Idea Surplus Disorder #89

Welcome to the penultimate edition of 2024's Idea Surplus Disorder.

I will take a week off next week to work on something new: a "best of" edition that pulls together my favorite ideas, the "funnest" things I've found, and the coolest things we've learned at Filament in 2024.

Until then, here's what's in this week's edition: the death of critical thinking, the problems with strategy consulting, culture decks, robot replacements, obstetricians, Chinese cuisines, American cartoons, rocket-engine fireplaces, and more.

I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!

Ideas + Insights

Every year, Tom Whitwell's 52 Things I Learned makes the rounds. These are my favorites from his 2024 edition:

• Film studios now add CGI effects to behind-the-scenes footage to hide how much CGI has been used to make the film.
• Powerful showers are more energy-efficient and more water-efficient than weak showers.
• Photographs of sporting events in the 1960s–70s have a blue haze in the background that’s absent in modern photos. It’s because everyone was smoking in the arena.
• People whose surnames start with U, V, W, X, Y or Z tend to get grades 0.6% lower than people with A-to-E surnames. Modern learning management systems sort papers alphabetically before they’re marked, so those at the bottom are always seen last, by tired, grumpy markers. A few teachers flip the default setting and mark Z to A, and their results are reversed.

The death of critical thinking:

Reading is more than a utilitarian skill. It exposes us to new ideas, cultures, and experiences. Books allow us to imagine other lives, expanding our worldviews. Deep, thoughtful reading exercises our mental capacities. It develops focus, analytical skills, and abstract thinking. Reading builds empathy and compassion. Through stories, we gain emotional insights into the human condition. An erosion of critical reading hinders cognitive growth and emotional intelligence. […]

No algorithm can replace human wisdom and analysis. But no algorithm will need to if we have abandoned — wholesale — a millennium of critical reading and thinking skills. […]

The problem with hiring a "strategy consulting firm" to help you be innovative:

I frequently see ‘strategy consulting firm’ proposals and workplans. In almost every case (actually, I can’t think of one where it isn’t the case), a key selling point is that they have worked for many (if not most) of the direct competitors of the potential client. That is front and center in their pitches. They are explicitly (not elliptically) telling the potential client that they are going to bring to bear the things they have learned from working for its direct competitors.

But if you are in (say) the top quintile of the industry, you are an idiot if you hire a ‘strategy consulting firm’ that sells you based on its industry experience. All you are doing is facilitating your competitors to catch up to you and will gain very little useful from the small number of players above you — most of whom (though clearly not all) are probably smart enough to not hire a ‘strategy consulting firm.’

Here's a great list of company culture decks.

To break a habit, use Don't and not Can't:

“Don’t” is a declarative statement about what kind of a person you are. When you say you “don’t” do something you give yourself the power to have made the decision not to do that thing. When you say “can’t” it feels as though some external force is telling you you shouldn’t be doing this thing. The way human motivation works and the way human decision making works is that we do much better when it’s something that feels like it arises within us. We don’t like being told what we can and can’t do.

What to Do If Your Boss Gets Distracted by Every New Thing has some good tips like this one:

Start all meetings with an anchoring statement that sets context. It can be as simple as, “Today we’re going to cover the Blue, Green, and Red initiatives. Any great ideas we have for anything else will be recorded and taken up in the appropriate staff/strategy/development meetings.” Make sure at least one attendee is responsible for recording, and at least one will be vigilant for digressions.

Being a facilitator is like being a director (which is like being an obstetrician):

You are the obstetrician. You are not the parent of this child we call the play. You are present at its birth for clinical reasons, like a doctor or a midwife. Your job most of the time is simply to do no harm. When something does go wrong, however, your awareness that something is awry – and your clinical intervention to correct it – can determine whether the child will thrive or suffer, live or die.

I recently came back to Kevin Kelly's The Inevitable and found his Seven Stages of Robot Replacement still rings true in the age of AI:

In the coming years, our relationships with robots (AI) will become ever more complex. But already a recurring pattern is emerging. No matter what your current job or your salary, you will progress through a predictable cycle of denial again and again:

1. A robot/computer cannot possibly do the tasks I do.
2. [Later.] OK, it can do a lot of those tasks, but it can't do everything I do.
3. [Later.] OK, it can do everything I do, except it needs me when it breaks down, which is often.
4. [Later.] OK, it operates flawlessly on routine stuff, but I need to train it for new tasks.
5. [Later.] OK, OK, it can have my old boring job, because it's obvious that was not a job that humans were meant to do.
6. [Later.] Wow, now that robots are doing my old job, my new job is much more interesting and pays more!
7. [Later.] I am so glad a robot/computer cannot possibly do what I do now
8. [Repeat.]

Fun Finds

• A classic: George Orwell's Why I Write
• NASA's rocket-engine fireplace
• Bongo is like Wordle, but with strategy.
• Here's a great holiday gift guide.
• One perfect frame shares a still from classic American cartoons.
• In defense of non-literal "literally"
• All 63 cuisines of China

Words of Wisdom

“I have never seen ordinary effort lead to extraordinary results.” – Alexandr Wang

"The culture of an organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate." – Steve Gruenert

"'Intelligence' is whatever machines haven't done yet." – Larry Tessler

"The rich buy time, the poor buy stuff, ambitious people buy skills, and lazy people buy distractions." – Alex Hormozi

“Theorizing is not nearly as effective as trying.” – Charles F. Kettering

"What makes us feel liberated is not total freedom, but rather living in a set of limitations that we have created and prescribed for ourselves." – Andrea Zittel