Cukier Quotes

As late as 2000, Cukier and Mayer-Schönberger note, only 25 per cent of the world’s stored information was in a digital form. Today that proportion is 98 per cent.5

Teraz nastąpiła wielka scena w historii kina: jej kawą mnie częstowanie! - Napije się pan kawy? - Tak. - Ale... jest tylko rozpuszczalna. I nie mam akurat cukru. (Zajrzała do puszki). - Właściwie to akurat mi się kończy... - Starczy - powiedziałem z mocą. - No nie wiem, czy tak starczy... - potrząsnęła głową, aż kolczyki jak bombki choinkowe, kulki poprostu oblepione brokatem, zawirowały. Bo zapomniałem powiedzieć, że miała na sobie adidasy, różową podomkę hollywoodzką z targu, kolczyki bombki i pełny makijaż. Widocznie gdzieś się wybierała. I już bym był na straconej pozycji, gdyby nie to, że nagle jej stary się odezwał, widać, unieruchomiony, tylko w ten sposób mógł ją drażnić: - Nic się nie kończy, stara, jest cała nowa nescafe gold w kuchni, a i cukier. - To była jego torpeda, jego połów frutti di mare na błyszczyk, na odległość. "Bił ją słownie", jak mawiała pewna gwiazda o swoim eks-mężu, bił ją na odległość.

Podano mu herbatę, którą wypił, ale pozostał mu na talerzyku kawałek cukru — i wyciągnął rękę żeby go podnieść do ust — ale może uznał ten ruch za nie dość uzasadniony, więc cofnął rękę — jednakże cofnięcie ręki było właściwie czymś bardziej jeszcze nieuzasadnionym — wyciągnął tedy rękę powtórnie i zjadł cukier — ale zjadł już chyba nie dla przyjemności, a tylko żeby odpowiednio się zachować... wobec cukru, czy wobec nas?... i pragnąc zatrzeć to wrażenie kaszlnął i, aby uzasadnić kaszlnięcie, wyciągnął chusteczkę, ale już nie odważył się wytrzeć nosa — tylko poruszył nogą. Poruszenie nogi, jak się zdaje, nasunęło mu nowe komplikacje, więc w ogóle ucichł i znieruchomiał. To szczególne zachowanie (bo on właściwie nic tylko ,,zachowywał się”, on ,,zachowywał się” bez ustanku) już wtedy, przy pierwszym widzeniu wzbudziło moją ciekawość, a w ciągu następnych miesięcy zbliżyłem się z tym człowiekiem, który zresztą okazał się kimś nie pozbawionym ogłady, a także mającym za sobą doświadczenia z dziedziny sztuki (zajmował się kiedyś teatrem).

Topnieję, powiedział, jak zauważyła świeca, gdy… Ale cicho, sza! Ani słowa więcej o tym przedmiocie. Kinch, zbudź się. Chleb, masło, miód. Haines, wejdź. Żarcie gotowe. Pobłogosław nas, Boże, i te dary twoje. Gdzie cukier? O, kurwa, nie ma mleka.

w sobie awanturniczego i niespokojnego ducha. Podczas kolacji Tomek kradł cukier, ilekroć tylko nadarzyła się sposobność, zaś ciotka Polly zadawała mu podstępne i zdradzieckie pytania, aby wyciągnąć z niego kompromitujące zeznania. Jak wszyscy ludzie prostoduszni, uważała się za mistrzynię

A diverse mind makes us better individual framers, and a diverse team leads to better solutions. A similar advantage from embracing multiple frames holds true for society and humanity generally. Just as individuals benefit from diversity, so too does society benefit from pluralism. The point is less moral than pragmatic: an openness and tolerance to a multitude of diverse frames improves the chances that society will progress.

