The 007s — Week 5

Piece of digital artwork by White Lotus

This week I re-read the Power of Habit (I seldom do this), finished reading The Great Mental Models and also joined the Wordle cult. This time, the 007s are 7 concepts that I came across through the books, primarily.

• The Icarus Paradox: In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the creator of the Labyrinth. In order to escape a towering prison, Daedalus invented wings made of wax and feathers. Enamoured of his newfound ability to fly, Icarus ignored warnings not to fly too close to the sun. Upon getting close to the sun, the beeswax melted, his wings fell off, and he plummeted to his death. This tale forms the Icarus Paradox: A parallel has been drawn between Icarus’ approach and that of successful companies, which on becoming successful get overconfident and blind to the dangers that other developments can pose to them. Fact: When you take the Fortune 100 companies in 1966 and compare it with the Fortune 100 in 2006, 66 of the companies have ceased to exist anymore.

• Maillard Reaction: Also known as the browning reaction Maillard reaction is what makes food more enticing to us humans, encouraging us to dig into a steak, drink a coffee, or chug a beer. Unlike all the other omnivores this earth bears, humans no longer tend to find a chunk of raw meat particularly appetizing. But if that same piece of meat is ground up, formed into patties, and seared on a flame — it instantly is considered palatable. Named after Louis Camille Maillard, this concept explains how sugar and amino acids in foods such as meat and bread combine to create aroma and flavours — which vary from food type, the temperature of cooking and cooking time.
• Trolley problem: Judith Thomson, a philosopher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology coined the term: trolley problem, which is a thought experiment in ethics about a fictional scenario in which an onlooker has the choice to save 5 people in danger of being hit by a trolley, by diverting the trolley to kill just 1 person. In terms of first principles, this problem is about making choices when there are no ideal choices: one is posed with the conundrum of whether moral decisions should be based on outcomes or the manner in which they are achieved.

• Inversion: The German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi often solved difficult problems by following a simple strategy: man muss immer umkehren or loosely translated, invert, always invert. The goal of Inversion is to envision the negative things that could happen in life. This is based on the understanding that many hard problems are best solved when they are addressed backwards. Inversion often forces you to uncover hidden beliefs about the problem you are trying to solve. For example, if one wants to improve innovation in your organization, through inversion you will first think of all the things you could do to discourage innovation and you would design intervention, to always avoid those things.

• Occam’s Razor: Occam’s razor is a principle stated by the philosopher William of Ockham (1285–1347/49): plurality should not be posited without necessity. The principle gives precedence to simplicity: of two competing theories, the simpler explanation that makes the fewest assumptions is to be preferred. The principle however does not explain which one of the two is actually true — but is used as a rule of thumb for philosophers when choosing between different models and explanations to understand complex problems.

• Bayes Rule: Bayes theorem is named after the 18th century English minister Thomas Bayes whose essays concerned how we should adjust probabilities when we encounter new data. Bayes rule helps us calculate the conditional probability which measures the probability of an event, given that another event has occurred. Knowing the exact math of probability calculations is not the key to understanding Bayesian thinking. More critical is one’s ability and desire to assign probabilities of truth and accuracy to anything one knows and then be willing to update those probabilities when new information comes in.

• First Principle Thinking: Thinking about a problem in first principles is ruling out shared beliefs (anything that is not the law of nature is a shared belief. First-principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated problems and unleash creative possibility. Sometimes called reasoning from first principles, the idea is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up. For example: when people claim they do not have a good memory, taking the first-principles approach would mean asking how much information they can physically store in our minds.