis
Giacomo Rizzolatti

Giacomo Rizzolatti

b. 1937 · Parma

Discovered mirror neurons, cells that fire both when we act and when we watch.

Originated
Mirror Neurons

Maria Ovsiankina

1898–1993 · Psychology

The Ovsiankina effect - an interrupted task pulls us back to finish it.

Popularised
The Ovsiankina Effect (Hemingway Effect)
C. Sue Carter

C. Sue Carter

Behavioural neurobiology

Mapped how oxytocin and vasopressin shape bonding and trust.

Originated
Oxytocin vs. Vasopressin

Fabrizio Benedetti

Turin

Mapped the biology of the placebo effect - expectation altering the body.

Originated
The Placebo Effect

Stewart Wolf

1914–2005 · Medicine

The Roseto effect - tight community ties protecting a town’s heart health.

Originated
The Roseto Effect

David E. Meyer

Michigan

Measured switch cost - the hidden tax every time attention changes task.

Originated
The Switch Cost Effect
Kent Berridge

Kent Berridge

Michigan

Split wanting from liking - desire and pleasure run on different brain systems.

Originated
The Want-Like Split (Berridge's Paradox)
Robert Plomin

Robert Plomin

b. 1948 · King’s College London

The Wilson effect - heritability of intelligence rises with age, not falls.

Originated
The Wilson Effect
Elaine Morgan

Elaine Morgan

1920–2013 · Writer · Evolution

Popularised the aquatic ape hypothesis of human origins.

Popularised
The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
Daniel Fessler

Daniel Fessler

UCLA

The crazy-bastard hypothesis - reckless risk-taking as a costly signal of formidability.

Originated
The Crazy Bastard Hypothesis
Amotz Zahavi

Amotz Zahavi

1928–2017 · Tel Aviv

The handicap principle - costly signals are trusted because they are costly.

Originated
The Handicap Principle
W. D. Hamilton

W. D. Hamilton

1936–2000 · Evolutionary biology

Kin selection - altruism pays when it helps copies of your own genes.

Originated
Kin Selection (Hamilton’s Rule)

Malte Andersson

Gothenburg

Tested sexual selection and the lek - where males display and females choose.

Popularised
The Lek Hypothesis

S. Boyd Eaton

Medicine · Evolution

Mismatch theory - modern bodies built for a vanished environment.

Originated
Mismatch Theory

Steven Gangestad

New Mexico

Studied the ovulatory-shift hypothesis in human mate preference.

Originated
Ovulatory Shift Hypothesis
Leigh Van Valen

Leigh Van Valen

1935–2010 · Evolutionary biology

The Red Queen - species must keep evolving just to hold their ground.

Originated
The Red Queen Hypothesis

Sarah Brosnan

Georgia State

Showed capuchins reject unequal pay - fairness runs deeper than humans.

Originated
Sensitivity to Fairness
Ronald Fisher

Ronald Fisher

1890–1962 · Statistics · Genetics

The sexy-son hypothesis - attractiveness itself can be the trait selected for.

Originated
The Sexy Son Hypothesis
Edvard Westermarck

Edvard Westermarck

1862–1939 · Anthropology

The Westermarck effect - childhood closeness suppresses later attraction.

Originated
The Westermarck Effect

Roy Malpass

Psychology

Documented the cross-race effect - faces of other groups are harder to tell apart.

Originated
Cross-Race Effect
Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

1934–1996 · Astronomy · Science writer

Popularised pareidolia - the face in the clouds, the pattern in the noise.

Originated
Pareidolia
Daniel Oppenheimer

Daniel Oppenheimer

Carnegie Mellon

Showed disfluency can deepen thought - harder-to-read text is better remembered.

Originated
Processing Difficulty Effect

Albert Hastorf

1920–2011 · Social psychology

“They saw a game” - selective perception, where each side sees a different match.

Originated
Selective Perception

Antonia Abbey

Wayne State

Documented sexual overperception - misreading friendliness as sexual interest.

Popularised
Sexual Overperception Bias

Peter Sifneos

1920–2008 · Psychiatry

Coined alexithymia - the inability to name one’s own emotions.

Originated
Alexithymia
Elaine Hatfield

Elaine Hatfield

b. 1937 · Social psychology

Documented emotional contagion - moods spread from person to person.

Originated
Emotional Contagion
C. Daniel Batson

C. Daniel Batson

b. 1943 · Social psychology

The empathy-altruism hypothesis - empathy can produce genuinely selfless help.

Originated
Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

1934–2021 · Psychology

Named flow - total absorption where challenge and skill meet.

Originated
The Flow State

Philip Brickman

1943–1982 · Social psychology

The hedonic treadmill - happiness resets to baseline after fortune or ruin.

Originated
The Hedonic Treadmill
Martin Seligman

Martin Seligman

b. 1942 · Pennsylvania

Discovered learned helplessness, then built positive psychology around its cure.

Originated
Learned Helplessness
Joseph LeDoux

Joseph LeDoux

b. 1949 · NYU

Traced the fast fear pathway behind the emotional hijack of the amygdala.

Originated
Limbic Hijacking
Ernest Becker

Ernest Becker

1924–1974 · Anthropology

The denial of death seeds terror management - culture as a shield against mortality.

