25 Useful Ideas for 2025

5. Region-Beta Paradox:

Often we fail to improve our lives simply because things don't get bad enough. If your new job is hell, you’ll leave it, but if it’s just unsatisfying, you’ll likely grind it out. Thus, small problems often threaten our quality of life more than big ones.

15. Goal Dilution Effect:

We assume that the more arguments we give, the better our case. In reality, our weakest arguments dilute the strongest. Generally, you’ll only be as convincing as your worst point, so instead of making as many arguments as you can, make only the best.

11. Explanatory Inversion:

Questions rest on unexamined assumptions, so always try flipping them. For instance, don’t just ask why there is poverty, ask why there is prosperity. This helps you realize poverty is the norm and the lack of it is the thing that needs to be explained.

20. Sheepskin Effect:

Employers value qualifications more than education. This is because the purpose of the education system is not actually to educate people, but to sort the “wheat” (worker bees) from the “chaff” (slackers, dreamers). It’s why students are taught things they’ll never use — what they learn isn’t as important as demonstrating they can

17. Blue Dot Effect:

The more we solve our problems, the more we widen the definition of “problem” so that our number of problems remains constant. So don’t expect a life without problems. Progress doesn’t mean reducing your quantity of struggles, but increasing their quality. The goal of life is to trade bad problems for better ones.

25. Sphexishness:

Army ants follow each other’s pheromone trails to know where to go. Sometimes, they accidentally form a loop, or “ant mill”, circularly following each other until they die of exhaustion: