This is the landing page for the NPF/CNI series: a formal hypothesis that repeated poor reasoning habits entrench neural circuits and form belief networks. It includes six canonical papers, four bridge essays, five science communication essays, appendices, and an OSF archive. All materials are open under CC0.

Beliefs don’t stay isolated—they cluster into networks that can become self‑reinforcing and resistant to evidence. This essay introduces cognitive synergy, ideological scaffolding, cross‑domain spillover, and the Composite NPF Index (CNI) as a proposed way to summarise systemic epistemic risk. It also touches on cultural calibration and why context matters.

The Neural Pathway Fallacy describes how repeated poor thinking habits can physically entrench flawed neural circuits. This essay introduces the concept in plain language, explores six common reasoning pitfalls, and explains how they cluster into self‑reinforcing belief networks. It is the first in a series of bridge essays accompanying the NPF/CNI canonical papers.

The Composite NPF Index (CNI) extends the Neural Pathway Fallacy to belief networks, quantifying systemic epistemic risk. This paper presents the CNI formula (weighted sum with normalised weights), normalisation methods (linear, sigmoid with cultural parametrisation), sampling adequacy, and a gradient‑descent weight update (hypothesis). It introduces the neurodiversity provision (autistic resistance to high‑SE NPFs) and positions CNI within the Fractal Entailment Network (FEN