Concepts A working vocabulary, business and philosophical. Each entry defines the term, shows it in a concrete situation, and names the mistake people usually make with it.
See them as a web Act and potency Aristotle's distinction between what a thing is now and what it is capable of becoming. Philosophy Adverse selection When one side of a transaction knows something the other does not, and the ignorant side's attempt to protect itself drives away the cases it wanted. Business Aesthetics The philosophical study of beauty, art, and taste. Philosophy Akrasia Acting against your own better judgment — knowing the better course and taking the worse one, which Socrates argued is impossible and everyone else has observed constantly. Philosophy Alienation Marx's concept naming the structural condition under capitalism in which workers are estranged from the product of their labor, from the activity of labor, from their species-being, and from other workers. Philosophy Allegory of the Cave Plato's famous image in Republic VII of prisoners chained in an underground cave, mistaking shadows for reality — the canonical illustration of the soul's ascent from ignorance to knowledge. Philosophy Amara's law We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. Business Amor Fati The Stoic doctrine of loving fate — actively accepting whatever happens as the working of cosmic logos, rather than merely tolerating it. Philosophy Analogy of being Aquinas's account of how a word like good or wise can be said of God and of a creature: neither in the same sense, which would make God a being among beings, nor in unrelated senses, which would make theology empty, but in related senses with one primary. Philosophy Antifragility The property of gaining from disorder rather than merely surviving it. Business Apatheia The Stoic doctrine of freedom from passion — not the absence of feeling, but the absence of the disturbing emotions that arise from mistaken judgments about what is good and bad. Philosophy Aporia The Greek term for productive perplexity — the recognition, often arrived at through dialectical questioning, that one does not in fact know what one thought one knew. Philosophy Ataraxia The Hellenistic ideal of mental tranquility — the settled, undisturbed state of soul that Epicureans and Skeptics took to be the goal of philosophy. Philosophy Aufhebung Hegel's technical term for the dialectical movement that simultaneously negates, preserves, and elevates a position into a higher synthesis — the central operation of dialectical thinking. Philosophy Authenticity The existentialist value of being what one is in the deepest sense — living from one's own freedom and recognition of finitude rather than from inherited roles, social conformity, or self-deception. Transitions Bad Faith Sartre's name for the mode of consciousness that flees its own freedom by treating itself as a fixed thing rather than the open activity it actually is — self-deception that requires simultaneously knowing and not knowing the same thing. Philosophy Barriers to entry Anything that makes it costly, slow or impossible for a new competitor to start doing what an existing business does. Business Base rate neglect Judging how likely something is from how well the case matches a picture, while ignoring how common the thing is to begin with. Business Batch size How much work is accumulated before it moves to the next step. Business Baumol's cost disease Wages rise in sectors with no productivity growth because they must compete for labor with sectors that have it. Business Being and becoming The Pre-Socratic opposition between what is stable and what changes — Parmenides holding that only unchanging being is real and Heraclitus that everything flows. Philosophy Being-toward-Death Heidegger's analysis of human existence as essentially structured by its relation to its own coming death — the recognition of which is what makes authentic existence possible. Philosophy Belief Systems A set of beliefs held together so that each is supported by the others. Philosophy Black swans A rare event that was not in anyone's model, has very large consequences, and is explained confidently afterwards as though it had been foreseeable. Business Brandolini's law The energy needed to refute nonsense is an order of magnitude greater than the energy needed to produce it. Mind Break-even The level of sales at which total revenue covers total cost and the business makes neither a profit nor a loss. Business Brooks's law Adding people to a late project makes it later. Business Bundle Theory Hume's account of the self (and, by extension, of objects) as a bundle of perceptions held together by relations of resemblance and causation rather than by an underlying substance. Philosophy Bundling Selling several things together at one price rather than separately. Business Burn Rate The rate at which a business consumes cash, usually stated monthly. Business Campbell's law The more a quantitative indicator is used for social decision-making, the more it will be corrupted — and the more it will distort the process it was meant to monitor. Business Capital allocation Deciding where a business's available money goes: back into growth, into paying down debt, into reserves, or out to the owners. Business Career Capital The stock of rare and valuable skills, relationships and proof you have accumulated. Transitions Cash Conversion Cycle The time between paying for work and being paid for it. Business Categorical Imperative Kant's formulation of the moral law as an unconditional principle of action — act only on that maxim which you can will to be a universal law — the foundational doctrine of deontological ethics. Philosophy Category creation Building a market for a kind of thing that did not previously exist as a kind of thing, rather than competing within an existing one. Business Causation The relation by which one event or state brings about another — contested from Aristotle's four causes to Hume's skepticism. Philosophy Chesterton's fence The rule that you should not remove something until you know why it was put there. Business Churn The rate at which customers leave. Business Cogito Descartes's foundational principle — cogito ergo sum, 'I think, therefore I am' — the indubitable certainty of the thinking subject's existence, recovered through systematic doubt as the foundation of modern philosophy. Philosophy Cognitive dissonance The discomfort of holding two things that do not fit, and the work done to remove it. Business Coherence Without Certainty The epistemic posture of holding beliefs as functionally coherent and provisionally adequate without claiming demonstrative certainty — the alternative to both dogmatic conviction and skeptical paralysis. Philosophy Commoditization The process by which a product or service stops being distinguishable, so buyers choose on price alone and margins fall toward cost. Business Comparative advantage That it pays to specialize by opportunity cost rather than by skill. Business Competency confusion Assuming that excellence at the thing you deliver transfers to running the business that delivers it. Business Competitive moat A structural reason a business stays profitable after competitors have noticed it is profitable. Business Compounding Growth applied to a base that already includes previous growth. Business Confirmation bias The tendency to look for, notice and weight evidence that fits what you already think. Business Consciousness Subjective experience itself; the 'hard problem' is explaining why physical processes give rise to it. Philosophy Conway's law Organizations produce systems that copy their own communication structure. Business Show 50 more · 50 of 262