Originated
Terror Management Theory

Lisanne Bainbridge

Cognitive engineering

The ironies of automation - automating a task can deskill the human who oversees it.

Originated
Automation Bias

Betsy Sparrow

Cognitive psychology

The Google effect - we remember where to find facts, not the facts themselves.

Originated
The Google Effect

Riley Goodside

AI · Prompt engineering

Named prompt injection - hijacking a language model through its own input.

Originated
Prompt Injection

Michael Jensen

1939–2024 · Economics · Finance

Formalised the principal-agent problem - when the agent’s interests diverge from yours.

Originated
The Principal-Agent Problem

Garold Stasser

Miami University

The shared-information bias - groups dwell on what everyone already knows.

Originated
Shared Information Bias

Jon Jecker

Social psychology

The Ben Franklin effect - doing someone a favour makes you like them more.

Originated
The Benjamin Franklin Effect
David Ricardo

David Ricardo

1772–1823 · Economics

Comparative advantage - even the weaker party gains from specialising and trading.

Originated
Comparative Advantage
Joseph Schumpeter

Joseph Schumpeter

1883–1950 · Economics

Creative destruction - the storm of innovation that scraps the old to build the new.

Originated
Creative Destruction
Thomas Gresham

Thomas Gresham

1519–1579 · Finance

Gresham’s law - bad money drives out good when both must trade at par.

Originated
Gresham's Law
Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger

1924–2023 · Investing

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome” - incentive design in one line.

Originated
Incentive Design
Robert Zajonc

Robert Zajonc

1923–2008 · Social psychology

The mere-exposure effect - familiarity alone breeds liking.

Originated
The Mere Exposure Effect
Robert Solow

Robert Solow

1924–2023 · Economics · Nobel laureate

Named the productivity paradox - computers everywhere except in the statistics.

Originated
The Productivity Paradox
William F. Sharpe

William F. Sharpe

b. 1934 · Finance · Nobel laureate

The risk premium and CAPM - the price the market pays you to bear risk.

Originated
Risk Premium
Oliver Williamson

Oliver Williamson

1932–2020 · Economics · Nobel laureate

Built transaction-cost economics - why firms exist instead of pure markets.

Originated
Transaction Costs
Lewis Fry Richardson

Lewis Fry Richardson

1881–1953 · Mathematics · Physics

Modelled arms races as coupled equations of mutual escalation.

Originated
The Arms Race Dynamic
Mancur Olson

Mancur Olson

1932–1998 · Economics · Political science

The free-rider problem - why groups under-supply the goods everyone wants.

Originated
The Free Rider Problem
John Nash

John Nash

1928–2015 · Mathematics · Nobel laureate

The Nash equilibrium - the point where no player gains by moving alone.

Originated
Nash Equilibrium
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1712–1778 · Philosophy

The stag hunt - the dilemma of trust between cooperation and safe self-interest.

Originated
The Stag Hunt
Brendan Nyhan

Brendan Nyhan

Dartmouth

Studied belief perseverance - corrections that fail to dislodge a false belief.

Originated
Belief Perseverance

Lynn Hasher

Toronto

The illusory truth effect - repetition alone makes a claim feel true.

Originated
The Illusory Truth Effect
Mike Masnick

Mike Masnick

Writer · Techdirt

Coined the Streisand effect - suppressing information only spreads it.

Originated
The Streisand Effect

Masaaki Kurosu

Human-computer interaction

The aesthetic-usability effect - pretty interfaces feel easier to use.

Originated
The Aesthetic-Usability Effect
Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

b. 1941 · Oxford

Coined the meme - an idea that spreads and mutates like a gene.

Originated
Meme Theory

Hans Moravec

b. 1948 · Carnegie Mellon

Moravec’s paradox - what is hard for machines is easy for us, and vice versa.

Originated
Moravec’s Paradox
Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt

b. 1963 · NYU

Named safetyism - the overprotection that leaves people more fragile.

Popularised
Safetyism
Eliyahu Goldratt

Eliyahu Goldratt

1947–2011 · Management science

The theory of constraints - a system is only as fast as its tightest bottleneck.

Originated
Bottlenecks (Theory of Constraints)
Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener

1894–1964 · Mathematics · Cybernetics

Founded cybernetics - the science of feedback loops and control.

Originated
Feedback Loops
Elon Musk

Elon Musk

b. 1971 · Engineering · Business

Popularised first-principles thinking - reason up from physics, not analogy.

Popularised
First Principles Thinking
Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham

1894–1976 · Investing

Margin of safety - buy with a buffer wide enough to survive being wrong.

Originated
Margin of Safety
Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell

b. 1963 · Writer · Journalist

Popularised the tipping point - the threshold where change goes vertical.

Originated
Phase Transitions
Antony Flew

Antony Flew

1923–2010 · Philosophy

The no-true-Scotsman move - redefining a term to dodge a counterexample.

Originated
No True Scotsman
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1906–1945 · Theology

His theory of stupidity - the compliant crowd is more dangerous than malice.

Popularised
Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity
Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi

1901–1954 · Physics · Nobel laureate

The Fermi paradox - if the universe should teem with life, where is everybody?

Originated
The Fermi Paradox
Jim Collins

Jim Collins

b. 1958 · Management · Writer

The Stockdale paradox - confront brutal facts yet never lose faith in the end.

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The Stockdale Paradox

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