
Invert, always, invert - anupj
https://www.anup.io/2020/07/20/invert-always-invert/
======
nate
This is also a great way to surprise people.

Surprise seems to be one of the most important ingredients to getting things
to spread (I won't quote the academic or anecdotal research of that here.) So
I use this inversion analysis often in thinking about coming up with ways of
surprising people. My most successful example of this:

I was originally thinking, "How can I get more customers?"

Inverting it I came up with, "How can I lose more customers?" (A different
inversion from the OP's but an inversion nonetheless).

Using that as my base I came up with this funny campaign where I tried to
figure out how to fire more of my customers. What if I could fire the worst of
my customers. So I invented a honey pot website called trickajournalist.com
where I described some software you could signup for to spam journalists. And
then I used the list of people who signed up for that and banned them from
using my product that had an email newsletter component. We didn't want
spammers.

It was a nice media/traffic win for what we were doing. And it all came from
inverting what we originally struggled to answer.

P.S. If you're interested more in the whole trickajournalist.com thing, the
original site is dead now, but some articles about it:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathankontny/2018/02/27/trick-a...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathankontny/2018/02/27/trick-
a-journalist%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Athe-next-innovation-in-email-
marketing/#42d395f91d25)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathankontny/2018/03/08/reddit-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathankontny/2018/03/08/reddit-
banned-me-so-why-didnt-google-and-facebook/#1702cd5f15a2)

~~~
mola
So you lied to a bunch of people? While enticing them to participate in bad
behaviour? I don't get the joke

~~~
kleer001
I doesn't seem like a joke to me. It seems like a sincere way to filter out
bad actors.

~~~
mdorazio
...by being a bad actor yourself? I'm with the parent poster, I don't get it.

~~~
yumraj
Context matters.

A bad actor towards spammers and a bad actor towards your legitimate customers
are not the same thing.

A bad actor towards spammers, is being a good actor towards their legitimate
customers.

~~~
mdorazio
Thank you for taking the time to respond instead of just downvoting. However,
this is an Ends Justifies the Means argument, which I have always disagreed
with and also disagree with here.

------
mlangenberg
As a software developer I have been doing this exact thing for the past twelve
years: think of all the possible reasons why something can fail.

The downside is that I have trained my mind in such a way that it is difficult
to turn it off outside of work and it is influencing my personal live
negatively.

(or maybe I'm just wired to be a doom thinker and that is what makes me a good
software engineer)

~~~
teekert
I wanted to contribute the same to this discussing.

At work, I'm really good at thinking things through and avoiding unnecessary
work. Outside of work, I worry that when we restructure our roof, we will
negatively impact the neighbors solar panel output. I constantly grind about
how I'm going to discuss this with them. Even though we may not even
restructure the roof.

Or I wonder how I'm going to handle it the next time my neighbor turns on an
outdoor speaker. Even though he may not, for months to come, and when he does,
I might just be on my way out.

Now the wife and kids want chickens, and I'm sitting here discussing (in my
head) how our neighbor is wrong about all the downsides she may bring up. Even
though she may even like that we have chickens.

It's tiring and impacts my life negatively.

