(Mis)Leading by Pithiness: Three Laws of Aphorisms

by Jonathan A. Handler, MD, FACEP, FAMIA

There is nothing like a good aphorism. Those who say them look and sound smart, experienced, and wise. I love aphorisms, except that I think I’m starting to hate them. And maybe pretty much anything that sounds short, pithy, and smart. Maybe I’m jealous of those who can turn a pithy phrase, since I’m prone to blather as I wrestle with a complex issue and clumsily attempt to concoct and convey my thoughts. Kind of like I’m about to do in this post! 😀 But, I also find that aphorisms and pithy comments tend to end conversations, sometimes too early, and often with collateral damage.

Isaac Newton (perhaps the greatest intellect in history, IMO) developed three laws of motion that revolutionized science. Well, I’m no Newton and I probably won’t revolutionize anything, but I whipped up Three Laws of Aphorisms. Maybe someone else has said these before me, so maybe I can’t claim them. But if so, I am not consciously aware of them, so I share “mine” here. I was equally inspired by the laws of thermodynamics, but I’m a big Newton fan, so he gets the nod. Also, I made no attempt to order the laws in relation to the order of the laws of motion or thermodynamics.

These were inspired, in part, by many conversations with my close friend, Dr. Michael Gillam, and he even provided a corollary to the laws that might be even more relevant on a day-to-day basis than the laws themselves. To make it fun (for me at least), I’ve littered this post with aphorisms, including aphorisms that I made up about aphorisms, often in the form of alliteration, since apt alliteration appears astute and aphorism-y. 😀

Before We Start: My Definitions for Aphorisms vs. Learnings vs. Facts

I define here the differences between an “aphorism,” a best practice or “learning”, and a “fact.” Those definitions are based on the probability that the statement will prove correct (with each term — aphorism, learning, fact — listed in increasing order of probability of correctness). If I had to make an aphorism about it 😀, the more general the statement, the more likely I’d label it an aphorism, the more specific the statement, the more likely I’d label it a learning or a fact.

You might say, “well, it takes wisdom to know when to apply the aphorism.” However, if it takes wisdom to know when to apply it, then it doesn’t “usually prove correct in most circumstances.” Therefore, offering such an aphorism is useless: the wise already know it and when to apply it, the unwise don’t have the knowledge or experience needed to make it useful. If the unwise use it successfully, they may think the aphorism helped them, but they probably just got lucky (per my Third Law below).

According to (part of) Newton’s first law of inertia, “an object at rest stays at rest” (unless a force acts on it to move it). That is a reliably provable fact in the world we observe every day with our naked eyes. In that frame, it applies all the time, every time. Most people don’t need “wisdom” or “experience” to correctly apply and use it. The law is the wisdom. The law doesn’t depend on “getting lucky.” It just works.

If you can say the opposite of a phrase and it will often be right, then you are probably dealing with an aphorism, not a learning or a fact (see my First Law below). Often, you can add some context to convert a useless aphorism into a useful tidbit of learning. For example, “Being tired usually indicates disease” is often incorrect. Add just a little more to it, “feeling persistently sleepy with no obvious explanation often indicates a medical problem,” and now it’s very often true. Hippocrates wrote almost the exact latter statement in 400 BC, and it still holds today. Ironically, the Hippocrates’ text is titled “Aphorisms,” but I find this a misnomer or mistranslation. Under my definition, this is a learning, not an aphorism. For ease of use, let’s lump “learnings and facts” together and call them “knowledge.”

In sum, “The wise offer knowledge that even fools could successfully use. Fools offer aphorisms that often lead other fools to disaster.”

Unfortunately, to the fool, an aphorism is pithier, and therefore sounds smarter, than a learning or a fact. So, fools often don’t use, or recognize the value of, the knowledge they are given. Instead, I have found that fools tend to follow pithy fools and become pithy fools rather than following the learned wise and becoming the learned wise.

First Law: For every aphorism there is an equal and opposite aphorism.

I should have said “for almost every aphorism there is an equal and opposite aphorism” because I generally don’t aim for absolutes. But that ruined the pithiness of the phrase 😀, so let’s treat the “almost” as implicit.

