These elementary ideas, so often overlooked, are from multiple disciplines:

The pursuit of understanding fuels meaning and adaptation, but this understanding, by itself, is not enough. Understanding only becomes useful when we adjust our behavior and actions accordingly.

Most geniuses—especially those who lead others—prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities. » Andy Benoit6

It may seem counterintuitive, to work on developing knowledge that is available to everyone, but the universe works in the same way no matter where you are in it.

As Confucius said, “A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.”

The further we are from the feedback of the decisions, the easier it is to convince ourselves that we are right and avoid the challenge, the pain, of updating our views.

Organizations over a certain size often remove us from the direct consequences of our decisions.

The further we are from the results of our decisions, the easier it is to keep our current views rather than update them.

Many of us tend to have too much invested in our opinions of ourselves to see the world’s feedback—the feedback we need to update our beliefs about reality. This creates a profound ignorance that keeps us banging our head against the wall over and over again. Our inability to learn from the world because of our ego happens for many reasons, but two