Just as there are thought-terminating clichés, there are thought-terminating concepts - ideas people accept as unambiguously good, or at least not bad. Here are a few.
Efficiency
Efficient is the opposite of flexible, i.e. brittle. There is such a thing as over-optimized.
I’m not talking about waste. People conflate “efficient” with “not wasteful” but they’re different. It’s more efficient to walk in a straight line than to zig-zag your way to your destination, everyone is aware. We’re talking about points along the production-possibility frontier here.
Shoutout to Taleb and Goldratt.
Transparency
Full transparency is a police state. We got it right.
Congressional hearings on CSPAN are theater and not truth-revealing. High-stakes bargaining does not happen in public. “Saving face” exists because others are watching. The voting booth is private, enjoyably so.
Related: legibility. (If you hear someone use this word outside the context of handwriting, they have read James C. Scott or his derivatives.)
Democracy
“Oooh hot take!” I can hear you thinking it now.
Think about the last group project you ever did. Nobody wants design by committee. Condo boards, HOAs, Community Boards in NYC, all a nightmare. Veto points against housing, rail, desalination are killing us.
No surprise SDS couldn’t tell which way the wind blew.
Bearish on DAOs, bullish on companies.
Detail
Forests, trees etc. Each detail makes each other detail less memorable.
No use in a 1:1 map. Abstraction is lossy and valuable.
Apply 80/20 rule until satisficed. Ignorance is bliss.