Well-meaning white parents tend not to point out race or bring up racial issues, in the belief that such “color-blind” behavior will lead to nonracist children. The message, channeling Martin Luther King Jr., is that a person’s character counts, not the color of their skin. But black parents regularly discuss race and racial matters with their children. To be color-blind is to willfully ignore the obvious—and fail to see how it affects everyday life, from walking down a store aisle to being pulled over for a traffic stop. Black kids are taught to see the “colorful,” to be aware of race. Sociologists believe that “color-blindness,” as a frame, is actually a significant source of racial discrimination. By suggesting that race all of a sudden should not matter, white people with the best intentions are inadvertently denying the experience of people of color who live with daily discrimination. The frame of absolute color-blindness erases variation and disregards diversity, turning a rainbow into indistinguishable shades of gray. It neglects the reality that people live and vaunts homogeneity, the very opposite of frame pluralism. The alternative frame, “colorfulness” (in the words of sociologists of race), not only acknowledges variation but in so doing highlights the pain, hardships, and tensions that the differences signify, eventually translating them into the diversity that human framing thrives on. The goal of education and socialization is to see the actual differences in our society as both a responsibility and an opportunity.

Framers see the world not as it is, but as it can be. They do this by understanding, considering, rejecting, or accepting frames and communicating them to others. The principle of agility of mind asks us to never stop honing our skills of framing: seeing causation, generating a variety of counterfactuals and altering their features—in short, dreaming with constraints. Just as the free flow of information is the basis of interpersonal coordination, agility of mind is the foundation of human framing.

For example, until the mid-2010s many senior executives in traditional companies cackled that Amazon’s business still showed no profits. They felt it was a low-margin activity propped up by a hyperinflated share price. And within their traditional way of understanding corporate performance, they were right. But seen through a different frame, they were utterly wrong. Jeff Bezos had reframed the idea of commercial growth, away from producing annual returns for shareholders (and handing about a third of the profits to governments in the form of tax) and toward reinvesting every penny of net income to establish adjacent business lines, from Kindle books to cloud services. People see it plain as day in hindsight, but the new frame was incomprehensible to many in the moment.

London’s Tube map, for instance, makes a particular virtue of ignoring distance in the interest of readability: two stations abutting each other on the map might actually be a mile apart. And most transit maps do not tell riders how long it will take to reach their destinations. The length of lines between stations is usually not to scale. Transit maps forgo depicting distance in favor of readability.

Nobody knew how to navigate through more than 200,000 miles of empty space between Earth and the moon. Experts at NASA had to imagine it, creating a mental model of space navigation and the tools that would enable it to happen. It wasn’t simply that a compass would not work—the whole idea of north and south makes no sense in space. Similarly, engineers had little experience with building motors that would work in the cold, airless vacuum of space—and could be started and restarted at the press of a button. So they constructed the rocket based on mental models of how engines work, not just in our planet’s atmosphere but also in space. Testing helped, of course, but mainly to validate what scientists had already conjured up in their minds.

They achieved their breakthrough not because they came up with something completely novel but because they masterfully applied the very frame they had identified to be the best fit. They weren’t geniuses—they were exemplary framers. They attained success by thinking clearly about cause and effect, by imagining alternatives, and by applying the constraints derived from the laws of physics. These three features—causality, counterfactuals, and constraints—are essential to applying frames.

Normally species go extinct because they cannot adapt to their circumstances. Human beings could be the first species that has everything we need to adapt but perishes because we did not use it—not because we have no other choice but because we failed to make the right choices.

Around the 1970s, the idea of “mental models” gained traction—along with the concept that human reasoning isn’t an operation of formal logic but works more like a simulation of reality: we assess options for action by imagining what might happen.

Frames are not “imagination” or “creativity” but they enable it.

Transit maps are masterpieces for what they leave out. They’re designed so people can choose the most expedient route. But woe to the person who takes their transit map aboveground to find their way around town!

stability wasn’t critical, control was. They were bicycle experts, after all. Just as a cycle is inherently unstable but can be balanced and controlled by the rider when in motion, so too it was crucial that a plane could be controlled and balanced by a flier in the air.