At work I do manage to keep a "do-ers" attitude, I mean I will start many
things, take in criticism, change my approach. I think I'm generally pretty
good at my job and radiate a positive attitude. I wish I was the same at home.

~~~
throwaway7uA4
Yes, I am exactly the same. While at work I feel very productive eliminating
future risk by being very conspicuous towards all design decisions, but the
same attitude in "real life" is very troublesome.

For example, a very small random sample of thoughts that routinely pop up:

\- Lent somebody your bike? Oh my god he/she may die, because it's badly
maintained (and thinking about the details about different kinds of breakage
vs. harm caused).

\- Opening plastic containers or cans for food: oh my god, sharp edges may
fall into the food (how to keep parts of packaging from falling into food
while opening is surprisingly complex topic, think about knifes vs. scissors
vs. tearing it open, all have very different hehaviour wrt. creating debris :)

\- doing mistakes when filing taxes vs. the risk and penalties that may ensue

\- furniture / cupboards being insufficiently bolted to the wall and coming
down (and thinking about how it would move, where it would hit and the
likelhood of bad injuries)

\- risk of injuries due to electricity after fixing electric installation at
home (am I sure I didn't damage some insulator, is the ground wire really
properly attached, is the strain-relief properly done etc.)

For me this is pretty much modulated by stress level. Doing a lot of sports,
less coffee, and sleeping enough usually leaves me much less inclined of doing
these not so helpful analysis for stuff outside work. And I'm always amazed
how other people can just "wipe away" such thoughts as unnecessary without any
analysis at all. Maybe that's the difference between employing proper
intuition vs. striving for "mathematical proof" kind of certainty in all areas
of life.

[edit] adding another perspective that is sometimes helpful in stopping
overthinking: trying to analyse the full tree of possibilities is the chess
computer kind of reasoning (alpha-beta search). It is pretty limited in what
domains it can be applied to (e.g. it does not work for Poker or the Game of
Go). On the other hand try to learn some Go and feel the difference: after
gaining some experience you will give up on exhaustive analysis in many
situations and just start relying on intuition, because it's the only thing
that actually works for complex, unclear situations. Now sometimes I try to
remember how playing Go feels when faced with real-world problems where I'm
tempted to do an exhaustive analysis. See also [1].

[1] [https://xkcd.com/761/](https://xkcd.com/761/)

~~~
andi999
I can relate to this. Let me ask you a thing: when you ship things (release a
product), do you feel lifted/happy like ppl here tell you, or does your
worries increase (like it happens for me, I hate shipping)

~~~
freehunter
Personally when I _finish_ a project I feel great. When I release a project to
the world, that’s when the worry kicks in.

~~~
andi999
Can you elaborate what exactly you mean by 'finish'

~~~
freehunter
When the code works the way I want it to for the version I’m about to release.

Like if I’ve finished the code for v1.6 and am ready to ship it to customers,
I feel great. When I actually send it to customers my anxiety kicks in
thinking of all the support requests and criticism I’m about to get.

------
philwelch
A cool example of this principle in action is to read the WWII-era “Simple
Sabotage Field Manual” ([https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-
archive/...](https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-
archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf)), which
reads like an inverted guide to productivity. Some fun bits:

> Managers and Supervisors: To lower morale and production, think of the worst
> boss you’ve had and act like that. Be pleasant to inefficient workers; give
> them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain
> unjustly about their work. When possible, refer all matters to committees
> for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as
> large and bureaucratic as possible.

> Employees: Be forgetful. Clumsy. Work slowly. Think of ways to increase the
> number of movements needed to do your job: use a light hammer instead of a
> heavy one; try to make a small wrench do instead of a big one.

> When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and
> consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible - never
> less than five.

> Apply all regulations to the last letter.

Admittedly, some of the techniques—like releasing a bag full of moths in a
movie theater to disrupt enemy propaganda—are oddly specific and not easily
inverted.

~~~
esaym
Amazing....

~~~
bigiain
BRB. Going make a cinema-focussed remake of Hitchcock's "The Birds" that
_relies_ on a few bags full of moths being released during each screening...

------
seanpquig
I work on the algorithm for a widely used search engine and can confirm that
this line of thinking has been very effective in improving our product over
the years.

Rather than trying to generate hypothetical ideas for "how can we make our
search better", we spend a lot of time analyzing our data to find where we are
failing. Many of our biggest relevance improvements have come from tracking
and understanding the types of queries where we consistently fail to generate
results or user engagement.

I think it is a very effective approach, but can require some discipline and
perspective. When you spend so much time focusing on the failures of your
product, it can create this internal perception that the product is constantly
failing and broken. So you do need to actively remember what you're doing well
and how far you've come as a team/product.

~~~
whack
> _Rather than trying to generate hypothetical ideas for "how can we make our
> search better", we spend a lot of time analyzing our data to find where we
> are failing. Many of our biggest relevance improvements have come from
> tracking and understanding the types of queries where we consistently fail
> to generate results or user engagement._

This sounds a lot like the 6-sigma approach of driving improvement by focusing
obsessively on eliminating "defects".

