What is Gibson affordances?

Gibson affordances is a concept in personal epistemology: Physical cues in your environment trigger more reliably than mental intentions.

Example: You decide to drink more water. You rely on remembering to do it — and by 3pm you've had one glass. Now place a full water bottle on your desk before you sit down each morning. You don't need to remember. The bottle is there. You drink. Anne Thorndike's 2012 cafeteria study at Massachusetts General Hospital found that simply placing water bottles in baskets near food stations — making water visible where people already stood — increased water sales by 25.8%. Nobody was told to drink more water. The environment said it for them.

This concept is part of Phase 22 (Trigger Design) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for trigger design.