Epistemology & Logic

Hanlon's Razor: Most Slights Were Never Aimed at You

The meeting you weren't invited to has two explanations that fit equally well. Preferring the boring one isn't generosity — it's what happens when you count how much each explanation assumes.

Occam's Razor: Why Assumptions Are Expensive

The colleague who ignored your email is probably not conspiring against you. The principle behind that judgement is arithmetic, not optimism — and it is misquoted more than almost any other rule of thought.

First Principles Thinking: Separating Physics From Habit

A pallet's dimensions are not a fact about pallets. Most of what looks like a constraint is an inherited decision — and telling the two apart is where the method earns its cost.

The Map Is Not the Territory: Every Model Earns Its Keep by Lying

A map showing everything would be the size of the city and useless. Models work by discarding detail — the error is forgetting which detail, and when you left the range where it didn't matter.

Inversion: The Easier List Is the Backwards One

Ask how to be a good manager and you get admirable vagueness. Ask what would make you a terrible one and the answers are specific, short, and something you can act on tomorrow.