There are certainly huge wins that can be obtained by identifying and
eliminating bugs or corner-cases with undesired behavior. But it's scary to
imagine a world where this is used as a replacement for innovative thinking -
ie, "how can we make our search better". If Steve Jobs had focused all his
proverbial efforts on minimizing flip-phone defects, the world would have
missed out on the smartphone revolution.

~~~
asdgagbiobnio
The iPhone's competition was not the flip-phone. It was the PDA and the
Blackberry and the pocket PC. The iPhone was an evolution of previous similar
devices.

I still do not understand why people consider smartphones revolutionary. It is
revolutionary that everyone has one on them at all times, but the gadgets
themselves aren't all that.

------
lentil
One of the ways to apply this inverted thinking is to conduct a "pre-mortem"
at the start of a project. By deliberately imagining that something has
failed, and speculating about the reasons, you can sometimes uncover useful
steps that prevent those imagined failures from actually happening.

I've found this can be quite useful, both for minimizing risk, and also
(interestingly) as a source for new product/feature ideas.

~~~
ssss11
I think it depends on the scenario selected. I’ve found pre-mortems annoying,
and given any number of risks that could materialise how do you choose the
right one for the pre-mortem for maximum value discussion?

Plus I generally dislike the idea and feel like its a trend that should go
away.

~~~
EForEndeavour
> how do you choose the right one for the pre-mortem for maximum value
> discussion?

Isn't that where domain expertise comes in? It sounds pretty sensible and
important to me to try to imagine various realistic failure modes and
preemptively try to prevent them. To not let the website go down, pre-empting
hard drive failure or DDoS makes a lot more sense than worrying about network
cables spontaneously disintegrating, or the outbreak of nuclear war.

~~~
fendy3002
Then in reality the website is down due to the simplest things that's so
common we don't reconsider it, such as user input some special characters that
makes the server error.

Edit: I'm not downplaying the importance of prevention

~~~
cutemonster
> server error

Seems to me that bugs is then a high risk in that project. And to prevent or
reduce the number of failures, the project needs an auto test suite

------
jermier
I use an old inversion technique. Not sure where I read this, and I think Tim
Ferris said it:

    
    
        The last thing you want to do is the first thing you should do
    

There is always something mega pertinent on my TODO lists that I really don't
want to do, and it calls out my name when I sleep saying: 'You really need to
do this' and the feeling of procrastination makes you feel ashamed of having
not completed the task. But it gets done thanks to inversion, and I proudly
check it off as being done, until the next task I don't want to do comes along
(and yes it will come along).

~~~
imhoguy
Damn. I should finally add GDPR-compliant privacy policy to my niche side
project.

------
rwmj
Is the example correct?

 _> Instead of asking how do we increase the adoption of a product or feature?
You could instead consider - what are some of things preventing adoption?_

Surely to invert the question you'd want to consider how do I deliberately
decrease adoption of the product? It might lead to some of the same answers,
like make it slower. But also to different ones, like constantly bad-mouth my
own product on social media. (Which would indicate a path to adoption is to
rigorously rebut criticism using Google Alerts.)

Edit: I think the difference is if I'm only looking for what about my current
product prevents adoption, then I've narrowed my scope to looking at aspects
of my current product. Whereas if I blue-sky think about ways to make the
product bad, that allows a broader range of solutions for making it good.

~~~
maps7
Yeah a direct inversion doesn't seem to work. I think you invert the idea but
with the premise that you don't want to do it.

So instead of: How do I decrease adoption?

You think: How do I avoid decreasing adoption?

I think this works anyway. Another example:

Goal: Fly to Spain

Question: How do I fly to Spain?

The inverted question should not be "How do I not fly to Spain?" (answer: get
put on a flying ban or don't buy a ticket) but "How do I avoid not flying to
Spain?" (answer: pick a date and book tickets)

~~~
dtech
But that isn't really an inversion, more a double negative.

The example given is "how do I keep my pilots alive?" with the inversion "what
could kill my pilots?". Your result would be "how do I avoid not keeping my
pilots alive?", which is just the original question.

~~~
marcosdumay
I imagine a single negation would increase the solution space so much that it
wouldn't be useful anymore. A double negation will change the question format,
so our (irrational) minds treat it differently, yet keep the solution space
the same.

~~~
feanaro
It might be irrational in some cases, but it also might have to do with the
double negation of a statement not being practically equivalent to the
statement, as in constructive mathematics.

