Metadata
- Author: John Cutler
- Full Title:: TBM 389: Overthinker!
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- URL:: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-389-overthinker
- Read date:: 2025-11-19
Highlights
From a young age, being accused of “overcomplicating” or “overthinking” things felt like a dismissal of who I was. (View Highlight)
Later, in professional settings, I struggled to stay calm when I witnessed reductionist ideas being used (often by those in power) in ways that harmed others. (View Highlight)
Reductionism can be wrong, but actionable. Complexity can be right, but paralyzing. (View Highlight)
Corporate environments are filled with confident simplifiers, but also filled with equally confident critics determined to expose them with the messy truth. (View Highlight)
But as Imre Lakatos noted, it isn’t enough to point out that reductionism is flawed. If your alternative doesn’t generate better predictions or more useful interventions, you’re just running what he called a “degenerating research program.” It may be more nuanced or more philosophically correct, but if it doesn’t help people intervene more effectively in the world, it is functionally less useful than the flawed theory it opposes. In other words, you don’t win by being right in principle. You win by being useful in practice. (View Highlight)
title: “TBM 389: Overthinker!” aliases: [“TBM 389: Overthinker!”] permalink: tbm-389:-overthinker
Metadata
- Author: John Cutler
- Full Title:: TBM 389: Overthinker!
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- URL:: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-389-overthinker
- Read date:: 2025-11-19
Highlights
From a young age, being accused of “overcomplicating” or “overthinking” things felt like a dismissal of who I was. (View Highlight)
Later, in professional settings, I struggled to stay calm when I witnessed reductionist ideas being used (often by those in power) in ways that harmed others. (View Highlight)
Reductionism can be wrong, but actionable. Complexity can be right, but paralyzing. (View Highlight)
Corporate environments are filled with confident simplifiers, but also filled with equally confident critics determined to expose them with the messy truth. (View Highlight)
But as Imre Lakatos noted, it isn’t enough to point out that reductionism is flawed. If your alternative doesn’t generate better predictions or more useful interventions, you’re just running what he called a “degenerating research program.” It may be more nuanced or more philosophically correct, but if it doesn’t help people intervene more effectively in the world, it is functionally less useful than the flawed theory it opposes. In other words, you don’t win by being right in principle. You win by being useful in practice. (View Highlight)