Kairotic sensitivity
Sensing when a system is in phase transition and maximally responsive to intervention. Timing as perception, not luck. Fails in flat stretches; pairs well with grinders.
Open pre-taxonomy · revised continuously
Human capacities that have no name yet. Nominated by readers, tested against four thresholds, kept provisional on purpose.
Why a list
Every taxonomy in the history of science began as a list of things somebody noticed before anybody could explain them. Mendeleev had a table with gaps. Linnaeus had drawers of specimens. Before the periodic table of human capacities can exist, somebody has to collect the specimens: the recurring, recognizable human abilities that no personality test measures and no language has bothered to name.
That is what this page is. It is not a scientific instrument. It is the drawer of specimens that precedes one.
The rules
A nomination is a hypothesis. It earns a place only through evidence, and most will not survive. That is not a failure of the list; it is the method working. To graduate from nominated to entry, a capacity has to clear the same four thresholds set out in the founding essay:
The list
The first five come from the founding essay and have cleared none of the thresholds yet. They are well-shaped hypotheses, nothing more. Each gets a full treatment in the series; the links follow as installments are published.
Sensing when a system is in phase transition and maximally responsive to intervention. Timing as perception, not luck. Fails in flat stretches; pairs well with grinders.
Holding an unresolved problem for years without forcing it closed. Not intelligence, not perseverance; a third thing, and possibly the best-kept predictor of fundamental breakthroughs.
Inducing an inner state in others independent of what is said. The unbundled mechanics of what we vaguely call charisma; probably several capacities wearing one coat.
Continually rewriting one's past into a structure that carries the future. The measurable difference between resilience and a past that shifts like loose gravel.
Seeing what falls between the categories, the residue every classification leaks. Where most scientific revolutions began.
Reader nominations appear here once reviewed. The first ones are being collected now.
Nominate
You have almost certainly known someone with an ability that fits no test and no word. The colleague who always knows which week a decision can actually be made. The friend who can carry a contradiction for a decade. The relative who sees what everyone's categories filter out. That observation is data of the informal kind that precedes every formal taxonomy.
Nominations in any language are welcome. A capacity has to appear across cultures and languages to become an entry, so a nomination in Japanese, Arabic or Spanish is not a translation problem. It is exactly the data the taxonomy needs.
Every nomination is read. Listed nominations credit the nominator by name or initials, with permission. Nominations are reviewed against the four thresholds; most will remain nominated, some will be discussed in the series, few will become entries. Nothing here measures anyone. See the Charter in the founding essay: the map belongs to the mapped, no selection, every classification expires.