General Thinking & Meta-Models
Section 1
Core Idea
Ribot's law (Théodule Ribot, 1881) states that memory loss follows an inverse temporal gradient: recent memories are destroyed first, while older memories are the most resistant. In neurodegenerative disease, patients forget yesterday before they forget childhood. The broader principle is that deeply encoded, long-held knowledge is structurally stickier than recent information. For founders, this has direct implications: the beliefs your team formed earliest — about culture, market, identity — are the hardest to change, even when the environment has shifted. Early assumptions become load-bearing walls. Ribot's law explains why pivots fail when they contradict founding narratives, why legacy processes outlive their usefulness, and why retraining is harder than training.
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Section 2
How to See It
Culture
You're seeing it when a company's founding-era habits persist long after the context that created them has changed. "We've always done it this way" is Ribot's law operating at the organisational level.
Strategy
You're seeing it when a pivot fails because the team's earliest market assumptions are encoded too deeply to overwrite. The recent strategy deck says one thing; the team's instincts say another.
Personal development
You're seeing it when a founder's earliest mental models — learned in a first job or first company — dominate their decision-making long after they've moved to a different context.
Section 3
How to Use It
Audit your oldest assumptions — the ones so embedded they feel like facts rather than choices. These are the most resistant to update and the most dangerous if the environment has changed. When onboarding new team members, recognise that their prior-company instincts (Ribot's oldest memories) will override your training for months. Design for it.
Decision filter
"Is this belief deeply held because it's been tested recently — or because it was formed early and never questioned?"
As a founder
Identify the founding-era assumptions your organisation still runs on. Stress-test the oldest ones hardest — they're the most resistant to change and the most likely to be outdated. When hiring experienced people, expect their prior-company instincts to persist; design onboarding to surface and address them explicitly.
Section 5
Founders & Leaders
Warren BuffettChairman, Berkshire Hathaway
Buffett has described his earliest investment lessons — learned from Benjamin Graham in the 1950s — as the foundation of everything that followed. Decades later, those principles remain his stickiest mental frameworks, even as he adapted his style (famously shifting from deep value to quality compounders under Munger's influence). Ribot's law explains both the strength and the risk. The strength: deeply encoded principles like margin of safety became load-bearing foundations for a sixty-year career. The risk: early-formed beliefs can become invisible constraints. Buffett himself has acknowledged missing entire sectors (technology) partly because his earliest frameworks didn't include them. For founders, the lesson is dual. Your earliest beliefs will be your most durable — choose them carefully. And audit them periodically, because Ribot's law means they'll resist updating even when the evidence demands it.
Section 7
Connected Models
Reinforces
Path Dependence
Path dependence shows how early choices constrain future options. Ribot's law adds the cognitive layer: early beliefs are structurally stickier, making path dependence self-reinforcing at the individual level.
Reinforces
Status Quo Bias
Status quo bias is the preference for existing states. Ribot's law explains a mechanism: long-held beliefs are neurologically more resistant to change, making the status quo harder to overwrite.
Leads-to
Compounding Knowledge
Compounding knowledge relies on deeply encoded foundational understanding. Ribot's law shows why foundations matter: they are the stickiest layer, and everything built on them inherits their shape.
Section 8
One Key Quote
— Théodule Ribot, Diseases of Memory (1881)"The progressive destruction of memory follows a logical order — it advances from the unstable to the stable."
Section 11
Summary & Further Reading
Ribot's law: older memories resist destruction while recent ones are lost first. Applied to organisations and founders, the earliest beliefs are the stickiest and hardest to update. Audit your oldest assumptions — they're the most resistant to change.
01
Book
Ribot's original work on the temporal gradient of memory loss.
02
Book
On mental models, early-formed beliefs, and the difficulty of updating them.
03
Book
How Buffett's earliest investment principles shaped a six-decade career.