Anti-Principle Test
A principle earns its name only when choosing it costs you something. Reveal its substance by naming the anti-principle: the competing value, option, or resource it asks you to sacrifice.
In an episode about making faster decisions, the sharpest question is not whether a principle sounds wise. It is: what do I have to give up? Advice that demands no sacrifice may be describing universal goodness rather than guiding a decision.
E1A principle must exclude something
Decisions exist because desirable values collide. A real principle resolves that collision by ranking one value above another; its anti-principle names what loses. Asking for that opposite works like Socratic questioning: it makes the hidden ranking explicit. It also gives the claim a failure condition, separating usable guidance from a story that can justify anything.
E1A cost proves substance, not wisdom
Finding a tradeoff does not show that the principle is correct, only that it has operational meaning. Whether its ranking is sensible still depends on the domain; like the validity-of-intuition, a rule that works in one environment can mislead when the underlying conditions change.
Write the rejected sentence
Before adopting a piece of advice tomorrow, complete two lines: “This principle prioritizes ___” and “Its anti-principle prioritizes ___ instead.” Then name the specific time, money, speed, certainty, or alternative you will surrender. If you cannot fill in the second line or identify a cost, do not use the advice to make the decision.
E1Episodes that teach this
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Jeff Bezos Decision Making Framework | How to Make Fast Decisions?
· explained at 12:14
2,345 views
“Whenever somebody gives you a principle like this ask what is the anti-principle… what do I have to give up?”