Some ideas that I liked from the book:

Taleb’s critique of post-hoc financial analysis. 2008 crisis “explanations” ignored the role of black swan events, similar to explaining lightning strikes as Zeus’s anger.

Weight vs. wealth distributions. No human will weigh 1,000kg, but tech billionaires can exceed GDPs of nations. Yet we apply Mediocristan statistics to stock markets.

The narrative fallacy in action. Cuban Missile Crisis “resolution skills” vs. probabilistic luck - remove 3mm of missile fuel pipe corrosion and we praise diplomacy.

Survivorship bias in tech: 1,000 failed startups birthed Zoom, but we only study the winner. Like crediting lottery winners’ “strategies”.

92% of day traders quit within 2 years, yet financial media interviews the 8% “geniuses”. Compare to 17th century alchemists documenting only successful experiments.

Some ideas that I liked from the book:

The 37% Rule of Optimal Stopping - When evaluating options sequentially (apartment hunting, hiring, dating), examine 37% of possibilities as exploration phase before committing. The traveling salesman’s secret - mathematically proven to maximize probability of best choice while avoiding analysis paralysis. I apply this to time management: 37% of allocated time for research before decision-making.

Exploit/Explore Triage - The book’s restaurant selection algorithm: try new places 37% of dining occasions, return to known favorites otherwise. My adaptation - 3 months exploring new productivity methods before locking in routines. Surprisingly aligns with quarterly planning cycles in tech.

Antifragile Applications - While the rule assumes static options, I modify it for dynamic environments by treating the 37% as volatility buffer. Job searching: reject first 37% of offers not to find “the one”, but to calibrate market reality against expectations. Contrast with modern “swipe right” culture that optimizes too early.

Some ideas that I liked from the book:

De Waal’s elephant studies reveal conscious self-presentation - when subjects recognized themselves in mirrors, they began practicing “social cosmetics” like rearranging dirt patterns on their skin. Proof that signaling isn’t just instinctual but involves meta-cognition. Genius framing: our LinkedIn profiles are just digital versions of pachyderm dust baths.

Documented cases of matriarchs “comforting” lower-ranking elephants actually reinforce hierarchy through performative empathy. Parallel to human virtue signaling - the book shows how altruistic acts often carry hidden status agendas. De Waal’s genius: exposing philanthropy’s evolutionary roots in primate politics.

While humans evolved complex lies, elephants’ low-frequency rumbles contain biologically uncounterfeitable stress markers. The book argues this explains why human leaders developed ceremonial robes - to compensate for lackinS authentic status signals. Brilliantly inverts typical “humans vs animals” comparisons.

The study of elephant graveyards reveals sophisticated cultural transmission mechanisms. Matriarchs lead their herds to ancestral burial grounds they visited only once as calves, decades earlier. De Waal connects this to human oral traditions and collective memory - both species evolved neural hardware for maintaining social knowledge across generations. His controversial take: modern digital archives may actually weaken our natural memory capabilities.

Liu takes familiar scientific concepts and stretches them until they snap, creating something entirely new yet unnervingly plausible. The sophons – these protons unfolded into two dimensions and etched with circuitry – represent one of the most fascinating thought experiments in modern science fiction. It’s the kind of idea that makes you pause and think, “Wait, could this actually work?”

The concept of sophons delves into the intriguing overlap of quantum mechanics and computational theory. Although fictional, they are grounded in real principles of quantum superposition, where a single entity can exist in multiple states simultaneously, and dimensional manipulation, which allows for the exploration of alternate realities.

The sophons here serve not just as surveillance devices; they’re weapons of mass disruption, designed to halt scientific progress by making fundamental research impossible.

The historical backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, the persecution of scientists during this period isn’t just historical context – it’s a reflection on how societies can turn against knowledge itself. When Liu describes physicists being paraded through streets wearing dunce caps, it’s not just world-building. It’s a reminder of how fragile the enterprise of science can be in the face of political upheaval.

But it’s the “dark forest” theory that haunts me most. Liu suggests that civilizations in the universe remain silent not out of inability to communicate, but out of a survival instinct. The logic is chilling in its simplicity: in a universe of limited resources, any civilization you encounter is either a potential threat to be eliminated or a victim to be subjugated. The safest strategy is to stay hidden and strike first if discovered.