Bernanke understood that his concerns were different from those of the policymakers around him. They framed the issue as being about incentives for individual firms—bailing out one, they worried, would only encourage more risky behavior. He didn’t see it that way. His mental model was focused on the causal link between the availability of capital, trust in the system, and the health of the economy. The banks’ mortgage losses were trifles compared to the financial markets as a whole: a fall of hundreds of billions of dollars only amounted to a bad day on Wall Street. But he knew it undermined confidence in the system—and a lack of trust would prevent banks from providing credit to one another, which could lead to chaos.

Recalling his research, Helicopter Ben was focused on a system-wide credit crunch, not the failure of individual firms. That frame gave him an idea. He would buy the toxic-sludge assets from the banks, taking them off their balance sheet. Then, the banks could use those fresh, clean dollars to lend—pumping capital into the system. Between 2008 and 2015, the Fed’s balance sheet soared from $900 billion of mostly high-quality Treasury notes to $4.5 trillion of largely risky assets. And it worked. The financial crisis was painful, but the system did not collapse. Bernanke’s framing, imbued with causal understanding, allowed him to see the economy in a way that others did not. Even amid market uncertainty, the system can be understood by human reason, predicted with human foresight, and controlled by human hand.

In complex organisms, reactions to perceived causes are not always hard-coded. A dog can learn that if it gives its paw, it receives a treat. So, predicting a treat, it will offer to give its paw. The perceived causal link between the paw and the treat influences the dog’s behavior; it shapes its decisions to act. Humans extract causal connections from experiences too; we do it all the time without much thought.

Human brains are good at recognizing patterns, especially visual ones. At its core, pattern recognition is about generalizing from the specific.

Tomasello gave the toddlers and chimps a tube containing a reward that could be extracted only if both ends of the tube were pulled on at the same time. Children as young as eighteen months understood that they needed to cooperate with someone else to release the reward, and were able to direct the attention of a potential collaborator who initially acted as if they did not understand what they had to do. The chimps could not do this: they may have had an inkling of causality, but they failed in abstract causal representations—they could not take the perspective of another chimp and see their role in regard to the other.

human technology is too complex to be the product of individual genius but emerges from the accumulation of improvements across time that are communicated by others (Tomasello’s cultural niche).

we don’t know what first prompted humans to combine cognitive and cultural dimensions. But our ancestors already used abstract causal reasoning when, about fourteen millennia ago, they began to settle down and farm.

Sowing and harvesting not only marked the beginning of systematic agriculture and the end of nomadic life for many people; it also showed that by this time, humans had developed causal templates. They had become not only farmers, but framers.

The frame was causal on a number of levels. First, Semmelweis understood that the disease caused the deaths; that it was contagious. Second, he understood that handwashing caused the incidence of puerperal fever to drop. But his reasoning for what caused puerperal fever in the first place—“cadaverous particles”—was not only vague but flawed. It wasn’t a death particle that caused women to become sick. It was that the bacteria that caused puerperal fever and remained on doctors’ hands were passed on to healthy women. Semmelweis’s causal frame was faulty, even though his proposed solution, to wash hands, was correct.

The tragic case of Ignaz Semmelweis highlights that it is not sufficient for a mental frame to improve decision-making. For a frame to catch on, it also has to offer a convincing causal explanation.

It wasn’t a victory for artificial intelligence but a success of human cognition: the ability to rise up to a critical challenge by conceiving of it in a certain way, altering aspects of it, which open up new paths to a solution. Credit does not go to a new technology but to a human ability.

Humans think using mental models. These are representations of reality that make the world comprehensible. They allow us to see patterns, predict how things will unfold, and make sense of the circumstances we encounter. Reality would otherwise be a flood of information, a jumble of inchoate experiences and sensations. Mental models bring order.

The mental models that we choose and apply are frames: they determine how we understand and act in the world. Frames enable us to generalize and make abstractions that apply to other situations.

Our frames are always operating in the background. But we can stop and deliberately ask ourselves which frame we are applying, and whether it is the best fit for the circumstances. And if it’s not, we can choose another frame that is better. Or, we can invent a new frame altogether.

