What will sharpen your thinking today:

• Makes-You-Think Tweet: Write, write, write

• Mind-Expanding Concept: Alder’s Razor

• Cool Quote or Question: Scale matters

• High-Signal Content: Steve Jobs on consulting

Makes-You-Think Tweet

Mind-Expanding Concept

Alder’s Razor (aka Newton's flaming laser sword)

First impression: Yep, that makes sense. Why discuss things that can't be hashed out at the end? What a waste of time. My second pass was: wait, that doesn't make sense at all. What about all philosophical questions or political science debates? They are useful, even though things can’t be proven on a physics level. But then again, how many useless discussions I've been part of where one side has an opinion and the other disagrees, and the ping pong seems endless?

After ruminating on it, I’ve adopted an approach to discuss any topic while avoiding the speaking past each other death spiral. What is it? I point out (in my head or out loud) which type of proposition is being discussed and make the appropriate adjustments in approach. Three types of propositions:

• Proposition that can't be settled by experiment. For these, there's a cap to how confident you can be about your position. You're relying on logic, at most. But the risk of abandoning it to somewhat blindly defend your position is high. You improve your position by tightening your logic, but remember that language is more malleable than the physical world.

• Proposition that can, at least in theory, be settled by experiment, but it's not feasible in practice, it hasn't been done or we don't know the evidence. Ok. Things are warming up. There's no evidence, so we're still cautious. But there's at least a path to get it. If you manage to articulate how an experiment would be performed to settle the issue, that's fantastic. Just by doing so, you'd set an appropriate stage for the discussion. Ninja bomb pro-tip: if you want to terminate a discussion, ask mid-way what evidence would confirm/disconfirm your counterpart's position. This will kill 79% of useless debates.

• Proposition that can be settled by experiment, it was already done and we know the evidence. These are rare, but fun. So when it happens, make sure to savor it. Here you'd be discussing the interpretation of the evidence and how bulletproof and well-design the experiment was. Almost because of its nature, these discussions require a minimum level of expertise in the topic. Confidence levels can be high, even though disagreements about nuances are normal.

Feasible in real life? Maybe. I’ll report back.

Cool Quote or Question

Scale matters.

High-Signal Content

I used to be a consultant myself. It was an interesting intense experience and I learned useful skills but it just wasn't for me. In the end, the main reason to leave it was that I wanted more "depth". Doing something, not just strategizing, and facing the consequences of my decisions was a key ingredient of getting this depth. I wanted to "taste the ".

Three related concepts come to mind:

• Reality has a surprising amount of details. It's "surprising" because we tend to underestimate the amount of it. Getting enough exposure to parse the details that matter from those that don't take time and surface area. Deeply understanding an industry or a company is very different from knowing enough to concatenate logical arguments and make plausible recommendations.

• The map is not the territory. You can't claim to understand a business just by looking at its financials. Or by talking to half-dozen executives for a couple of months. Maps are useful but limited, by definition. I wanted to explore a territory or at least have a more complete map of one.

• Skin in the game. If you don't bear the consequences of a recommendation or decision, how can you know that it worked? And hence, how would you know if you're making good calls over time?

This pairs well with one of the best monologues in cinema, that I shared here.

See you next week,

Filipe