Verified insights, organised by theme.
Value is felt, not fixed. Perception and meaning outweigh objective reality.
Value is what something objectively costs to make. Value is what it's perceived to be worth. Perception, meaning, and even placebo effects are just as real as production cost.
A signal is only believed if it was expensive, effortful, or risky to send.
Take a message at face value. What matters is what's said. What matters is what it cost to say it. A message is only believed if sending it was expensive, effortful, or risky.
Copying others is usually a better bet than reasoning alone, until it isn't.
People weigh the options and choose what's individually best for them. People mostly do what everyone else is doing. Copying, not calculating, drives most behaviour.
Being noticed and remembered beats being merely better.
Being better than your competitors is what wins. Being noticed and remembered wins. Distinctiveness beats marginal superiority.
Humans don't reason their way to decisions. They decide, then reason.
People make decisions by reasoning through them logically. People decide first, on instinct, then construct a logical sounding justification afterwards.
The same fact, differently framed, is felt as an entirely different fact.
A fact means the same thing wherever and however it's said. The same fact, framed differently, is felt as an entirely different fact.
Sometimes the smartest move is answering a different question than the one asked.
Solve the problem you were handed, only faster or cheaper. Solve a better problem than the one you were handed.
The best fix is often not the obvious one.
The direct, obvious fix is the serious one. The oblique, sideways fix is often the one that actually works, and works cheaper.
Cheap trial and error beats confident top down planning.
Plan carefully in advance, then execute the plan. Run cheap experiments and let the market decide. Most winning ideas couldn't have been predicted in advance.
Brands don't just describe value. They create it, sometimes physiologically.
Branding is a cosmetic layer on top of the "real" product. Branding is a genuine driver of judgement, and sometimes even of measurable physical outcomes.
Small changes to the choice or environment, big changes in behaviour.
To change behaviour, change the incentives or change the facts. Leave the facts alone. Change how the choice is presented, and behaviour changes anyway.
Some things work brilliantly despite defying any logical explanation, and that's fine.
If you can't explain why something works, it probably doesn't. Some things work brilliantly and defy explanation entirely. That's not a flaw to fix, it's a result to use.
Narrative, not fact, is what actually persuades and creates value.
What persuades people is the facts. What persuades people is the story wrapped around the facts, and once a narrative takes hold, truth stops being the point.
The case against best practice: doing what your rivals refuse to do.
Study your competitors and match or beat them at what they do. Do what your competitors refuse to do. Matching them on their own terms caps you at merely average.
Strategic incentives, not sincerity, explain a surprising amount of behaviour.
People act on sincerity and stated intentions. People act on incentives. A lot of sincere looking behaviour is really a strategic move in disguise.
On the power, and the limits, of behavioural science as a discipline in its own right.
Behavioural science is just applied common sense with a scientific label. Behavioural science is a rebranding of psychology that finally gets taken seriously. The rebrand is half of its value.
A topical commentary on AI as an amplifier that can't tell brilliance from mediocrity.
AI's impact depends on the technology itself. AI's impact depends on what kind of world you point it at: an amplifier of brilliance in one, of mediocrity in another.