unexplainable

Why are we drawn to cheap, re-usable, and safe language? The pressure to use modular Swedish furniture is similar to the pressure online writers face. We want quick results, we cushion our words, and we crave to be accepted.

I find explaining any actually interesting idea usually requires explaining like 5 subsidiary ideas. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky it’s like 25 and either they’re ready for a three hour lecture or you’re not going to succeed.

Articulating ideas as simply as possible is attractive, not least because getting people to agree with us is attractive. But we have a tendency to overrate ideas that can be shared easily, with the most apparent advantages. By constant simplifying, we may be lulled into abridging our own ideas a little too much, and sooner or later our audience—or ... See more

“The next _____” “[existing thing] (eg Uber) for x” Almost always wrong and uninteresting Build something that can’t be easily analogized

Many people who are talented in their various fields have access to insight they can’t share with others. They simply see something we can’t. They try to describe it—picture any Paris Review interview—and often hearing them talk about their process is interesting and informative. But they’re unable to describe the core thing—what gives them the sto... See more

New discoveries often have to be conceived initially as variations of existing things,

even by their discoverers

, because there isn't yet the conceptual vocabulary to express them.