In 2008 Nokia led the world in mobile phone sales. When Apple introduced the iPhone, few thought it would take off. The trend was to make handsets smaller and cheaper, but Apple’s was bulkier, pricier, and buggier. Nokia’s frame came from the conservative telecom industry, valuing practicality and reliability. Apple’s frame came from the breathlessly innovative computing industry, valuing ease of use and the extensibility of new features via software. That frame turned out to be a better fit for the needs and wants of consumers—and Apple dominated the market.

Yet framing is not only for high-stakes matters. It affects our everyday lives as well. We are continually confronted with questions that require having a model of the world in our mind. How can I get along better with my partner? How can I impress my boss? How can I rearrange my life to be healthier? And wealthier? Framing is just as essential for these types of questions. It undergirds our thoughts, affecting what we perceive and how we think. By making our frames apparent and learning how to deliberately choose and apply them, we can improve our lives and our world. Put simply: we can turn framing from a basic feature of human cognition into a practical tool we can use to make better decisions. Our mind uses frames to capture the most salient aspects of the world, and filter out the others—we couldn’t comprehend life in all of its intricate complexity otherwise. By mentally modeling the world, we keep it manageable and thus actionable. In this sense, frames simplify reality. But they aren’t dumbed-down versions of the world. They concentrate our thinking on the critical parts. Frames also help us to learn from single experiences and come up with general rules that we can apply to other situations—including ones that have not yet happened. They enable us to know something about the unobserved and even the unobservable; to imagine things for which no data exists. Frames let us see what isn’t there. We can ask “What if?” and foresee how different decisions might play out. It is this ability to envision other realities that makes possible individual achievement and societal progress.

Frames also help us to learn from single experiences and come up with general rules that we can apply to other situations—including ones that have not yet happened. They enable us to know something about the unobserved and even the unobservable; to imagine things for which no data exists. Frames let us see what isn’t there. We can ask “What if?” and foresee how different decisions might play out. It is this ability to envision other realities that makes possible individual achievement and societal progress.

These three dimensions of cognition—causality, counterfactuals, and constraints—together form the basis of framing. They are our tools for seeing beyond the obvious and thinking forward.

The crucial insight is that our choice isn’t limited to these two options. We do not have to decide between a dehumanizing singularity or a tsunami of populist terror—nor try to meld them into a suboptimal mix. We have at our disposal another strategy, a different human capacity that until now has been overlooked: framing. Our ability to apply, hone, and reinvent mental models provides us with the means to solve our problems without deferring to the machine or accepting the mob.

But as our framing improved our decision-making, this success created its own weakness: a belief in a single frame of truth. In countless cases, humanity has created and enforced such frames, from the Spanish Inquisition to Soviet collectivism. And we have learned surprisingly little from their failures. We are still susceptible to monolithic thinking, convincing ourselves that past failures of single frames were due to the frame, not because it was singular.

Crises of nature (from climate change to pandemics) and humanity (from new forms of tribalism to violent oppression) demand not a cognitive leap of faith, but a doubling down on what humans have always done so well: applying imagination under constraints to come up with novel solutions and appreciating their long-term consequences.

The story of the Wright brothers also highlights that a frame itself is not a solution, it’s just a means to find a solution. Using a frame isn’t simply instinctive; it is considered

Option pricing in financial markets offers a case in point. The Black-Scholes theory—a widely used mathematical frame to price options—pushed option prices toward the prices the frame predicted, leading financial institutions to promote the frame’s application, which in turn brought the prices even closer to the frame’s predictions. There is a self-fulfilling dimension to this: often the more a frame is used, the more it validates its use (up to a point).

Counterfactuals are a way to see beyond the reality that surrounds us. Without this ability to imagine “what could have been,” “what has been,” and “what could be,” we would

Counterfactual thinking is the second element of framing. It is different from freewheeling fantasizing. It is not intellectual buffoonery. Unlike random stream-of-consciousness thoughts and free associations, counterfactuals are focused and goal-oriented. We use them to understand the world and prepare for action. Counterfactuals rely on the understanding of cause and effect that is embedded in our frames. This allows us to project forward or backward in time in our imagination, or take something that happened in one context and imagine it happening in another.

