What is negative feedback loops?

Negative feedback loops is a concept in personal epistemology: Self-correcting loops maintain balance by countering deviations.

Example: Your thermostat detects the room is 3 degrees above the set point. It activates the air conditioning, which cools the room. Once the temperature drops to the target, the cooling shuts off. No one decides this. The loop detects a deviation, produces the opposite force, and returns the system to its set point. Every negative feedback loop in nature, engineering, and cognition follows this same structure: measure, compare, correct.

This concept is part of Phase 24 (Feedback Loops) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for feedback loops.