------
load
The inversion principle is a great mental model in my opinion. The best way I
can sum it up in the most basic way is instead of thinking "What can I do to
[achieve goal]?", think "What is preventing me from [achieving goal]?".

If some of you like this, I suggest delving into the 'mental model' rabbit
hole. There's some pretty inspiring stuff on it.

~~~
maps7
Is the link in the blog post a good place to start? ([https://fs.blog/mental-
models/#what_are_mental_models](https://fs.blog/mental-
models/#what_are_mental_models)) or do you have an alternative suggestion?

------
corry
Reminds one of PG's "just don't die and you become rich" advice for startup
founders.

FWIW, the best founders I've met within YC or outside of it have this
paradoxical quality that takes high optimism about the future of their company
and combines it with extreme gritty paranoia about the short-term things that
could derail or kill you.

~~~
davidrm
That reminds me of the foreword in the High Output Management, written by Ben
Horowitz and Andy Grover's words "only the paranoid survive":

“CEOs always act on leading indicators of good news, but only act on lagging
indicators of bad news.”

“Why?” I asked him. He answered in the style resonant of his entire book: “In
order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by
definition you are trying to do something that most people would consider
impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of
bad news.”

But this insight won’t be in any book. When I suggested he write something on
the topic, his response was: “Why would I do that? It would be a waste of time
to write about how to not follow human nature. It would be like trying to stop
the Peter Principle.* CEOs must be optimists and all in all that’s a good
thing.”

------
knodi123
A similar principle from the ancient boardgame of Go is, "Your opponents best
move is your best move." i.e. sometimes it can be hard to see what the most
advantageous move is for you. but if you can see your opponent's most
advantageous move, then just steal that one.

------
klodolph
This is how I summarize my time in photography classes.

\- What’s in focus? (What’s out of focus?)

\- What’s in light? (What’s in shadow?)

\- Where is the light coming from? (Where is the light _not_ coming from?)

\- What’s in the foreground? (What’s in the background?)

\- Positive space / negative space

Similar things end up happening in audio. You want to set up a microphone to
record something, it’s usually better to point the microphone _away_ from the
noise that you don’t want, instead of _towards_ the sound that you do want.
When you’re EQing, you usually want to remove unwanted frequencies rather than
boost wanted frequencies. Etc.

------
codezero
That’s fun. My personal version of this is when I’m stuck on a problem at home
or work I’ll lay down on the ground and look up at the ceiling or lay on a
couch with my head hanging off to see the room upside down.

Surveying an area I’m familiar with from a weird perspective always sparks new
ideas for me because I almost always also see something new in that familiar
place because of the positioning.

In doing so, it helps me unblock other thought processes.

------
davecap1
Interesting way of describing/thinking about hazard or risk analysis which is
applied in many industries through ISO standard frameworks such as ISO 14971
for medical devices (but is also used elsewhere). Risk analysis complements
requirements analysis in that risk mitigation plans become requirements of the
system (if the risks meet some threshold).

~~~
kejaed
I came here to note the same thing, from an aerospace perspective.

In a formal development following something like ARP4754A even before one
works on the requirements that a system has to meet, the high level system
functions are considered and a Functional Hazard Assessment is done to look at
the criticality of those functions failing. Then one can add requirements and
architectural mitigations as the system and Safety Assessment is developed.

------
pgt
The article gets it right, but "man muss immer umkehren," is better translated
as "man must always turn upside down", "inside out," "turn back" or "reverse"
depending on the context.

In Afrikaans, "omkeer" is derived from the Germanic umkehren and would be used
as changing direction (in a military sense) or upside down as in 'leave no
stone unturned.'

Strangely, nowadays I would refer to inverting your trousers as "binneste-
buite" (inside-out) or "uitkeer" in Afrikaans: roughly 'about face'.