Put in the context of framing: as humans explain the world using causal frames, they are actually learning more about the world they are explaining, generating deeper and more accurate insights. Explaining the world to others leads to understanding it better oneself. The finding has direct application to education and parenting: get kids to explain their reasoning, not just give an answer. (There may be an evolutionary advantage too. By explaining, we are likely to learn more and faster about the world than those who don’t bother.)

The idea of agency provides that humans have choices and can exercise them. We are subjects, not objects, in the world. We have the capacity to act. Having agency hinges upon our ability to frame causally. This is not to say that “free will” exists objectively, nor that human choices aren’t influenced by social structures. Yet only if our actions have consequences—only if we can predict how our choices will shape reality—can we actually choose.

As we explain the world through causal frames, we accept that there is a force larger than ourselves that governs all that is under the sun—if not a divine entity, then at least something that obeys the laws of physics.

What we cannot allow are frames that deny the existence of other frames (the sole exception to the idea that there are no bad frames). Uniformity of mental models is what crushes human progress. It makes people no wiser than automata that perpetuate the past because they cannot see beyond the present. If our frames cannot coexist, how can we?

Pundits often suggest that people must come together and converge on a perspective to meet pressing challenges. But it is quite the opposite: our power lies in the difference of human frames and in our ability to see the world from a myriad of angles. Only if we tap the breadth of human frames can we devise the original solutions we will need to survive as a species.

The MeToo movement is many things, but perhaps most powerfully, it is a frame. It transformed how sexual assault is perceived, not as something to be kept private but something that could be made public. The declarations on Twitter became a source of empowerment and liberation. MeToo reversed the stigma: women need not be ashamed, and could bring shame upon the men who assaulted them.

Before MeToo, a woman speaking about an assault might be seen not as a victim but as complacent, complicit, or culpable. (Why did you go to his apartment? Why did you wear that provocative dress?) With this new frame, women could bear witness knowing they had strength in numbers, with a ready, global support group. The new frame didn’t merely provide an alternative way of thinking about the issue: it opened up new possibilities for decisions and actions.

Previous airplane designers based propellers on those used for ships. But water has a million times the density of air. Boat propellers bite into the water to produce momentum. Air, on the other hand, is compressible, and the Wrights realized they needed to rethink how an airplane propeller would work. The aerodynamic frame led them to the answer. As Orville later described their insight: “It was apparent that a propeller was simply an aeroplane [wing] travelling in a spiral course.” The blades would need a camber to produce uplift, like the wings.

The first hurdle to choosing the right frame, however, is that we are cognitively biased to stick to the frames we have used before. We are like the proverbial handyman, who while holding a hammer can only see nails.

Dennett’s three scenarios capture the key elements of frames. In the first scenario, the robot failed to see basic causality. In the second, it failed to quickly conjure up the relevant counterfactuals. In the third, it was paralyzed by applying too many constraints. The machine, as Dennett suggests, can do a lot of calculating with an immense amount of formal logic and processing reams of data, but it cannot frame.

When we dream up alternative realities, we actually do serious cognitive work, requiring a wide spectrum of skills. Counterfactual thinking requires our minds to be fully engaged. We know this because humans with brain disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, are more impaired in thinking counterfactually than for other cognitive tasks. They may have no difficulties speaking and reasoning, but they find it hard to envision alternatives to what exists.

Because we can choose our actions, because we decide, we also can be blamed. Accountability comes with choice. Being forced at gunpoint to hand over money doesn’t make us culpable, but robbing a bank does. Crossing a street while sleepwalking will not lead to punishment, but deliberately running over a pedestrian will. Responsibility is the flip side of agency; it’s part and parcel of making choices.

