Mapping Mental Moves
How to think different, on demand
Is there a method that generates novel (to me) thoughts?
I wanted one, so I made one.
I think in systems, so it helps me to know what kinds of thoughts are possible.
A map lets me search, choose, and combine moves deliberately. Naming them lets an LLM suggest or even automate them.
What is a mental move?
A mental move is a way to refer to a type, category, or kind of thought. Mental moves are actions the brain can take, the cognitive equivalent of “bend finger”, “make fist”, “bicep curl”, or “push jerk”.
A mental move is:
Internal (no muscle required)
General (repeatable and available in any domain)
Atomic (cannot be decomposed to smaller named moves)
Dimensionalization is a mental move. So are logical fallacies, brainstorming, socratic questioning, and root cause analysis. How many more are there?
The cube: Tier, Genre, and Substrate
Identify a mental move by its position on three dimensions:
Tier (abstraction level)
Sensory: raw perception, direct impressions
Simulation: models of scenes and events
Steering: goals and strategies
System: abstractions, mappings, and gears
Synthesis: coherence checks and epistemic audits
Substrate (mental object type)
verbal, visual, emotional, social, kinesthetic, symbolic, somatic, spatial
Genre (mental action family)
remembering, attending, imagining, modeling, evaluating, reasoning, abstracting, controlling, communicating, learning, auditing, navigating frames
5 tiers x 8 substrates x 12 genres = 480 cells1. Each cell is a distinct mental move.
Suppose these are the buttons the brain can push: I want to be able to locate and consciously press each one.
Dimensionalization as proof-of-concept
I used to mumble “I’m going to do the thing where I figure out the attributes that are important to me and rank my options on each attribute so I can make a decision”.
Naming that dimensionalization makes it possible to outsource the operation to an LLM: “dimensionalize my new car purchase”.
I wanted to expose other unnamed moves worth discovering, so o3 and I built this cube. Now:
Tier 4 • Symbolic • Abstracting → Dimensionalization
To find related moves, we can search for other Tier 4 Abstracting moves (across Substrates), other Tier 4 Symbolic moves (across Genres), or other Symbolic Abstracting moves (across Tiers).
What a mental move feels like
Reading a spicy tweet from not-my-tribe, I feel a twitch of irritation. Why?
Register Shift (Tier 1, Verbal, Navigating Frames): unconsciously shift tone or linguistic style based on perceived context.
I’m automatically hearing it in the voice of an enemy.
What should I do about it? Draft a reply? Doomscroll on? Turn off my phone?
Frame Flag (Tier 5, Verbal, Navigating Frames): name the lens I’m currently in.
“Of course, I’m being trolled.” Irritation is now exasperation. Time to go to bed.
More examples below2.
LLM synergy: make it generative
Input: “Give me a Tier 2 Kinesthetic Evaluating move.”
“effort-felt balance” — scan body while imagining each choice; pick the one where tension and energy feel in alignment.
Input: “Give me a Tier 5 Symbolic Learning move.”
“schema refactor” — consciously rework the internal structure of a concept after discovering a better organizing principle.
Input: “Give me a Tier 3 Spatial Attending move.”
“zone scan” — deliberately sweep attention across physical or imagined space to assess readiness, unease, or opportunity.
With every cell labeled, I can now request new moves by constraint, or generate compositional variants. Just reference this post, and you can ask your LLM to do it too.
Coda
Every useful thought pattern should have a name. That way I can practice it, improve it, remix it, and scale it. I want a manual for the mind controller.
Not exhaustive, hopefully useful
Examples (all generated by o3)
1. stuck indoors on a rainy weekend
T1 imagining kinesthetic — body play sketch: simulate physical games with available props.
T3 modeling social — co-play storyboard: plan 3 mini-games aligned with kid energy levels.
T4 abstracting spatial — space reset: reimagine the apartment as zones (jungle, stage, lab).
2. lonely while friends are traveling
T4 communicating verbal — ritual dispatch: send a micro-story or image to the group chat.
T2 remembering emotional — shared joy recall: relive a vivid, embodied past hangout.
T5 navigating frames social — friendship lattice view: reflect on relationship strength outside presence.
3. inconsolable baby at 3 a.m.
T2 modeling somatic — need-pattern guess: run through familiar cause schema (wet, gas, too hot).
T1 attending somatic — pulse feel: scan baby tension patterns vs baseline.
T3 controlling kinesthetic — rocking variant fork: test tempo + axis combinations to soothe.
4. decision paralysis over job offer
T4 evaluating symbolic — criteria matrix: build axis table (pay, growth, mission).
T5 reasoning emotional — inner signal contrast: visualize yourself at each job and scan felt-sense.
T3 modeling verbal — counterfactual story: narrate future selves under each path.
5. mid-meeting brain fog
T1 attending symbolic — variable highlight: mentally bold the term that matters now.
T3 controlling verbal — rephrase directive: silently issue new internal instruction.
T5 auditing verbal — structure echo: check if what you’re hearing matches the claimed shape.
6. spiraling from a small critique
T1 remembering emotional — felt mismatch recall: name past overreactions.
T2 modeling social — mind model debug: simulate what the critic probably meant.
T5 auditing emotional — confidence echo: say belief to self, notice wobble.
7. procrastinating on writing
T3 controlling verbal — inner directive: frame and fire 20-min writing order.
T2 evaluating emotional — desire surface: notice if block is boredom, fear, or fatigue.
T5 abstracting symbolic — output atomize: break concept into publishable shards.
8. stuck in a family conflict
T4 modeling visual — system diagram: draw arrows and feedback loops.
T2 attending emotional — heatmap scan: locate the high-intensity narrative points.
T5 navigating frames verbal — value context tag: notice if conflict is moral vs pragmatic vs aesthetic.
9. persuasion failure with a smart skeptic
T3 reasoning verbal — evidence trail trace: follow your own causal thread and find weak links.
T2 communicating social — empathy signal: restate their best point better than they can.
T5 auditing symbolic — premise slot check: flag the default assumptions they never questioned.
10. caught in a loop of doomscrolling
T1 attending visual — scroll interrupt ping: feel for image-repeat and snap back.
T3 controlling emotional — valence redirect: pair action (close app) to emotion shift.
T5 navigating frames symbolic — attention economy tag: mentally label “this is for their gain, not mine.”