~~~
trampi
Native german speaker here: In this context, I would read "umkehren" as "turn
back / turn into the direction where you came from"

~~~
felixr
I agree. I would have never thought about translating it as invert.

------
l0b0
What is the difference between a bug report and a feature request? Is it
simply that a bug report is something the system should already be doing,
either because it's an advertised feature or it's something which is
universally expected from that kind of software, while a feature request is
about something which the system does not do, does not advertise that it does,
and is _not_ expected to be there by default? If so, we should be able to
"invert" any bug report into a feature request (and vice versa), which could
gain some insight by looking at it in a different way.

Another thing we could do is write a feature request — which often over-
specifies what should be done in a classic up-front design way — like a bug
report, which usually only specifies a _goal_ which we can't yet achieve,
rather than how it should be achieved.

Yet another thing which would be interesting is TDD-style tickets. Rather than
simply explaining the happy path to a goal they could explain the various
things which could _prevent_ someone from reaching that goal: invalid inputs,
missing permissions, inaccessible dependencies, missing UI, etc.

------
ibejoeb
The technique is also pretty good for acknowledging one's own personal
decisions and being ok with them. For example:

What's preventing me from being richer, more powerful, more famous?

Perhaps you'd give up privacy, autonomy, free time. That might be all it takes
to realize that happiness and performance are not always, or even often, the
same.

------
agumonkey
Funny a few years ago I thought that Failure Oriented Design could be a nice
starting point. Think about all the failures/errors, the remaining space will
then be a safe playground.

~~~
the_af
Thinking about all possible failures seems daunting though. It reminds me of
the Anna Karenina principle:

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

What does this say about the tractability of enumerating possible failures? :P

------
joe_the_user
It's Staparfi, it's always STA-PAR-FI!

That is:

Standard: Start with standard, commonly applicable piece of advice. Lists of
these can be found many places (for example, "to achieve success, avoid
failure").

Paradoxical: Reformulate in terminology that's opaque, paradoxical, jargony
and truncated (OPJART!)

Fixation: Claim that's always true, that it's best thing since sliced bread.
etc. Your audience will recoil but some of them will work and realize there's
some good advice in your stream of jargon. And having _worked_ at getting this
understanding, they will value it more and be happy to endorse the exaggerated
value you're assigning to your jargon and your point, which is, indeed,
something that is true moderately often.

STA-PAR-FI! This phrase can launch a thousand consultancies.

------
kwhitefoot
It seems to me that a better English equivalent to _umkehren_ would be _turn
around_. That also fits the text of the article better. That is to say look at
the problem from the other side, form another angle. Invert is simultaneously
too specific (leading to formulaic methods) and too ambiguous (leading to
pointless discussions of whether it means considering putting the steering
wheel at the back or on the other side when in fact it means do both).

See
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/umkehren](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/umkehren)

Edit: fixed typo.

~~~
ralfd
Jacobi was a mathematician and his "Umkehrfunktion" is in english "Inverse
function".

It also seems the common english translation:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=invert+always+invert](https://www.google.com/search?q=invert+always+invert)

To be fair though:

While his Wikipedia entry has the sentence:

> He is said to have told his students that when looking for a research topic,
> one should 'Invert, always invert' ('man muss immer umkehren'), reflecting
> his belief that inverting known results can open up new fields for research,
> for example inverting elliptical integrals and focusing on the nature of
> elliptic and theta functions.[8]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Jacob_Jacobi#Scien...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Jacob_Jacobi#Scientific_contributions)

The attributed source for that, a paper from 1916, differs in the translation:

[https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1916-23-01/S0002-9904-1916...](https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1916-23-01/S0002-9904-1916-02863-1/S0002-9904-1916-02863-1.pdf)

> The great mathematician Jacobi is said to have inculcated upon his students
> the dictum: Man muss immer umkehren. One must always seek a converse, turn a
> thought the other end to.

------
maire
Murphy's law is a more humorous way of saying the same thing.

"If something can go wrong it will go wrong."

There are earlier references - but Murphy's Law is associated with high
g-force testing just after WWII. The team used Murphy's law to anticipate
every possible failure and prevent it before the experiment ended in death.
There is nothing like death to sharpen your focus.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law)

------
mark-r
Has anybody else ever noticed that mazes are easier to solve if you start at
the end and work backwards?

~~~
abiogenesis
I usually solved them that way when I was a kid, but that's only because maze
designers set up forks in one direction but they don't bother doing it in the
other direction.