• Do you look before you leap? Or is he who hesitates lost?
• Do many hands make light work? Or do too many cooks spoil the soup?
• Does the early bird get the worm? Or does haste make waste?
• Is it better to be safe than sorry? Or does fortune favor the bold?
• Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? Or is it nothing ventured, nothing gained?
• If at first you don’t succeed, should you try, try again? Or was deGaulle right when he reportedly said, “Genius sometimes consists of knowing when to stop“?

Let’s face it, we can say any of these aphorisms, they will sound good, and many people will nod in agreement. But we could just as easily say the opposing aphorism in the pair and often get the same nod!

Aphorisms are often perceived as conveying “common sense.” By declaring one, those arguing the other side may feel as if their common sense was brought into question. But when every aphorism has an equally common-sensical opposite, then are those who take the opposite tack really lacking in common sense? If I say, “look before you leap” then am I saying everyone wanting to move faster is careless and wasteful?

Some people don’t have aphorisms or pithy responses on the tip of their tongue. They “lose” the argument not because they have made the weaker argument, but because they have made the less eloquent, less pithy, and less quick-witted argument. If you want eloquence over expertise and quickness over correctness, then let the first to pith win! All others get the stain of lacking common sense as a consequence of their loss. On the other hand, those who want a different decision-making process must be ever-alert for the “decision by aphorism.” In other words, aphorisms too often truncate rather than turbocharge the conversation.

Second Law: People in motion tend to use aphorisms to stay in motion. People at rest tend to use aphorisms to stay at rest.

Does your gut disagree with a proposal to try something new that may have a big payoff? I’m guessing you will be more likely to say “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Does your gut say the opposite? I’m guessing you’ll more likely say “nothing ventured, nothing gained!” You can virtually always find an aphorism to support your gut.

When quoting an aphorism from your favorite book on business and leadership, you may consciously or unconsciously be seeking to justify your gut. Why was that book your favorite even though other books may contradict its key points? In many cases, that book meshed with what you already believed. In others, it may have changed what you believed. In either case, what’s in that book now matches what’s in your “gut”. Instead of citing your gut, you can quote a famous business book to make your assertion harder to assail. Consider that it has been stated that most startups fail. If business success truly only requires following a few simple, logical, rules from a popular business book (including those supported by research), then I’d imagine businesses should have much higher success rates.

Rather than relying on an aphorism, it might be more intellectually honest to estimate the probability and potential return and then decide whether the risk/return ratio seems reasonable. But in practice, the key assumptions and estimates that go into analyses often tend to be affected by one’s gut anyway. For this reason, the outcome of the intellectual exercise is often destined to match the gut of the person doing it. I thought Malkiel’s excellent book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, illustrated this point wonderfully. In other words, the choice of aphorism probably tells us more about the person than the proper path.

Third Law: Given no information other than the aphorism, the aphorism’s likelihood of correctness is usually based on chance.

An aphorism is often a prediction of the future, and the future is almost always uncertain. If virtually every aphorism has an equal and opposite aphorism, then the likelihood of an aphorism’s correctness in any situation also depends at least somewhat on chance. Better yet, its correctness depends on its concordance with the statistical likelihood of the outcome, given the known information. Let me break that down a bit. Since most startups reportedly fail, knowing only that you are pursuing a startup, “Better to be safe than sorry” seems statistically more likely correct than “fortune favors the bold.”

In other words, unless the choice of aphorism is rooted in clear and directly relevant data, it’s likely just gambling disguised as guidance.

Gillam’s Corollary: Humans will cite aphorisms retrospectively to imply the wisdom was out there all along.

Thank you for this corollary, Dr. Gillam (and for allowing me to say and cite it here)! It might be the most important point in this post. With the benefit of hindsight (what we used to call the “20/20 retroscope”), one can always pull up a well-known aphorism to show why any “common sense” person would have known in advance which was the right decision to have made. Prospectively, either the selected aphorism or its opposite might have been right, but after the future has arrived, generally only one will look correct in retrospect. Beware of those who look back on the “lessons learned” and try to imply that the outcome was predictable all along had the “basic rule” been followed. Poor Schroedinger’s cat might argue otherwise.

If you think failure to follow the aphorism was the lesson to be learned, you might be learning the wrong lesson. In my experience, when doing a retrospective analysis on successes and failures, it has proven worthwhile not to stop at the aphorism but to dig much deeper. Often, that has seemed to lead to more valuable insights.

