Baseline

In CF, your baseline is the knowledge and skill you have already finished learning: the stuff you can do successfully and, crucially, can check your own work on with confidence and ease. Walking is a baseline skill — you reliably judge whether you tripped, went too slow, or arrived at point B. The defining test is not “have I read about it” but “can I do it successfully and detect my own errors when I do.”

The baseline matters because it is the launch point for learning. CF rejects trying to learn something hard and complex directly, as a separate body of knowledge. Instead you identify what you can already do, then take one small step beyond it — see incremental progress. A good step overlaps heavily with the baseline so that most of your error-detection knowledge carries over and only one new thing can go wrong, keeping your success rate high. Temple’s “one shoe” example: walking with one shoe is harder, but 95% of your walking judgment still applies.

CF stresses testing your beliefs about the baseline. People routinely assume something is within their competency, never actually do it, and would fail if they tried. So the baseline must be established by real successes, not self-image. A reliable sign you are reaching past your baseline: you cannot check your own work, so you depend on others to find your errors. The fix is to step back to where self-checking is easy and rebuild from there.