Have you ever looked out of the window at the clear sunny sky and thought “Wow, the weather’s beautiful! Maybe I should go for a walk!” and then watched as your hopes, dreams, and ambitions were crushed by the dark looming clouds of a thunderstorm that appeared out of nowhere? If you’re in Europe and reading this, you probably feel personally attacked right now (unless you’re in London, where the only sunlight you get is in your imagination). Even before climate change was a factor, certain cities have always been famous for their fickle weather, going through the four seasons in a single afternoon, and generally being a nightmare to pack clothes for (I’m looking at you, Paris). In light of the growing meteorological instability in the region, I decided to purchase a pair of water-resistant shoes for when Mother Nature can’t make up her mind on what season will grace humanity on that day. Nothing fancy, just a good ol’ pair of walking shoes that can resist some mild rain before getting soggy.

Upon breaking the shoes in, I began using them on trips and quickly ran into a problem - the insole of the left shoe would gently ride up my heel as I walked, leaving me with a missing inch of the insole under my toes. Try as I might to bend, fasten, coax, or secure it in the correct position, the damn thing would inevitably do this within 100m of walking. I would begrudgingly adjust it and move on, trying to scooch it back into its place with the motion of my stride. After dealing with this for a month or so, I lost my mind yesterday and did something absurd - I removed the insoles from both shoes, threw them in my bag, and wore them like that for the rest of the day. The effectiveness of this solution astounded me. The insole exists to cushion the bottom and fill the gap between the top of your foot and the shoe. This stops your foot from sliding around inside, improving comfort and preventing blisters. Hence, if the shoe fits well enough to hold your foot correctly without the insole, you can do away with it and not be impacted in any way! It logically made sense, cost me nothing, and took barely a couple of seconds. Why do we not try more such insane ideas in life?

The (un)holy trinity of misdirection Link to heading

The human brain is vulnerable to cognitive biases that attempt to simplify the world around us and ease decision-making (I’ve written more about this in my previous blog). Three of these biases are particularly notorious:

• Truth bias: The fundamental principle of science is that a statement is false unless proven otherwise. Unfortunately, the brain prefers the opposite - it assumes a statement to be true, and then assesses whether this information should be un-believed.
• Novelty bias: Our monkey brains like shiny things. Anything new, surprising, or scary will grab your attention subconsciously, leading you to ignore everything else.
• Confirmation bias: Familiarity breeds contempt comfort. If something aligns with your existing beliefs, you tend to passively accept it much more easily than something that does not conform.

The horrific combination of these biases can cripple rational thinking in ways that can have devastating consequences. One prominent example is the field of medicine, where this mistake has been committed over and over enough times to earn a name for itself - the Semmelweis reflex. Semmelweis was an Austrian doctor who worked in a maternity ward in the 1840s. He observed that significantly more women died from post-partum infections when handled by a doctor against a midwife, and eventually deduced that it was due to germs - doctors would perform autopsies and give birth with the same hands (I know, I’m gagging too). When he proposed that doctors wash their hands, he was called a madman, and eventually lost his job and died in a mental hospital.

Another significant instance was with James Allison and immunotherapy. Allison discovered that the immune system was capable of attacking cancer cells and could be used to develop a form of cancer treatment, but couldn’t secure funding to pursue his research due to scepticism by pharmaceutical companies that had previously invested and lost billions of dollars in similar research. If not for one small biotech company in the Netherlands (GenPharm International), we probably wouldn’t have immunotherapy today.

There’s never enough time Link to heading

Creativity blossoms when your mind wanders and gives rise to a flow of thoughts that eventually manifest into something novel. Naturally, to be able to reach this state of mind, you require a dedicated chunk of time without any distractions coming in the way. In today’s increasingly noisy world, you’d be hard-pressed to find a creative window without actively inconveniencing yourself. The problem is only exacerbated by the ever-decreasing attention span of the average person, stopping them from using said window productively even if they managed to get one.

Ain’t very useful, innit? Link to heading

Think of a world that evolved purely out of functional concerns. Is that a world you would want to live in? One of the biggest barriers to new ideas is questioning the utility of it. Often, innovation arises from pure absurdity - if you have never heard of something before, how can you evaluate if it is brilliant or moronic? The only way is to go ahead and try it out. Maybe you succeed, or maybe not. Maybe it becomes something revolutionary, or maybe it just fades away as another failed experiment in your journal of experiences. In either case, the true value of an avant-garde concept can never be reliably evaluated before an attempt has been made to implement it.

Nike: Just Do It Link to heading

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
– Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra)

The next time you have an episode of serendipity, actually go ahead and give that crazy idea a shot. Who knows, you might just end up winning a Nobel prize 20 years later ;)