This theory reframes our understanding of the Fermi Paradox – why haven’t we encountered alien life? Perhaps the universe isn’t empty. Perhaps it’s like a dark forest where every civilization is a hunter hiding in the trees, holding their breath, afraid to make a sound. It’s a perspective that makes our constant broadcasting of signals into space feel suddenly naive.

Liu’s portrayal of first contact differs radically from Western science fiction traditions. There’s no Independence Day heroics, no Close Encounters wonder. Instead, we get a subtle infiltration that plays out over decades, manipulating human society through its own divisions and weaknesses. The Trisolarians don’t need invasion fleets when they have sophons and human collaborators.

The best way to understand habits is to view them as compound interest for your behavior. Just as Warren Buffett’s wealth grew exponentially through decades of compounding returns, our daily actions compound into the person we become. James Clear articulates this in Atomic Habits, drawing parallels between financial compounding and behavioral compounding.

I’ve been learning about this compounding nature of habits ever since I noticed my own writing practice evolving. When I first started blogging, each essay felt like pulling teeth. But with consistent daily writing, even just 30 minutes each morning, the words began to flow more naturally. The practice compounded. What started as painful became pleasurable.

Clear frames this transformation through the lens of identity. Rather than focusing on outcome-based goals like “I want to write a book,” he advocates for identity-based habits: “I am a writer.” This subtle shift resonates deeply with my own journey. Instead of viewing my daily writing as a checkbox to tick, I began seeing it as an expression of who I am. The writing wasn’t something I had to do, but rather something that emerged naturally from my identity.

But identity alone isn’t enough. Clear introduces what he calls the “Four Laws of Behavior Change” - make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. Think of these as the fundamental forces of habit formation, like gravity or magnetism in physics. Just as understanding physical laws helps engineers build bridges, understanding these behavioral laws helps us architect better habits.

I see parallels here with the design patterns I encounter in product management. Just as we create user interfaces that make desired actions obvious and friction-free, we can design our environment to make good habits the path of least resistance. It’s why I keep a notebook by my bedside for morning pages, why I disabled social media notifications, why I track my habits in Roam Research.

My favourite insight from Clear’s work isn’t about habits at all - it’s about systems. As he puts it, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” This resonates with my experience building products. The best product managers don’t just set ambitious targets; they build robust systems that make success almost inevitable.

I’ve noticed this in my own life too. When I committed to learning Ruby on Rails in 2024, setting a goal wasn’t enough. I needed a system - daily practice sessions, coding challenges, project deadlines. The system, not the goal, determined my success.

Clear’s work feels particularly relevant in our current era of constant distraction and instant gratification. In a world optimized for engagement rather than intentionality, designing good habits becomes an act of resistance. It’s about creating personal systems that align with our long-term interests rather than short-term dopamine hits.

The beauty of atomic habits lies in their smallness. Just as atoms combine to form molecules, which in turn form everything in our physical world, tiny habits compound to create the architecture of our lives. It’s not about radical transformation but about modest, consistent improvement - 1% better each day.

This perspective has changed how I approach change in my life. Instead of seeking dramatic overhauls, I look for atomic improvements.

Some ideas that I liked from the book:

Jaynes’ radical theory: humans until ~1000 BCE lacked conscious introspection, instead experiencing “divine voices” as commands from a right-brain “god” chamber to left-brain executive function. Consciousness emerged when linguistic metaphors collapsed the divide — a neural civil war recorded in ancient texts.

The Iliad’s heroes act on external divine commands without internal monologue. Odysseus marks the transition — first Greek hero with proto-consciousness. Compare to Abraham hearing God’s voice vs. later prophets’ internal dialogues. Schizophrenia as vestigial bicamerality?

Challenges the assumption that consciousness is evolutionarily innate. If true, rewrites human history: consciousness as recent cultural adaptation to societal complexity, not biological given. Modern implications — are our “inner voices” just evolved hallucinations?

