Peter Kaufman's base for universal principles is sample size, not recency. Three buckets, largest to smallest in time: 1. **Inorganic** — ~13.7 billion years — math and physics; rules the universe plays by 2. **Organic** — ~3.5 billion years — biology on Earth; rules life plays by 3. **Human history** — ~20,000 years of recorded behavior; rules humans have played by A statistician's friend is a large, relevant sample. These are the three largest relevant samples humans can access. Munger-style mental models still sit on the same idea: put the base of the pyramid on the oldest, most invariant disciplines. Use the right bucket at the right time. Physics and biology analogies illuminate groups only provisionally; culture has mechanisms (shared ideas, leadership, written memory) those buckets do not fully own. ## Cross-Domain Connections - [[Compounding Applies to Every Self-Reinforcing Resource]] — ideas and knowledge can compound once bucket-three culture stores them - [[History Looks Inevitable Only in Hindsight]] — human-history sample is still thin and path-dependent relative to physics - [[Civilization Decline Is Leadership Failure Not Organism Death]] — bucket-three warning against raw biology analogy - [[Human Nature Changes on Geologic Time]] — third bucket sits on nearly fixed organism-time software ## Source - [[The Three Buckets of Knowledge]] — Farnam Street / Peter Kaufman, 2016-02-16 — https://fs.blog/three-buckets-lessons-of-history/