Causal Opacity: It is impossible to know, for things above a very low bar of complexity, how they got that way or make accurate predictions about them. 1
Defragilizing: Improving something by removing an element that makes (or may make) it fragile.
Epiphenomenon: A correlation mistaken for causation.
Fractal History: The observation that historical causes are infinitely complex and interconnected, making simple causal explanations misleading.
Legibility: The forced packaging of information so that an organization can understand it. 2
MECE: Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive. When there’s a list of things that covers a topic, the list is MECE if it both covers everything in the topic, and none of the list items overlap.
Nonpredictive Planning: Planning by setting goals and running experiments rather than making predictions about outcomes.
Opaque Heuristic: A practice that works but whose mechanism is not understood.
Translation Gap: The delay between when something useful is discovered and when it is actually put into practice.
Via Negativa: Taking things away. Latin for “negative way”.3
Via Positiva: Adding things. Latin for “positive way”. 4
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