psychology

25. Sphexishness:

Army ants follow each other’s pheromone trails to know where to go. Sometimes, they accidentally form a loop, or “ant mill”, circularly following each other until they die of exhaustion:

This exacerbates their problem of downward immobility.

To use a phrase popularised in a famous FT article: great brands are often built obliquely. They are generally a by-product of something (ideals, vision, focus) and not a product of anything.

The frontier also tends to forge tribes that are more democratic and meritocratic (and less status-conscious), have fewer laws and policies, and bias toward empiricism over theory (because theory encodes facts about older environments). All of these cultural institutions help keep tribes more flexible, so they're more able to adapt when change

Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly.

Our memory is in large part the starting point for how we think, how our preferences form, and how we make decisions.

Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.

There’s a saying—I don’t know whose—that an expert is always from out of town. It’s similar to the Bible verse that says no man is a prophet in his own country.

myth that is really just about privilege and stacking the deck with high cards. Adam Grant thoroughly debunked this in Originals and he’s hardly the only one; the focus on risk taking is a product of cognitive bias. Remember what The Streets said—validation is what makes a low straight work—and add in a little boxing wisdom: slow is smooth, smooth