That’s where counterfactuals shine. As we dream up alternative realities, we also imagine different causes. They are the antidote to jumping to a particular causal conclusion too quickly

Rzeczy, rzeczy, rzeczy“- przedłużyła mężowskie zdanie Wanda i w tejże chwili uwagę wszystkich nieśpiących zwróciło głośniejsze trzeszczenie futryny, ołowiowe światło sięgało już trzech czwartych okna, martwa fala wznosiła się powtórnie, ” przepraszam ” powiedział inżynier, wstał i poszedł do łazienki (Chciałbym w tym miejscu zwrócić uwagę na doskonałą dramaturgię życia, przerwy na siusianie przed finałową rozgrywką nie wymyśliłby żaden twórca romansów). Korzystając z nieobecności inżyniera, szybko wyciągnąłem następne zdjęcie pornograficzne przedstawiające rozbieloną płaszczyznę (podpis : ” Roztopienie się w ekstazie ”) i podsunąłem Wandzie; ” słodkie ” - powiedziała oddając mi fotografię, tym razem nie tarła łydką o łydkę, lecz ograniczyło się do wzruszającego chrząkania, “niech pan patrzy na okno, może zaraz tu będzie dno” - szepnęła i jeszcze ciszej “chciałbyś, rekinku ?” “jestem Stanisław G.” “och, nie masz się czego wstydzić, te ząbki, zęby, zębiska, zębiska, właśnie zębiska, o twoich mówię, one słodkie, mógłbyś przegryźć stół, gdybyś tylko chciał”, “w zębach go podniosę”, “nie teraz, nie teraz, słodkie zębiska, cukier puder, cukier kryształ, cukier w kostkach, miód, syrop, ulepek, lukier, karmel” , “żaden cukier- ja na to- a witriol, dziegieć, ostrza mięso rwące, palnik acetylenowy, pinezki, sztylety, bęc”, “gwałtowniku”- powiedziała i westchnąwszy “gligligligli- zamierająco szepnęła, “rrrrrr”- odpowiedziałem chowając zdjęcie, “nieźle musisz wyglądać nago”- powiedział Robert do Wandy “pan mnie obraża, poskarżę się mężowi”, “jak chcesz- odparł Tęgopytek- ale gdybyś chciała tu kiedyś wpaść, to chętnie cię zobaczę”, “bezczelność” - rzekła z oburzeniem i łzy zakręciły się jej w oczach - proponować mi czystą formę! Gdyby pan choć powiedział, że mogłabym tu wrócić po zapomniane rękawiczki! Ale tak, jak pan to sfallizował, to bezczelność!”, “mogą być rękawiczki” - zgodził się Robert, “w żadnym wypadku, dzień jest zimny, dłonie mi spierzchną i…”, tu rozmowa się urwała bo inżynier Henryk Wiator, wyszedł z łazienki, zbywszy trochę esencji, wprost proporcjonalnie umocnił się w egzystencji, prezentował się więc nadzwyczaj godnie. “Henryku powiem ci prawdę” - oznajmił Tęgopytek, spojrzał na mnie inżynier, jakby chcąc potwierdzenie sukcesu znaleźć na mojej twarzy, przybrałem odpowiednią minę, również inżynier twarz odmienił zwracając ją ku Tęgopytkowi, było na niej łaskawe zainteresowanie, uśmiech mi jednak nieco drgał (w rytmie napierającej z zewnątrz na okno martwej fali; dochodziła do wierzchołka futryny)

counterfactuals make us better causal thinkers. In experiments, people improve their causal reasoning after engaging in counterfactual thinking than the other way around. Cognitive scientists, notably Ruth Byrne at Trinity College Dublin, suggest that counterfactuals are so helpful because they remind us of options, broadening rather than deepening our focus. As we think about options, we also ponder cause and effect; in contrast, when we just focus on a single cause, we are not stimulating our imagination. That’s why imagining alternative realities is such a central element for successful framing.

it’s easier for us to envisage something that doesn’t exist than to think it through in purely conceptual terms.

By imagining alternative ways in which a situation might play out, we activate a lot of our knowledge about how the world works, including causal insights that we would otherwise find difficult to articulate.

counterfactuals give people a sense of purpose. They expose and express our notion of action and agency.

Applying constraints is not about maximizing the number of counterfactuals we create. It’s about swiftly identifying a manageable number of the most effective options: the goal is to shrink the search space.