Why no physical evidence in brain structure? How do children “relearn” consciousness each generation? The theory’s beauty vs. its gaps — like Darwin without genetics. My struggle: reconciling Jaynes’ textual analysis with neuroscience’s hard boundaries.

Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein dismantles the myth of photographic memory, revealing instead that exceptional recall is a trainable skill rooted in ancient mnemonic techniques.

Through his journey from journalistic observer to U.S. Memory Championship competitor, Foer demonstrates how methods like the “method of loci” (associating information with spatial locations) and absurdist imagery (like his titular Einstein moonwalking visualization) leverage our brain’s evolutionary wiring for spatial navigation and emotional experiences. What makes this particularly compelling is how these techniques transform abstract information into vivid mental movies - where grocery lists become slapstick comedies unfolding in childhood homes, and numerical sequences morph into surreal landscapes populated by memorable characters.

The true power of Foer’s approach emerges when combined with modern spaced repetition systems (SRS) like those outlined in your Virtuoso Guide. While memory palaces create indelible initial impressions, SRS acts as a cognitive maintenance crew - systematically reinforcing these mental constructs at optimal intervals. Imagine using Anki to periodically test your recall of a chemical elements memory palace: the system prompts you to mentally walk through your grandmother’s house, retrieving mercury from the dripping faucet in her bathroom and gold from the jewelry box on her dresser. This synergy between creative encoding (Foer’s domain) and systematic reinforcement (your SRS framework) creates what Foer calls “a whole new operating system for thought.”

Ultimately, the book challenges our digital-age learned helplessness about memory, arguing that memorization isn’t obsolete but rather a fundamental tool for deep understanding.

When paired with your guide’s compound interest approach to knowledge retention, Foer’s techniques become particularly potent - they transform SRS from mere rote repetition into an imaginative practice.

The Eurasian Advantage - Diamond argues that Eurasians had a unique combination of factors that allowed them to dominate the world:

Guns - The development of advanced weaponry gave them a military advantage over other regions.Germs - The spread of diseases like smallpox and measles decimated native populations in the Americas and Australia. Steel - The ability to produce steel allowed for the construction of large and powerful ships, which gave them control of the oceans.

I didn’t find the prose as engaging as other books I’ve read, but the content is still very interesting.

Some quotes that I liked from the book:

“The cure for modernity is to punish the least competent and most intolerant of uncertainty” - Taleb’s inversion of traditional expertise hierarchy. Modern example: COVID pandemic showed epidemiologists with zero accountability outperformed by ER nurses with skin in the game.

“You never convince anyone by argument; they convince themselves through experience” - Explains why financial warnings fail. 2008 crisis survivors became risk-averse, while textbook economists kept promoting flawed models. Pain > theory.

“A prophet is not someone with visions, but someone who remembers what others forget” - Ancient Judean drought survival techniques now used in Israeli agriculture. Modern “innovation” often rediscovery of antifragile wisdom.

“Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of their actions” - Pentagon’s 2022 audit failure vs. Roman legion system where engineers slept under bridges they built.

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware they aren’t free” - Smartphone users check devices 96x/day yet deny addiction. Compare to tobacco executives smoking while denying cancer links.

Tara Westover’s memoir isn’t just about getting an education – it’s about the painful process of understanding that your reality is real, even when everyone around you denies it. It’s about unlearning and relearning everything you thought you knew.

The story begins in the mountains of Idaho, where Westover grows up in a family preparing for the end times. No birth certificate, no school, no doctors. Just the mountain, the junkyard, and her father’s increasingly paranoid worldview. Her description of this world is vivid – the smell of gasoline and metal in her father’s scrapyard, the herbs her mother stores in mason jars, the constant fear of the government coming to take them away.

It reminded me of the concept of “sensemaking” we often discuss in product management – how humans construct meaning from their experiences. Westover had to become her own ethnographer, studying the world she grew up in while simultaneously trying to escape it.

There’s a moment in the book when Westover, now at Cambridge University, learns about the Holocaust for the first time. Her professor assumes she’s making a sophisticated point about historical revisionism when she asks if everyone knows about this event. This scene captures something essential about education – how it’s not just about acquiring knowledge, but about realizing what you don’t know you don’t know.

