October 2026
February 2026
- Feb 4, 2026ConceptsTradeoffs as a Universal LawSix kinds of tradeoff (resource, design, temporal, quality-quantity, exploration-exploitation, risk-return), the questions that surface hidden ones, and six frameworks for choosing. The opening case is the one most people get wrong: American automakers read Toyota's low cost, high quality and fast delivery as proof the tradeoff was gone, when Toyota had traded flexibility, inventory buffers and quick design changes to get there.
- Feb 3, 2026ConceptsEconomic Laws Explained SimplyGneezy and Rustichini's 2000 study added a fine for late pickup at Israeli daycare centers. Late arrivals roughly doubled, and did not return to earlier levels after the fine was removed. The charge turned an obligation into a purchasable option and destroyed a stronger non-monetary incentive. Eight principles in plain language: scarcity, opportunity cost, incentives, marginal thinking, supply and demand, comparative advantage, diminishing returns, and prices as information.
- Feb 3, 2026ConceptsCognitive Principles That Shape DecisionsEight constraints that govern how people actually decide, from Simon's bounded rationality and Cowan's revision of working memory capacity down to roughly four items, through cognitive load, attention scarcity, and dual process theory. Johnson and Goldstein's study in Science shows what follows: opt-out countries reached organ donation rates of 85 to 99 percent while opt-in countries managed 4 to 28 percent, with broadly similar populations and attitudes.
- Feb 2, 2026ConceptsThe Limits of RulesRules fail in recognizable ways: they cannot cover infinite situations, they get gamed, they ignore context, they pile up, and they still need judgment to interpret. Andrew Haldane's 2012 Jackson Hole speech traced Basel from roughly 30 pages to about 347 and then 616, and argued a simple leverage constraint predicted which banks failed better than the risk-weighted version. The article sets out where rules genuinely work and where principles serve better.
January 2026
- Jan 31, 2026ConceptsWhat Is a Principle and Why It MattersRules cover anticipated situations; principles explain why things work, so they transfer to situations no rulebook predicted. The article distinguishes principles from tactics and values, gives four tests for a genuine principle, and shows why competing principles need judgment. Chi, Feltovich and Glaser's 1981 study found novices grouped physics problems by surface features, while experts grouped them by underlying principles.
- Jan 29, 2026ConceptsWhy Principles Outlast TacticsThe case for learning why something works rather than memorizing what to do, with four methods for extracting a principle from a tactic: ask why repeatedly, find the pattern across tactics that succeed, test it in another domain, and name the mechanism. The durability claim is checked against a review of 363 New England Journal of Medicine articles testing established practice, of which 146, about 40%, proved to be reversals.
- Jan 29, 2026ConceptsWhy Laws Break When Context ChangesSix kinds of context change that invalidate a working principle, three warning signs that context has shifted, and a hierarchy showing which rules survive travel. The clearest case is McNamara applying Drucker's Management by Objectives to the Vietnam War: body count became the measure of progress because it was quantifiable, and units under that pressure falsified reports and counted civilian casualties as combatants.
December 2025
December 2023
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