At the core of any frame lies a trade-off. The fewer constraints, the more counterfactuals a frame can generate. This gives a decision-maker more options, but it also means that many impractical ones have to be weeded out. The more constraints, the fewer options a frame elicits. This helps keep the decision-maker focused, but runs the risk of missing out on better choices.

A model’s value is in the information that is ignored as much as included.

By dreaming with constraints, we make sure that we have a bias toward impact, a bias toward effectiveness. What we achieve in our lives leaves footprints that others can follow—frames that others can adopt, adapt, and apply.

But when and where reframing succeeds, it offers a novel way of understanding and provides us with a new set of options.

Reframing is special because we normally stay within a frame.

Adhering to a well-honed mental model is often the default strategy for success, not the consequence of cognitive inertia. It is not a flaw but a feature of human cognition.

Staying within a frame comes with mental baggage. In contrast, switching to an alternative frame affords the opportunity to start anew.

Especially when compared with reasoning within a frame, switching frames is more about a stroke of insight than a methodical process.

When using our repertoire of frames, knowing the qualities of each frame we possess is crucial to identifying a good fit. But it is equally important to have a wide selection of frames at our disposal.

the idea of repurposing a frame from elsewhere. We do this when we need to reframe but have no ready alternative at our disposal, so we look to other domains for an existing frame that could be adjusted to our current circumstances. It won’t be a ready template and so may require substantial cognitive work to shape it appropriately, but at least having something to play with can get us started.

The key to IKEA’s initial success was its use of an alternative mental frame of what furniture represents and is used for: not timeless but timely. Yet that frame wasn’t entirely new. It had been in the air. Other sectors were undergoing a transition from the durable to the disposable. Luckily for IKEA’s founder, the furniture sector had not yet, so his repurposed frame gave IKEA an edge.

The economist Andrew Lo at MIT believes it is time to transform economics from its frame of physics and its emphasis on equilibrium to the frame of biology with a focus on evolution and growth.

The economy resembles more a complex, adaptive organism that responds to changes than a slab of iron that has predictable properties of density or the diffusion of heat.

If reframing by dint of repertoire or repurposing fails, we need to devise a new frame altogether, an act of reinvention. This is exemplified by Charles Darwin. He is popularly associated with the idea of survival of the fittest. But the frame he invented is more fundamental: that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors. That basic concept—literally a diagram of the tree of life—transformed how humans understood the origin of life on Earth and how species evolved. In this way, the reframing was not a matter of applying a new frame from one’s repertoire or finding and adapting a new frame from another context to a new problem. Rather, it can be seen as inventing a new frame altogether.

In all these cases, the innovation was an intangible, intellectual one before it was instantiated in equations, laws, routers, or software. One’s whole mental model had to change. It is going beyond what one knows.

Whatever strategy we choose though, reframing remains an endeavor fraught with failure. The path to reframing has no reliable signposts, no straightforward cognitive processes, no dependable schedules. A new frame may crop up in a sudden rush or after years of plodding. And there is no guarantee of success at all.

reframing an issue allows us to see it from a new perspective, which reveals alternatives that we might not otherwise have imagined.

Whether they plunder their repertoire, repurpose a frame from elsewhere, or reinvent an entirely new frame, all successful reframers share certain things in common. It isn’t a clever mind, quick memory, or deep experience. What’s needed is a willingness to risk new thoughts and forge new cognitive paths. It requires a mind that is comfortable with the unfamiliar, that can gently let go of preconceptions and presumptions, and can see and seize new possibilities.

There is a risk, however, that just because someone has reframed successfully, they believe they can do it again and again. There can be a vainglory attached to reframers, who wear their achievement like a golden crown and reapply the new frame where it does not fit. The best innovators are aware of this and work to minimize it. Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Larry Page of Google all enjoyed reputations for stubbornness but at the same time actively sought out alternative views that contradicted their own. They understood the shortcoming of relying on a single frame and the value of being exposed to alternative ones.

The starting point is to understand the sources of difficulty we face when attempting to switch frames. There are four in particular: the cognitive energy required to create a novel frame; the need to step away from the familiar; the necessity of identifying a frame that fits the circumstances; and wise timing to recognize the right moment to reframe.

