Philosophy: The Questions Every Other Field Has to Assume
Physicists assume observation reveals reality; doctors assume suffering is bad. None of those assumptions can be tested by the field relying on them — and someone has to examine them.
Concept
First Principles Thinking
Amara's Law: Too Much in Two Years, Too Little in Twenty
The same technology gets overestimated early and underestimated late. Both errors come from drawing a straight line through something that is slow first and rapid afterwards.
Relativity: One Stubborn Fact and Everything That Follows
Light measures the same speed however fast you are moving. Take that seriously and distance and time have to bend — which is why your phone's position fix depends on the theory working.
Loss Aversion: Why ₹1,000 Lost Hurts More Than ₹1,000 Gained
A fair coin flip for equal stakes feels like a bad bet to almost everyone. The asymmetry behind that instinct quietly governs pricing, negotiation, investing, and why reform is so hard.
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.
Confirmation Bias: Why Research Can Make You More Wrong
When evidence agrees with us we ask what it shows. When it disagrees we ask what's wrong with it. Apply that second question to one side only and you can dismantle half the evidence without noticing.
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 Red Queen Hypothesis: Running Hard to Stay Exactly Where You Are
Species that have survived for ten million years go extinct at about the same rate as new ones. That surprising fact explains why your improvements so often buy you nothing.
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.