Thoughtfully Go Tangent
“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect” – Teller
“Solving problems using rationality is like playing golf with only one club. Dare to be trivial. If there were a logical answer, we would have found it.” – Rory Sutherland
Will Guidara created the best restaurant in the world by pursuing what he calls unreasonable hospitality. Naval says that the winners of any game are the people who are so addicted they continue playing even as the marginal utility from winning declines. Think of Steve Jobs—do you think he was reasonable?
This had me thinking what it means to be reasonable, and if there’s anything that’s rational in itself. For instance, are the laws of physics rational? I don’t think so—otherwise we wouldn’t be enjoying (good) science fictions. The question is meaningless to Mother Nature. The laws of physics are just that—the laws of physics.
People always told me to be rational, to be reasonable. But their reasonable was always in the context with something external—their culture. Most people are reasonably reasonable. And they are boring, because their reasonableness is preceded by their culture. Culture dictates what’s reasonable for them.
But there are also people who go completely tangent with other people’s expectation. Think of Galileo and Newton—they were definitely not reasonable back then. Their formulation—the laws of physics—apply to all things equally, maybe because they didn’t care about their culture. And see what happened. They created their own culture. [1] [2]
Notes
[1] How do you become unreasonably reasonable? By becoming an artist.
[2] But don’t deal with unreasonably unreasonable people.