Every Complex Idea Has a Million Stupid Cousins

Simplicity, I realized, does not lead to laurels.

A unique idea is powerful.

But truly original ideas — if there is such a thing — often struggle to gain traction with people who don’t have any reference point for them.

One alternative to this state of affairs is to ditch the idea, should we be under its sway, that what we need to make our way in the world is simply more information. For one thing, there are practical difficulties: even in cases where more information might be genuinely helpful, it may not be forthcoming when we need it. But, more importantly, som... See more

When the unenlightened ones try to be profound, they draw endless verbal comparisons between this topic, and that topic, which is like this, which is like that; until their graph is fully connected and also totally useless. The remedy is specific knowledge and in-depth study. When you understand things in detail, you can see how they are not alike,

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