Cognitive Scaffold

Preparing your thinking workspace

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MENTAL MODEL · M1777

Sturgeon's Law

Sturgeon's Law
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Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-30

CORE DEFINITION

“Ninety percent of everything is crud.” Whether it's science fiction, startup projects, or research papers.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

Quality filtering. Don't be pessimistic because "current movies are terrible." In any era, in any field, the vast majority of output is mediocre. Your task is to focus on finding the 10% gems and ignore the 90% noise.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Theodore Sturgeon's adage: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." It reminds us that most output is mediocre, so we should focus on the 10% that is valuable. It is a sobering agent for quality filtering.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_lawZH · Explicit
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