Counterintuitive Ideas

Science fiction is about strange rules, while fantasy is about special people.

If you know who you are, you get a civilizational war, if you don’t know who you are, you get a culture war.

If your boss asks for loyalty, give him integrity. If your boss asks for integrity, give him loyalty.

The appeal of learning through others is that it can be efficient. Books, mentors, case studies all compress years of experience into hours of consumption. But compression has a cost: it assumes a decoder. Without proper tacit knowledge, the message can lose meaning or, in some cases, be actively confused. In these cases, theory isn’t wrong, just o... See more

One of the most intelligent case studies in design is the Chinese tea cup. They’re made without handles simply because if it’s too hot to touch, it’s too hot to drink.

Humans naturally want to add more. Add a cardboard sleeve, add a warning on the outside of the cup, add a handle. The result of all these things never cools down the actual contents.

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“Your garden is not complete until there is nothing else you can take out of it.”

Rest is found in the rebellious acts where work ceases and our minds, bodies and spirits are refreshed.

A razor is a decision rubric that has an element of paradox or counter-intuitiveness to it, and as a result is particularly challenging and costly to apply.