When reframing, we must actively push aside an existing frame to free up the cognitive space for something new.

all else being equal, it is better to choose a frame with more mutable constraints, even if it fits more loosely. The disadvantage of looseness is compensated by the additional choices it lets us generate, and the sense of empowerment and agency it provides.

We need the right boundaries for our imagination to elicit the choices we have. Constraints are rules and restrictions that shape our counterfactual thinking in a particular way.

With constraints, framing goes from the purview of cognition to the basis of actions that matter.

People who are exceptional at framing understand that their imagination needs bounds—cognitive curbs, mental manacles—not to interdict their vision but to guide it. Restraints can free creativity rather than curtail it, providing a zone of permissibility to take mental risks.

In this very sense, constraints—by providing curbs on the open canvas of our dreams—can actually be more liberating than limiting. But the constraints themselves are not what is most important; it is what we do with them. By changing constraints, we are shaping the alternative realities we come up with. What matters is the act of constraining our imagination. Loosening or tightening constraints is like operating valves in complex machinery: one needs to adjust the right combination to produce valuable results.

If we focus on the wrong constraints, we don’t capture what’s needed. But focusing on all of them doesn’t help either. Select too few constraints and we lose focus on what matters; choose too many and we may miss something important.

Soft ones are malleable or amenable, can be adjusted or bent even if only with substantial effort. Hard ones are fixed, impermeable, inviolable. Hard constraints capture the central tenet of a mental model; neglecting them means giving up on the very model itself. So, when the frame is financial accounting, not accepting the constraint of basic arithmetic—that two plus two equals four—is dumping a hard constraint. By discarding it, one essentially discards the frame itself.

Choosing wisely among these soft constraints is more art than science. But three principles guide the selection: mutability, minimal change, and consistency. Mutability means picking constraints that are open to modification. Minimal change posits that constraints should be adjusted gently, not radically. Consistency means that modifying a constraint cannot contradict another constraint. Consider each in practice

The magic lies in understanding which constraints are mutable. SpaceX accepted that a rocket falling back to Earth needed to be slowed down, but it chose to use the built-in rocket engine instead of a wing to do it. Precisely because the SpaceX engineers were able to relax one set of now mutable constraints, they were able to see new possibilities and to develop the Falcon’s reusable rockets.

When we are choosing which constraints to modify, the principle of mutability suggests that we should single out elements that we can influence.

we should look to alter constraints that reflect human behavior or human choices, because it’s far more likely that this will yield a useful dream.

using mutability has a big advantage: it focuses our reasoning on things that we can influence, change, or shape. It helps us see choices and act on them.

social norms are mutable, at least in principle, and they do evolve over time. But in our mental laboratory of constraining counterfactuals, we tend to see norms as fixed and unchangeable.

When selecting which constraints to loosen or tighten, we should aim for the fewest, not the most, modifications. We should aspire to minimal change. With alternative realities in our mind, our imaginings need to stick closer to, rather than further from, the one we inhabit. That way, we reduce the risk of simply conjuring up impractical possibilities. Reality needs to shine through what we envisage.

idea of Occam’s razor, a rule of thumb in problem-solving that recommends a preference for simplicity. When choosing between alternative explanations or solutions to a problem, embrace the less complicated: it will probably be more accurate than an intricate or elaborate answer with lots of parts. The idea was set forth (in a somewhat different form) by the English friar William of Ockham in the fourteenth century; the “razor” is to shave away the unnecessary to focus on the essential.

The minimal-change principle pushes us in a particular direction when picking counterfactuals: we tend to omit rather than add. It is easier for us to imagine a world without some features of reality than to introduce ones that do not yet exist.

Experiments have shown that omitting a mutable human action from a counterfactual requires less mental work than adding an action from the countless possibilities.

Even though this sometimes may lead us astray, privileging human inaction has the advantage not only of a lower mental load to imagine but also of something that’s likely easier to achieve. It’s often simpler to stop others from acting than to motivate them to act when they had no intention of doing so.