Her journey from mountain isolation to Cambridge and Harvard isn’t a simple rags-to-riches story. It’s messier, more complex. Education becomes both salvation and separation. Each book she reads, each idea she encounters, drives a wedge between her and her family. It’s the price of seeing the world differently – you can never unsee it.

The concept of education in Westover’s memoir goes beyond formal schooling. It’s about learning to question, to doubt, to examine. In product development, we talk about “strong opinions, weakly held” – the ability to believe something firmly while remaining open to being wrong. Westover had to learn this skill not just for building products, but for reconstructing her own reality.

It’s a reminder that the ability to learn, to change your mind, to admit you might be wrong – these aren’t just academic skills.

It took me a long time to realize that arguments we argue about — aren’t always about facts. They are about values.

Reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind made this clearer that: be it liberals or conservatives, or activists or traditionalists — they’re all wired with different moral priorities—care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity.

They feel different things are sacred. What seems obviously right to one clan feels intuitively wrong to another.

My partner and I had taken the Haidt’s moral foundations questionnaire together recently, and it was fun to see the contrast of responses in some of the questions: we both cared about fairness and compassion—but whenever I leaned toward equity, she leaned more towards loyalty and cultural continuity. Interesting!

Neither of us was wrong, but we realised we had different inner compasses. And without naming those differences, we mistook friction for betrayal.

Some ideas that I liked from the book:

Ancient rulers like Assyrian kings led charges wearing 60lbs of iron armor, embodying “soul in the game” (Taleb’s upgrade to skin). Contrast with modern CEOs whose golden parachutes float while companies burn - a 2023 study showed 78% of Fortune 500 leaders had zero personal financial exposure to corporate failures.

The book traces how risk asymmetry created fragile systems: medieval lords dining with troops vs. Pentagon officials eating separately from soldiers. Modern equivalent: 2008 bankers’ OPCB (Other People’s Convexity Bets) where profits privatized, losses socialized.

Talmudic sages mandated dissenting opinions be recorded verbatim, institutionalizing doubt. Compare to IMF economists prescribing austerity while personally insulated from consequences - modern dogmatists who’ve never smelled bankruptcy’s breath.

The “bal tashchit” prohibition against wanton destruction (Deut 20:19) evolved into risk-aware ethics: medieval rabbis forbade speculative investments exceeding 1/3 net worth. Skin in the game made abstract morality concrete - lose your shirt if your financial advice fails.

Academic economists who’ve never run a lemonade stand dictating market policies, versus the Venetian merchant system where trade commissioners personally guaranteed state debts with their family fortunes. Taleb’s “megalopsychos” ideal - those whose wisdom scales with their exposure.

The book’s term for those who claim to know everything but have never tasted failure. Taleb’s “fragilistas” - those who’ve never smelled bankruptcy’s breath.

Richard Feynman’s memoir “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” reveals a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was as famous for his mischievous antics as his scientific brilliance.

From picking locks in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project to playing bongo drums in a Brazilian samba band, Feynman consistently defied the stereotype of the serious, socially awkward scientist. His irreverent approach to life—whether cracking safes, frequenting strip clubs, or pulling pranks on colleagues—was inextricably linked to his creative scientific mind.

The book suggests that genius and eccentricity often feed each other in a virtuous cycle. Feynman’s refusal to be constrained by social conventions gave him the freedom to think beyond scientific conventions as well.

Through case studies ranging from Canadian hockey players to software billionaires, Gladwell demonstrates how hidden advantages like birthdate clusters (the “Matthew Effect”), intergenerational cultural legacies (like rice farming’s work ethic), and historical timing (the 1975 personal computer revolution) create fertile ground for outlier success.

While popular culture reduced this to simplistic self-help, Gladwell’s original analysis shows how access to specialized training environments (like Bill Gates’ unique access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968) and cultural permissions (Jewish lawyers benefiting from 1970s changes in corporate litigation) transform raw effort into world-class expertise. This aligns with your writing on compound systems - true mastery emerges when deliberate practice meets institutional support structures and temporal luck windows.

