Catalyst
CatalystPathsPsychology
Path · Judgment & decisions

How Your Mind Actually Works

The way to learn something properly. On the schedule you actually have. About what you actually want to understand.

10 days 15 min/day Audio-first Psychology · In progress
Narrated by CatalystAudio-first, on the schedule you actually have
The premise

Three frameworks, one mind.

Three writers have done more than any others to translate the academic field of judgment and decision-making into a working vocabulary the rest of us can use. Daniel Kahneman gave us the architecture — System 1, System 2, and the biases that emerge when the fast system runs without the slow one checking it. Dan Ariely gave us the catalog — the specific irrational behaviors we all run, and the choice-architecture moves that can correct for them. Robert Cialdini gave us the social engineering — the seven principles other people use to influence our decisions, often without our noticing. Ten days, three frameworks, one set of moves for noticing what your own mind is doing before it decides for you.

Day 1, free

Three books, one mind.

Day 1 frames the path. What the three writers share, where they diverge, and why their convergence is the strongest evidence the underlying observations are correct. The honest replication-crisis caveat is surfaced early — some celebrated findings have not held up, and the appropriate stance is provisional belief calibrated to replication strength rather than uniform credulity. You leave Day 1 with the disposition the path is trying to install.

Day 1 of any path is free in the app.

Each day, one idea. In sequence.

01
Three books, one mind
15 min · what the three writers share, where they diverge, and why convergence is evidence
Free
02
Two systems
15 min · Kahneman's architecture — the fast intuitive system and the slow deliberate one
03
The catalog of biases
15 min · anchoring, availability, framing, substitution — the predictable failures
04
Loss aversion and honest replication
15 min · prospect theory, the endowment effect, and which findings have held up
05
Predictably irrational
15 min · Ariely on the power of free, the decoy effect, and the paradox of choice
06
Honest limits
15 min · social vs. market norms — and the 2021 retraction that has complicated Ariely's legacy
07
Reciprocity, commitment, social proof
15 min · the first three of Cialdini's seven principles, and how they are deployed against you
08
Authority, liking, scarcity, unity
15 min · the remaining four principles, and the pattern that connects them all
09
Pre-suasion
15 min · the framing moment before an ask — and why it often matters more than the ask itself
10
Three frameworks, one mind
15 min · the synthesis — the architecture, the catalog, and the social engineering layered together
Read Day 1, free

Three books, one mind

The first lesson of the path. No account, no card — Day 1 of any path is free in the app.

Day 1 · 15 min
0:0015 min
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