What is hidden connections?

Hidden connections is a concept in personal epistemology: The shortest route between two seemingly unrelated ideas shows how they connect.

Example: You're studying behavioral economics and notice a connection to evolutionary biology — but you can't articulate why. You trace the shortest path through your knowledge graph: behavioral economics → loss aversion → threat detection → survival heuristics → evolutionary biology. Five hops. Each hop is a relationship you already knew. The path was always there — you just never traversed it. Now you have an explicit chain of reasoning you can use, teach, and build on.

This concept is part of Phase 18 (Knowledge Graphs) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for knowledge graphs.