------
amelius
Why only invert? For example when designing a car, don't just consider putting
the steering wheel in the front or in the back. But also consider left and
right.

------
ajra
Great advice! I have to say though, I love the irony of the author mentioning
reducing investment losses by asking the question "Am I diversifying enough to
prevent long term loss?" when Munger+Buffett have the opposite view of
diversification for the savvy investor -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJzu_xItNkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJzu_xItNkY)

------
larrydag
This reminds me of the Dual in Linear Programming.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_linear_program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_linear_program)

[https://web.stanford.edu/~ashishg/msande111/notes/chapter4.p...](https://web.stanford.edu/~ashishg/msande111/notes/chapter4.pdf)

------
arjitkp
I have actually saw quite a few examples of Inversion

* Herta Herzog laid the foundation for the basis of modern media psychology, but simply inverting.

What do media do to people --> What people do with media.

This shifts focus from strong media influences to human being an active
consumer of media.

* In statistical testing is fundamentally based on the principle of inversion, if the resulting statistic can be used as an evidence to reject the null or favour the alternative.

------
sergioro
Related passage from Bell's "Men of Mathematics":

    
    
        It (inversion) is one of the most powerful methods of mathematical discovery (or invention) ever devised, and Abel was the first human being to use it consciously as an engine of research. "You must always invert," as Jacobi said when asked the secret of his mathematical discoveries.

------
blunte
Perhaps always invert but after approaching the problem from the front.

I would apply the 80/20 rule from both directions (so in theory perhaps
spending up to 40% effort) to get the best chance of success. And really, you
can't invert without first knowing enough about the problem you're trying to
solve.

~~~
zigzaggy
This follows the way my brain works too. Dog into the problem -> invert ->
learn more about problem -> uninvert -> map problem in much greater detail ->
reinvert -> discover truth -> solution

------
uses
This feels too similar to my default mode of thinking, which is risk aversion,
and constantly thinking about what can go wrong, and then steering away from
that. Is that because this concept isn't really for me, like it's more helpful
for go-getter optimists?

------
2bitencryption
Reminds me of how an AI agent that tries to minimize the worst case scenario
is almost always better than one that tries to maximize the best case
scenario.

(admittedly that's a bit anecdotal, maybe someone with more knowledge can give
better details on that statement)

~~~
PKop
> an AI agent

And probably life itself.

Good article from Nassim Taleb [0] relating to rationality/irrationality and
survival...

"survival comes first, truth, understanding and science later"

which would seem to relate to a the simpler model for AI centered around
preventing disaster being more robust than trying to solve some form of
maximization while risking ruin.

In some ways it is arguably better to be paranoid/"irrational" about risk than
try to be perfectly sufficiently rational

"I have shown that, unless one has an overblown and a very unrealistic
representation of some tail risks, one cannot survive –all it takes is a
single event for the irreversible exit from among us. Is selective paranoia
“irrational” if those individuals and populations who don’t have it end up
dying or extinct, respectively?"

[0] [https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-
rational...](https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-
rationality-432e96dd4d1a)

------
gweinberg
Well, obviously you don't always want to invert, since inverting twice will
just get you back to where you started. In fact, you have to be doing worse
than random guessing initially if inverting the problem in general makes it
easier to solve.

------
dctoedt
I have an "Invert"-related question for the HN hive mind — see below for the
question, and why it's not off-topic: I'm a pretty-senior lawyer and part-time
law professor; I'm working on turning some of my accumulated contract clauses
and course materials into a "fair and balanced," annotated, contract
_framework_ , in the form of a plain HTML document w/ some CSS styling, to
support using shorter contracts in business.

EXAMPLE: Instead of doing a full-blown NDA, parties could agree, in an email
exchange, that Party A will keep Party B's confidential information secret in
accordance with the [name] Confidential Information Clause — presto, an
enforceable NDA (in most jurisdictions).

I'll be posting the whole thing online for free under some kind of Creative
Commons license, in part for my students, and in part in the hope that if
people start to use it, _eventually_ I won't have to spend so much time
reviewing random contract language for clients.

The current corpus includes clauses for confidentiality; consulting services;
software warranties and disclaimers; limitations of liability; terms of
service; payment terms; referral payments; channel partnerships; consulting
services; indemnity ground rules; and other things.

