Inversion: Avoiding stupidity is easier than trying to be brilliant. Instead of asking, “How can I help my company?” you should ask, “What’s hurting my company the most and how can I avoid it?” Identify obvious failure points, and steer clear of them.
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- [note::Reminds me of a pre-mortem/murphyjitsu]

Theory of Constraints: A system is only as strong as its weakest point. Focus on the bottleneck. Counterintuitively, if you break down the entire system and optimize each component individually, you’ll lower the effectiveness of the system. Optimize the entire system instead.
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Preference Falsification: People lie about their true opinions and conform to socially acceptable preferences instead. In private they’ll say one thing. In public, they’ll say another.
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- [note::Reminds me of group think, pluralistic ignorance, and false enforcement.]

Faustian Bargain
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- [note::Basically, compromising on morals/values to gain something else (e.g. power, knowledge, wealth, etc)]

Mimetic Theory of Desire
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- [note::"People want what other people want"]

Talented people are good at hitting targets others can’t hit, but geniuses find targets others can’t see.
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- [note::Not sure if "talent" and "genius" are the right words hear. I think this is more about perspective (i.e. "seeing the forest for the trees") as opposed to intellect/skill.]

Avoid competition. Stop copying what everybody else is doing. If you work at a for-profit company, work on problems that would not otherwise be solved. If you’re at a non-profit, fix unpopular problems. Life is easier when you don’t compete.
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- [note::The easiest problems to make an impact on are the ones that no one is thinking about.]

The structure of the Internet pulls people away from age-old wisdom.
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Demand Curves Slope Down: The harder something is to do, the fewer people will do it. For example, raise the price of a product and fewer people will buy it. Lower the price and more people will buy it. Economics 101.
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Look for Things That Don’t Make Sense: The world always makes sense. But it can be confusing. When it is, your model of the world is wrong. So, things that don’t make sense are a learning opportunity.
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Russell Conjugation: Journalists often change the meaning of a sentence by replacing one word with a synonym that implies a different meaning. For example, the same person can support an estate tax but oppose a death tax — even though they are the same thing.
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- [note::I'd like to be more weary of how things are phrased - it might have a strong influence in how I view them!]

Opportunity Cost
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Overton Window: You can control thought without limiting speech. You can do it by defining the limits of acceptable thought while allowing for lively debate within these barriers.
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Planck’s Principle: Science doesn’t progress because people change their views. Rather, each new generation of scientists has different views. As old generations pass away, new ideas are accepted and the scientific consensus changes.
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- [note::Are there any meta-scientists trying to mitigate this issue? I love the other commenter's phrasing: "science advances one coffin at a time."
How can we create mechanisms and align incentives to make sure the best ideas, and not just the those promoted by the most well-known scienists, rise to the top?]

Bike-Shed Effect: A group of people working on a project will fight over the most trivial ideas. They’ll ignore what’s complicated. They’ll focus too much on easy-to-understand ideas at the expense of important, but hard to talk about ideas.
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- [note::I like the author's way of defining this i.e. "hard to talk about/communicate"]

Table Selection: This idea comes from poker, where you’re advised to choose your opponents carefully. That means you shouldn’t compete against the best people. You don’t need to get good at doing difficult things if you get good at avoiding difficult things. If you want to win, pick an easy table and nail your execution.
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- [note::Conversely: If you actually want to advance in your skills, it's often best to choose a "table" where the people in it are much better, smarter, and more accomplished than you.
Sometimes, feeling inadequate is the best indicator that you're on the right level - Z value - relative to your skills (provided the place - X and Y value - is actually right for you).]

Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
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- [note::Be extremely weary of metrics - sometimes they don't represent reality and can often produce incentives that result in negative outcomes.]

Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.
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- [note::I should mount this to my wall.]

Hock Principle: Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.
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- [note::Meh. "Simple" and "clear purpose" can often at odds with each other. What you should teach is the thinking/motivation behind a principle, so people can understand the reasoning underlying the principles and adapt it successfully to a wide variety of contexts.]

Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available. People don’t want to look like they’re lazy, so they find extra tasks to tackle, even if they’re trivial.
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The Paradox of Specificity: Focus isn’t as constraining as it seems. In the age of the Internet, when everybody has Google search and personalized social media feeds, differentiation is free marketing.
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Occam’s Razor: If there are multiple explanations for why something happened and they are equally persuasive, assume the simplest one is true.
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Hickam’s Dictum: The opposite of Occam’s Razor. In a complex system, problems usually have more than one cause.
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- [note::Never heard of this corollary to Occam's Razor. Interesting!]

Hormesis: A low dose of something can have the opposite effect of a high dose. A little bit of stress wakes you up, but a lot of stress is bad for you. Lifting weights for 30 minutes per day is good for you, but lifting weights for 6 hours per day will destroy your muscles. Stress yourself, but not too much.
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- [note::Never knew there was a term for this! Love it when that happens (e.g. Homophily)]