Efficient Ideas
The most impactful ideas are efficient.
They strike the exact level of abstraction necessary
to reduce complexity without losing functionality.
Consider a bubble.
It will always form a sphere.
It requires the least amount of energy to create.
This is why appears everywhere in nature—
the minimal structure necessary to prevent collapse.
It is efficient.
Though abundant in nature, efficiency is rare in thought.
It appears delicate—like one gust of wind could sweep it away.
Instead, the mind tends toward castles:
complex, robust, insurmountable towers of absolute certainty.
You know what they say—the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Every great city is reduced to dust.
And in that rubble, the essential forms are found.
Balls that roll and bounce.
Rivers that carve mountains down.
Delicate instruments that produce sound.
The core of a great idea is like a bubble:
paper-thin, deceptively simple, and seemingly unstable.
But the test of time can strengthen and solidify it into something eternal.
We have discovered these irreducible truths:
love, language, music, individual freedom, free markets, inalienable rights,
spirit, the scientific method, calculus, evolution, computation, quantum theory,
life—and death.
What else has not yet been found?