I'm trying to follow (part of) the Unix philosophy: Each clause should do
basically one thing, and do it well, with as few dependencies as possible
(maximize orthogonality).

The materials also have numerous planning checklists for spotting issues that
can come up.

The clauses incorporate typical wish-list items that work for both sides. In a
prior life, I was the general counsel for a software company, and customers'
lawyers liked that balanced approach very much because it reduced their
workload; our sales people likewise liked the fact that the balanced approach
helped get us to signature sooner, without screwing around with anatomy-
measuring, "art of the deal" game playing.

The clauses are extensively annotated with citations to real-world cases where
problems arose — sometimes, big problems — explaining how the clause language
seeks to avoid the problems, again in ways that work for both parties.

For improved readability, I'm using Python-like indentation to avoid long,
wall-of-words paragraphs of dense legalese. (That's proving very popular with
my clients' business people.)

HERE'S THE QUESTION: Apropos of the "Invert" subject of the posted article,
should this contract framework be positioned as:

1\. a vitamin — "balanced, readable terms to help you get workable contracts
to signature sooner,"

or

2\. aspirin - "learn from others' failures by adopting the [name] framework in
your contracts."

All input gratefully received.

~~~
323454
Huge props for this effort, I'm very excited to use this system. I'd advise
you to think about the audience for this work. To my eye, that audience is the
small and medium sized business leader, especially those with a technology
focus. The problem this solves for them is getting the legal stuff done as
quickly and cheaply as possible without sacrificing any important legal
protections. They don't really care that the contract is balanced and readable
except in as much as that speeds up the negotiation and let's them verify that
they are not getting screwed.

Your basic one liner might be something like "Create real, legally valid
contracts over email"

Expanding on that you could say "Use our standard library of legal clauses to
build your own contracts in a safe and legally defensible way. Each clause is
designed to serve a single purpose and offer each party fair, battle-tested
legal protections. The library itself is free, open source and licensed under
the Creative Commons. It can be used by simply referencing the clause by name
in any document, even email. Every clause is annotated with plain English
explanations, so it is easy for all parties to understand what your contract
says. Go _here_ for a quick tutorial on how to use library, including a primer
on the top N most important clauses for business deals"

Later you might want to explain why you made this "I/we made this because we
spent thousands of hours reviewing the same boilerplate contract language,
fixing the same mistakes and watching the same disagreements play out between
the parties. Taking a good idea from software engineering, we set out to
create a trusted standard library for building legal contracts that would
solve these problems once and for all. The library was created by professional
contract lawyers and academics with decades of experience, so every word is
backed by mountains of case law and legal precedent. We're confident that the
library can be the legal backbone of your next deal."

~~~
dctoedt
> _To my eye, that audience is the small and medium sized business leader,
> especially those with a technology focus. The problem this solves for them
> is getting the legal stuff done as quickly and cheaply as possible without
> sacrificing any important legal protections. They don 't really care that
> the contract is balanced and readable except in as much as that speeds up
> the negotiation and let's them verify that they are not getting screwed._

Exactly — thanks!

~~~
323454
Also, down the road you might consider making a non-profit to manage
improvements and updates to the clauses. You could even apply to YC with said
non-profit. I'm sure they'd be interested.

------
alexpetralia
I wonder if this is better described as "solution-oriented" problem solving
versus "failure-oriented" problem solving.

Inversion seems like a misnomer and is easily conflated with the
logical/mathematical meaning.

------
bluehatbrit
This seems to line up really nicely with "Jobs-to-be-Done Theory" proposed by
Clayton Christensen and Co [1]. This inversion approach seems like a great
technique to help move from thinking about products and think about the jobs
that need doing.

[1] - Competing Against Luck - [https://www.amazon.com/Competing-Against-Luck-
Innovation-Cus...](https://www.amazon.com/Competing-Against-Luck-Innovation-
Customer/dp/0062435612)

------
toolslive
This is only one of the principles featured in TRIZ.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ)

------
smitty1e
I'd follow up inverting with decomposing.

Solving smaller problems in the service of the bigger one is as powerful as
flipping the problem upside down.

------
eyelidlessness
This is instinctually how those of us with anxiety disorders and cognitive
challenges think. WAVINGEMOJI hi please feel free to ask us how to help when
you see us around.

Edit: sorry, didn't mean to volunteer anyone else! Just ask those of us who
make ourselves available for it, you know us as the people who are constantly
warning doom.

------
m3kw9
“Instead of asking how do we increase the adoption of a product or feature?
You could instead consider - what are some of things preventing adoption?“

    
    
      What if I started with “ what are some of things preventing adoption?“ Would I be incorrectly inverting? But you did say always invert.

