Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

Effective communication will always require some degree of irrationality in its creation because if it’s perfectly rational it becomes, like water, entirely lacking in flavour. This explains why working with an advertising agency can be frustrating: it is difficult to produce good advertising, but good advertising is only good because it is difficu

Complementary talent is far more valuable than conformist talent.

confirmation bias, which leads people to seek out and absorb only that information which supports an existing belief.

is interesting to consider how many more benign behaviours might be made possible through semantic invention.

‘The term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. […] Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. Plates are for pushing.

Yet magic does still exist – it is found in the fields of psychology, biology and the science of perception, rather than in physics and chemistry. And it can be created.

Bits deliver information, but costliness carries meaning.

We notice and attach significance and meaning to those things that deviate from narrow, economic common sense, precisely because they deviate from it.

we generally find it easier to buy things that serve a single purpose.