both are true

on holding two conflicting ideas at once

At Stanford’s dy/dx program, founder Tony Xu was asked about the qualities he interviews for at DoorDash. One of the five traits is holding and making sense of opposing ideas. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to fu... See more

Holding Opposing Ideas

both are true: I hold a lot of conflicting beliefs, and have become happier the longer I’ve sat with them and realized that internal conflicts are a fact of life.

There is so much mystique around the creative life. It’s fetishized and coveted and seen as mysterious even by the people who inhabit it. We have a cultural script that says: There’s too much consumption, not enough creation! If you want to be a [tasteful/interesting/admirable/happy] person, you should make more things. But then also: Social media ... See more

Ava • Making Things Is Hard

Bryce Roberts describing Soleio:

The "culture of Soleio” seems to contain a bunch of contradictions — care for craft with an obsession for speed. A clearly massive ambition coupled with a desire to be a “trim boat” that can be lean and focused.

I like to think that I'm both hip and square at the same time, that these two terms aren't irreconcilable, that, in fact, the book is a kind of a reconciliation of those two worlds of thought. So I think it's possible to be a square motorcycle mechanic at the same time a groovy rider, and that this isn't a conflict for anybody. Or it's possible to

There’s a lot of speculation and rhetoric these days about whether AI democratizes creativity or advances it. However, it is abundantly clear to me that both are true.

On the one hand, humanity’s creative confidence for humanity has gone up as people of all ages are able to prompt whatever is in their mind’s eye and express themselves visually. We’... See more

Scott Belsky • The Era of Abstraction & New Creative Tensions

on the shift from being skills-constrained to being imagination-constrained

On the one hand you have — the point you’re making Woz — is that information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable — the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information almost wants to be free because the costs of getting it out is getting lower and lower all of the time. So you have the... See more

Seth Godin • Information wants to be free*

Logic requires that people find universal laws, but outside of scientific fields and once human psychology has a role to play, it is perfectly possible for behavior to become contradictory. A tax rise can cause you to work less because the returns of your labor are lower, or work harder to maintain your present level of disposable wealth. There are... See more