~~~
marcosdumay
If you started with "what is preventing adoption?" you would explore the
answers to that question first, and then would still gain additional insight
from asking "how do I increase adoption?".

------
ptero
It seems like a good model, but probably because it helps you see things from
a new angle.

That is, the benefit is not focusing on (not (not A)) instead of A -- with the
right choice of A you can flip those, but rather when everyone is thinking
about A, see if a double inversion offers new solutions. My 2c

------
z3t4
According to positive psychology it's better to do something good rather then
avoiding something bad. But it's good to ask yourself _why_ you want to do
something, as there might be easier ways to achieve the same thing once you
understand what you really want.

------
bumelant
In combinatorial optimization, the basic principle is is always: every primal,
has a dual. That is, minimazing some expressions, means maximizing the other.
Primal-dual would also - I feel - fit better to the principle, as described in
this article.

------
fizixer
Something tells me OP hasn't read Polya "How to solve it" and is attempting a
bad rediscovery of a tiny aspect of the overall body of problem-solving
tactics.

------
AHappyCamper
My uncle has a similar saying: "The most important consideration in any
situation is the alternative". He's a very smart man and an excellent
engineer.

------
e_carra
This is also how some problems are solved more efficiently in Operations
Research: solving the dual of the problem instead of the actual problem.

------
mola
I think this is useful in zero sum/life and death situation. Otherwise you
might go on a path which leads away from your core values and intentions.

------
nurettin
Dialectic is now called "invert" ?

------
jyriand
I think hackers are pretty natural at this type of thinking. A la “what this
application is not supposed to do?”

------
youeseh
In business, I believe this translates to always protecting against the
downside.

------
bhntr3
"Imagine the worst possible outcome. Now . . . avoid that." -Baptiste

------
082349872349872
I'd never thought of Charlie Munger as a pomo, but here we are? Next thing you
know the POTUS will be engaging in a supplementary play of meaning which
defies semantic reduction?

~~~
082349872349872
Pedantry for those who have implicitly asked for it:

Munger spots binary hierarchical oppositions, such as between forwards and
backwards, seeking and avoiding, or intelligence and stupidity, and displaces
the privileged term, what we take implicitly to be primary, by inviting us to
consider the secondary term in its own right, as another endpoint of the same
relationship.

(Is this process somewhat like Category Theory's displacement of objects by
consideration of the arrows between them? Attacking problems by inverting to
generate coproblems?)

------
laybak
simple and actionable. A quick way to snap out of what is currently
constraining my thinkign

------
xapata
In other words, minimize regret.

------
fendy3002
Me: how can I finish this project smoothly

Inversion: what can makes this project not finished smoothly

My answer: if my boss died

Me: ...

~~~
ISL
So you'll look out for the health and well-being of your boss/colleagues and
look for ways to improve the resilience of the organization?

~~~
fendy3002
For me it means not everything can be prevented, and sometimes whatever bad
can happen, happen. It's out of our control. We just need to handle those in
our control and predict the probability of uncontrollable one, and whether we
can accept those risks (probability * severity).

Edit: and that's why coronavirus is so devastating to businesses. Primarily
because it's probability is so small with high severity and it's out of our
control.

* On a side note, I really have thought about it once, that my ex boss's diet is so horrible I'm afraid he will caught a disease. Thankfully it didn't happened in my 4 years of working there.

~~~
quickthrower2
Think of it like alpha-beta pruning. You look through all the alternatives,
and some will yield useful results, others will be useless so you can prune
those and concentrate on the useful.

------
atum47
short and helpful reading. thanks for sharing

------
hackerindie
Great short post! Big fan of Farnam Street and Charlie Munger myself as well