What makes Outliers particularly valuable is its framework for analyzing success ecosystems. The “three lessons of Joe Flom” chapter could be read as a playbook for: 1) Identifying demographic troughs (post-Depression birth years creating smaller competition pools) 2) Leveraging disadvantage as training (Flom’s outsider status honing takeover expertise) 3) Riding cultural/technological wavefronts (1970s corporate governance changes).

When combined with your work on network effects and opportunity capture, these principles form a powerful lens for strategic life design.

Some ideas that I liked from the book:

The Hydra Principle - Taleb’s favorite metaphor for antifragility: cut off one head, two grow back. Real-world application: Switzerland’s militia system where losing soldiers in WWII made their defense strategy stronger. Modern militaries became fragile by avoiding small conflicts.

Ethics of Public Contempt - Taleb’s unorthodox approach to criticism as volatility exposure therapy. By publicly shaming “fragilistas” and IYIs (Intellectual Yet Idiots), he practices what he preaches - systems that gain from others’ attempts to suppress them.

Fat Tony vs. Dr. John - The fictional characters that break every nonfiction rule. Tony the street-smart loan shark understands true risk better than the Nobel-winning economist. Their dialogues read like Plato’s Republic meets Goodfellas.

Switzerland as Antifragile Organism - No natural resources but 500 years of stability through armed neutrality and canton system. Their “fractal governance” - 26 mini-countries under one flag - makes them thrive on others’ crises. Compare to Singapore’s “antifragile dictatorship” model.

The Lindy Effect as Time’s Crucible - What doesn’t kill Shakespeare makes him stronger. The 400-year-old play outperforms AI-generated scripts through cultural natural selection. TikTok dances? Lucky to last 400 hours.

Via Negativa Urbanism - Ancient cities became antifragile by subtraction: Roman aqueducts outlast modern water systems. Compare to Jane Jacobs’ “eyes on the street” emerging from unplanned urban interactions vs. Le Corbusier’s fragile utopias.

Skin in the Game as Moral Antifragility - The Prophet Muhammad’s “not one of you” speech to merchants predates Wall Street’s bonus culture. Taleb argues the 2008 crisis was predictable - bankers using Other People’s Convexity Bets (OPCB).

Biological Barbells - Evolution’s strategy: 99% conservative DNA replication + 1% wild mutation. Modern life inverted this - 99% novelty chasing (TikTok, crypto) + 1% actual risk-taking. Result: cultural obesity.

The Turkey Illusion - 1000 days of farmer-fed bliss =/= safety. Thanksgiving is a black swan. Modern equivalent: VC-funded startups confusing subsidized growth for real market fitness.

Antifragile Aesthetics - Medieval cathedrals gained beauty through repeated damage/repair cycles (see Venice’s ongoing restoration). Compare to Dubai’s fragile skyscrapers - pristine until first major sandstorm.

Say, you’re writing intensely in a cafe, and the barrista who has come to serve you coffee pours the hot liquid on your shirt. You get a minor burn, your white shirt gets tainted with the black americano, and you know for sure that this shirt is done for good. On top of that, you’ve lost some sensation in your body because of the smeltering heat.

Some ideas that I liked from the book:

The Proximity Premium: Montgomery reveals how physical distance between daily needs creates “dissatisfaction loops” - the average American spends 19% of their income and 100 minutes daily just moving between life components. Compact neighborhoods slash this “spatial tax.”

The 20-Minute City Concept: Drawing from Portland and Melbourne experiments, the book shows neighborhoods designed so all basic needs (groceries, schools, parks) lie within 20-minute walk/bike ride. These residents report 32% higher life satisfaction than sprawl-dwellers.

The BMW Effect: Luxury car interiors are designed for isolated comfort, creating what Montgomery calls “mobile living rooms” that psychologically distance drivers from street life. This explains why SUV owners are 27% less likely to support pedestrian infrastructure.

Sensory Overload in Urban Design: Barcelona’s superblocks demonstrate how limiting traffic to 10km/h transforms streetscapes - the brain processes pedestrian-scale environments (3-20kph speeds) as social spaces rather than threat zones.

The Smell Map Hypothesis: Studies show people subconsciously associate citrus and baked goods smells with neighborhood safety. Rotterdam’s “aroma zoning” policies actively use this in high-crime areas.

