My/Principle/Simplify/Fewer and Deeper/Discussion

• Why rebalance to fewer and deeper?

  • To counteract my "liberal arts" bias

    • If you put a marble in my brain, the floor slopes downwards towards investigation of possibilities.
    • I have a natural tendency towards breadth first search, and left unchecked it leads to shallow relationships to many things.

  • to shape my "ability profile"

    • with respect to my abilities, I want to be a "T-shaped" person w.r.t. my abilities, not a "sinusoidal-corrugation-shaped" person (like corrugated tin roofing).

  • combat Entropy

    • many things are more Complex than fewer things. Complexity is fragile.

  • to increase Security

    • fewer tools that are more secure have a more understandable Risk/Profile

• What it doesn't mean

  • important non-implications of this principle

    • this principle does not imply
      • A - "never explore" in the "explore vs exploit" trade-off
      • B - "no redundancy" - having a backup method is sensible