Concept
Capability–Understanding Gap
The distance between what a civilisation is already able to do and how well it understands the object of its intervention, the consequences of it, and the environment in which it will act.
Capability and understanding do not grow together. Capability tends to come first, because it is easier to verify, to sell and to see.
The gap is not in itself a catastrophe; it is the appearance of new intellectual debt. Civilisation has gained a new power and now has to grow the matching layer of understanding.
This is the movement’s central concept: almost every other concept it uses is either a refinement of this one or a consequence of it.