Miyamoto Musashi killed his first man at thirteen. By the time he wrote The Book of Five Rings, Japan’s most legendary swordsman had fought over sixty duels and never lost. His advice on conflict strips away every comfortable illusion we hold about human nature. And nowhere does he savage our modern sensibilities more than in […]
Your Empathy is Your Weakness: Miyamoto Musashi’s Brutal Truths on Conflict Read More »
Francis Bacon never had to sit through a business meeting where someone proposed building a moat around the office to improve security. But if he had, he would have recognized something familiar. The same mental traps that plagued 17th century natural philosophers still plague us today. We just dress them up in better PowerPoint slides.
The Anatomy of a Bad Idea (And How to Kill It According to Francis Bacon) Read More »
When you wake up to find your lawn wet in the morning, you probably assume it rained overnight. You don’t immediately suspect a colossal ice cube with legs stomped through your neighborhood. This instinct to reach for the simpler explanation is so natural that we barely notice it. But what if this tendency isn’t wisdom
Is Occam’s Razor Just Intellectual Laziness in Disguise? Read More »
In the cutthroat halls of Renaissance Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli observed a peculiar pattern among those who survived political intrigue versus those who ended up exiled, imprisoned, or worse. The survivors, he noticed, rarely charged headfirst into uncharted territory. They waited. They watched. They let others test the waters, and only when the coast proved clear—or
The Machiavelli Rule on Innovation: Never Be the First to Implement a Dangerous Idea Read More »