Aphorisms Have Utility If Used Properly

I have mixed feelings for aphorisms because I see a legitimate use for them. Very often, one is trying to guess what will happen in the future, but the future can’t be known. Logical and educated predictions are often proven wrong. Commonly, good cases can be made for both (or many) predicted outcomes. Should the most eloquent argument win? Should the argument by the most expert win? Should the argument by the one most often proven right win? At the end of the day, someone will have to decide. The decider will often lean on a heuristic (essentially, an aphorism such as “he who hesitates is lost” rather than “look before you leap”) when they are uncertain because they feel it has most often proven right for them. I often find myself leaning on heuristics (or personal aphorisms) in times of uncertainty.

Still, care must be taken when using aphorisms, because people often feel badly after one is invoked, leading the conversation to close, often prematurely. For a more sympathetic approach, one might say, “All these are good arguments, and I can’t decide between them by the strength of one argument over another. Therefore, I have to decide between ‘better to be safe than sorry’ and ‘fortune favors the bold.’ I have had more luck with the latter, so let’s forge ahead. With that said, I recognize this is just an educated guess, and those who disagree with me may not be wrong.”

Why not take this kinder approach?

1. The speaker may be perceived as indecisive, rambling, unintelligent, and/or weak.
2. Someone else may prevail by offering a more forceful and less thoughtful opposing response.

In other words, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished! For this reason, to the greatest extent possible, I seek to work in groups that value wisdom over wittiness and also have the wisdom to tell the difference. When I’m not in a group like that, I admit I wish I were better at concocting a bon mot in the heat of the moment so that I could appear smart and bold as I declare, “You’ve mistaken pithiness for perspicacity!”

For myself, I try (not always successfully) to recognize when I am making a decision by aphorism (aka, my gut). If the available data doesn’t lead to an obvious answer, then what else do I have but my gut? In such situations, I find it important to consciously decide:

1. Has the aphorism has been applied too early, before the relevant considerations have been adequately aired and objectively examined?
2. Am I using the aphorism despite data clearly pointing in another direction? Maybe I’ll go with my gut anyway, but such situations can be fraught and, in my opinion, should be recognized explicitly, honestly, and with great caution, at least inside my own head.

My Aphorism “Prescription”

When someone says something that sounds pithy and “smart,” I recommend the following:

1. Determine if it is more an aphorism or knowledge:
   • Is there an opposite phrase that sounds just as smart? If so, it’s probably an aphorism and not knowledge.
   • Is it super-general, requiring wisdom to know when and how to apply it? If so, it’s probably an aphorism and not knowledge.
   • Is it very specific, clearly (even if succinctly) denoting the situations in which it applies (which should not be every possible situation)? If so, it may be knowledge.
   • Has it been proven by strong data and methodologically strong analysis? If so, it’s probably knowledge.
2. If it’s an aphorism:
   • Assess the team:
     • Did the person saying it demonstrate wisdom by recognizing it as an aphorism, used only because the situation has unresolvable uncertainty? Or, did they demonstrate wisdom by explaining why, in this very specific situation, the aphorism was more applicable than its opposite?
     • If the speaker did not demonstrate wisdom, did the team demonstrate discernment by rolling their eyes in recognition of the aphorism, or did they demonstrate obtuseness by nodding their heads in approval as if they just heard something wise?
3. Determine the “prescription”:
   • If the team lacks discernment (perspicacity) and wisdom (especially if the issues rest with the leader):
     • Unfortunately, you’re probably in trouble, because fools more often seem to follow pithy fools rather than the learned wise.
     • The prescription is a tough one: consider finding a new and better team.
   • If the team has discernment and wisdom:
     • You have found something wonderful.
     • The prescription is an awesome one: do your best to enjoy all the learning, camaraderie, and success that such environments often provide.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, this post is not against aphorisms, pithy comments, or generic business “rules.” I have found them useful in some cases. Heck, I wish I were better at using them when I need them! As they say, use the right tool for the job, 😀 and sometimes that means using an aphorism. This post has attempted to identify the pitfalls of aphorisms and how to mitigate them, when to avoid using them, and the conditions under which aphorisms can prove useful.

I also hope this post also serves as support to all those who have had an aphorism used against them. The person lacking common sense is more likely the one who thinks the richness and complexity of business, and life, can be distilled down to a few trite phrases. Or, as Einstein reportedly said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

All opinions expressed here are entirely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of their employers (if any), affiliates (if any), or anyone else. The author(s) reserve the right to change his/her/their minds at any time.