provocations
provocative ideas, musings, and statements to mull on
sari and
provocations
what is ine idea you’d defend like this?
The “drowning child” thought experiment involves seeing a child drowning in a pond on your way to work. Most people would jump in the pond to save the child, not thinking twice about the laundry bill from getting their clothes dirty. And yet, the amount of dollars spent on the dry cleaning bill could be spent on saving a child from starvation in a... See more
Erik Hoel • EconTalk on Apple Podcasts
The fork on your plate isn’t inevitable—it’s propaganda. Its design has been polished by centuries of iteration, yes, but also by centuries of forgetting. We stopped asking why a fork looks the way it does because it became too familiar to question. It’s not a tool anymore; it’s a dogma.
But supernormal isn’t about inevitability. It’s about normalization. When something becomes so ubiquitous, so embedded in daily life, it disappears from view. That’s not just true for objects—it’s true for the systems we live by. Markets, money, time.
Founders love ambitious deadlines. But great execution comes from ambitious goals with flexible timelines. Let the work define the schedule, not the other way around.
Hiten Shahx.com"When it comes to utility and efficiency, we are misanthropists. We actually kind of hate other humans." - @cpaik, partner @PaceCap
"When you're in an Uber and (the driver) starts talking to you, you wish you were in a Waymo."
"We are actually very happy with humans being removed from these... See more
TBPNx.comThis is the paradox of our time: the very tools designed to free us from labor are trapping us in an endless cycle of escalating work. As our productivity increases, our standards and expectations rise even faster, creating a psychological Jevons Paradox that threatens to consume our humanity in the pursuit of ever-greater output. We become victims... See more
Tina He • Jevons Paradox: A personal perspective
Do ideas really occur in chains, or is the lineal structure imposed on them by scholars and philosophers? How is the world of logic, which eschews “circular argument” related to a world in which circular trains of causation are the rule rather than the expectation? (G. Bateson, 2002, p.18)
Both True: “The customer is always right” and “The audience doesn’t know what they want”
Wild Hope: Indy Johar Keynote
youtube.comMutually-assured thriving