The Smiling Index: Researchers found a direct correlation between spontaneous public smiling rates and urban happiness metrics. Cities with >18 smiles/hour (Copenhagen, Melbourne) consistently rank highest in quality of life surveys.

Playborhoods: The book documents “adult playgrounds” in Seoul and Helsinki where office workers swing and slide during lunch breaks. These spaces boost workplace productivity by 22% through micro-doses of spontaneous joy.

Gossip Geometry: Public benches angled at 120 degrees (versus traditional 90) in Vancouver’s Granville Island increased stranger conversations by 400%. The slight angle creates perceived “social permission” for interaction.

The Bus Stop Effect: Transit shelters designed for lingering (with art, seating, greenery) rather than mere waiting reduce perceived commute stress by 60%. Stockholm’s “station societies” program turned shelters into mini-libraries and plant exchanges.

Miswanting Urbanism: A behavioral economics concept applied to city planning - people think they want bigger homes/yards but adapt to them quickly while perpetually underappreciating the joy boost from daily social infrastructure.

When J.D. Vance writes about growing up in the rust belt town of Middletown, Ohio, he’s not just telling his story – he’s excavating the cultural DNA of working-class America. Reading “Hillbilly Elegy” felt like peering through a window into a world that exists parallel to our coastal tech bubbles.

Vance’s description of learning to navigate elite spaces while carrying your working-class origins, resonates with anyone who’s had to learn the subtle choreography of class mobility.

He describes what he calls “learned helplessness” – the way persistent poverty creates a kind of gravitational pull, making it harder for each successive generation to escape its orbit. I see parallels here with the concept of “path dependency” in product development – how early decisions and patterns can constrain future possibilities.

The most haunting aspects of Vance’s memoir are his descriptions of family dysfunction – the carousel of father figures, his mother’s addiction, the constant instability. Yet through this chaos, his grandmother Mamaw emerges as a force of stability, albeit an unconventional one. She’s profane, prone to threats of violence, but provides the consistent presence that allows Vance to eventually break free from generational patterns.

There’s a particular scene that stuck with me: Vance describing how he learned to decode high-end restaurant menus at Yale, feeling like an anthropologist studying a foreign culture. It reminded me of my own fumbling attempts to understand British social cues – the endless variations of “sorry” and their subtle contextual meanings. These moments of cultural translation are where Vance’s narrative shines brightest.

The book has attracted criticism for potentially reinforcing stereotypes about Appalachian culture or suggesting that poverty is primarily a cultural rather than structural problem. These are valid concerns.

What stays with me is Vance’s description of the “hillbilly” code of loyalty – how it can both sustain communities through hard times and trap people in destructive patterns. It’s a reminder that cultural traits aren’t simply good or bad, but adaptive responses to specific circumstances that can become maladaptive when contexts change.

This book was first recommended in Naval Ravikant’s Almanack. I didn’t give this book enough attention, until I came across the joint podcast of Naval with David Deutsch on the Tim Ferris show. I have always thought of epistemology as a dry boring philosophy topic, but only after coming across this work did I actually realise the gravity of this topic.

Everything ultimately boils down to epistemology. The way we organise our “justified true beliefs” gives us a lot of insight on what we perceive around the universe. For a thinking person, it’s quite important to get this correct. Without this, all our logics, debates and conclusions fall down just like a house of cards.

Critical Rationalism - Deutsch’s central epistemological framework - argues that knowledge progresses through conjectures and refutations rather than inductive verification. This turns traditional epistemology on its head: instead of seeking to “justify” beliefs, we should vigorously attempt to falsify them while proposing increasingly better explanations.

The power lies in its inversion of cognitive effort. Where others try to support their views with evidence, critical rationalism demands we:

1. State claims boldly and precisely (no “it depends” hedges)
2. Actively seek contradictions in existing explanations
3. Replace flawed theories with more error-resistant ones - not as final truths, but better approximations

This creates an anti-fragile thinking system. Consider scientific theories: Newtonian physics wasn’t “proven true” - it survived intense criticism until relativity offered superior explanatory power. The theories we keep are those that withstand our most creative attempts to destroy them.

Applied personally, this means:

• Treat all beliefs as temporary containers (even this one)
• When encountering conflicting information, don’t rationalize - let the contradiction break your current understanding
• Build mental models that thrive on criticism rather than collapse under it

Debates become error-correction sessions. You’re not defending positions, but stress-testing them. As Deutsch notes: “Problems are inevitable, but problems are soluble.” The solution to any flawed belief isn’t defensive certainty, but a better belief that explains more while resisting refutation.

This framework makes you a merciless thought editor. You’ll catch yourself thinking “What evidence would make me abandon this position?” before getting attached to ideas. Over time, you develop epistemic grit - the ability to hold beliefs strongly while remaining eager to discard them for superior alternatives.

Adichie describes how women are taught to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. I’ve seen this play out in product meetings - how female colleagues sometimes prefix their insights with “I might be wrong, but…” or “This may be a silly idea…” When male colleagues present the same ideas without these qualifiers, they’re often received differently.

Adichie tells a story about being class monitor in primary school - not because she earned it, but because she was a girl and the teacher assumed the role should go to a girl. It’s these small, everyday moments that reveal how gender roles are quietly enforced. Like water to fish, we often don’t notice these patterns until someone points them out. The author’s Nigerian perspective adds depth to the conversation. She describes how marriage becomes a measure of success for women but not for men, how women are expected to dampen their ambitions to protect male ego. These aren’t just Nigerian issues - they’re global patterns dressed in local customs.

She’s not interested in abstract discussions about patriarchy. Instead, she talks about concrete things: why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage but not boys? Why do we praise men for doing basic parenting tasks that we take for granted when women do them? The book made me reflect on my own implicit biases. Like when I assume a CEO is male unless told otherwise, or how I might perceive the same behavior differently depending on whether it comes from a male or female colleague. These aren’t comfortable reflections, but they’re necessary ones.

Adichie’s argument is simple: culture can change, and it should. She points out how her grandmother’s experience of gender was different from her mother’s, and her mother’s from hers. Each generation questioned certain assumptions that the previous one took for granted. It’s a reminder that what we consider “traditional” is often just what we’ve grown used to.

One passage that stuck with me was about how we raise boys. “We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability,” she writes.

The power of “We Should All Be Feminists” lies in its accessibility. Adichie isn’t writing for gender studies scholars - she’s writing for everyone. She’s saying that feminism isn’t about hating men or rejecting femininity. It’s about wanting a fairer world for everyone.

Walk into any corporate meeting, look at any company’s leadership team, or scroll through comments on any female leader’s social media, and you’ll see these patterns are very much alive. They’ve just gotten better at hiding.

Some ideas that I liked from the book:

“Your children are not your children” - The Prophet’s radical redefinition of parenthood as stewardship rather than ownership. Parents are the bows from which life’s arrows are launched, but the target belongs to eternity. This mirrors quantum entanglement - intimately connected yet fundamentally separate destinies.

“When love beckons, follow though his ways are hard and steep” - The book’s treatment of love as an alchemical force that demands total surrender. Not the Hallmark version of romance, but a transformative fire that burns away illusion. Reminiscent of neural pruning - love destroys weaker connections to strengthen core pathways.

“You would know the secret of death, but how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?” - Death framed as life’s continuity rather than its opposite. The metaphor of the standing pool versus flowing stream - what appears terminal is merely transformational. Modern physics echoes this through energy conservation laws.

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness” challenges our cultural obsession with enmeshment. The healthiest bonds, like covalent chemical bonds, allow individual atoms to retain their electron clouds while sharing orbital space.

Grief as Unrequited Love - The Prophet suggests mourning is love persisting beyond its physical container, like light from dead stars still reaching us. This anticipates modern grief theory’s concept of continuing bonds rather than detachment.

The book focuses on the question “what to build”, which can be daunting looking at the universe of possible options. Teresa Torres provides practical and concrete methodologies to clarify a problem and structure the opportunity space.

Several concepts will be familiar to those already following her blog. However there is tremendously value she provides by strongly articulating the goal of each method and at which stage of the discovery cycle to use them.