These are opinions I hold that seem to be minority positions. I’ve tested them in conversations, on Twitter, and in my own head. People push back. I might be wrong. But I think I’m right.

Arranged roughly by how much pushback they get.

🌶️ Mild

Remote work is strictly better for deep work

The “collaboration and serendipity” argument is cope from managers who don’t trust their teams and extroverts who need stimulation. Every meaningful collaboration I’ve had happened asynchronously or in scheduled calls. The “hallway conversations” people romanticize are mostly interruptions.

Confidence: 85%
Pushback level: Moderate — remote workers agree, office enthusiasts don’t

Most meetings should be async documents

If your meeting doesn’t require real-time discussion, it should be a document. Status updates, information sharing, decisions with clear options — all documents. Meetings should be reserved for actual debate, brainstorming, and relationship building.

Confidence: 95%
Pushback level: Universal agreement, universal non-compliance

Tutorials are mostly useless

Reading tutorials is comforting but ineffective. You learn by doing, failing, debugging, and reading documentation when stuck. The tutorial-to-project pipeline is backwards. Start the project, hit walls, then learn what you need.

Confidence: 80%
Pushback level: Beginners hate this; experienced devs agree

Most “productivity systems” are procrastination

If you’ve spent more than a week setting up your task management system, you’re avoiding work. The best productivity system is a text file. Second best is literally anything used consistently.

Confidence: 90%
Pushback level: Notion enthusiasts are offended

🌶️🌶️ Medium

Microservices are almost always wrong

For 95% of companies, a well-structured monolith is better. Microservices add operational complexity, network latency, debugging nightmares, and team coordination overhead. They’re appropriate for massive scale with large teams. Your startup with 8 engineers doesn’t need them.

Confidence: 90%
Pushback level: Architecture astronauts are very upset

Code reviews slow down good engineers

Hot take: if you trust your senior engineers, mandatory code review for every PR is overhead. Review risky changes, review juniors’ code, review security-sensitive areas. But “this senior dev refactored a function they own” doesn’t need three approvals.

Confidence: 70%
Pushback level: High — this one makes people angry

Most AI safety concerns are premature

I work in AI. I’ve read the alignment papers. I think the “AI will kill us all” crowd is wrong about timelines and mechanisms. Current systems are sophisticated pattern matchers, not agents with goals. The real risks are mundane: job displacement, misinformation, concentration of power. Not robot apocalypse.

Confidence: 70%
Pushback level: Both AI safety people AND AI hype people disagree

Hustle culture critics are often just lazy

Nuance: burnout is real, work-life balance matters, and toxic workplaces exist. But also: some people use “anti-hustle culture” as cover for not wanting to work hard. Working intensely on things you care about is fulfilling, not exploitation.

Confidence: 75%
Pushback level: Very high on Twitter

Philosophy degrees are underrated for tech

Studying philosophy taught me: rigorous argumentation, comfort with ambiguity, detecting logical fallacies, and thinking about ethics before shipping. These are increasingly rare and valuable skills. The “just learn to code” crowd is missing something.

Confidence: 85%
Pushback level: Moderate — engineers skeptical, philosophers delighted

🌶️🌶️🌶️ Spicy

Most people shouldn’t go to college

For the majority of careers, college is a four-year, six-figure credential that could be replaced with apprenticeship, self-study, or vocational training. It’s defended by people who went to college because admitting otherwise devalues their own credential.

Confidence: 70%
Pushback level: Parents are horrified

Democracy optimizes for the short term

Elected officials can’t think beyond the next election. This structural incentive makes democracies bad at addressing long-term problems: climate change, infrastructure investment, debt, demographic shifts. I don’t have a better system. But let’s be honest about the failure mode.

Confidence: 80%
Pushback level: “Are you saying we shouldn’t have democracy??” (No.)

Meritocracy is mostly a myth, and that’s fine

Success is heavily influenced by luck, timing, network, and birth circumstances. “Merit” exists but explains less variance than we pretend. Accepting this is liberating, not demoralizing. You can work hard AND acknowledge the role of fortune.

Confidence: 85%
Pushback level: Self-made millionaires are offended

Having children is ethically questionable

You’re creating a being without consent who will experience suffering, possibly a lot of it, in a world with serious problems. I’m not anti-natalist — I might have kids. But the “of course everyone should have children” default is under-examined.

Confidence: 60%
Pushback level: Maximum. People really don’t like this one.

Most charity is ineffective virtue signaling

Donating to your local whatever makes you feel good but probably doesn’t maximize impact. Effective altruism, despite its recent problems, got the core insight right: some interventions are 100x more effective than others. Giving without analysis is about your feelings, not outcomes.

Confidence: 75%
Pushback level: Charitable people are mad

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Nuclear

Religion was net positive for humanity

Hot atheist take: I’m not religious, but religious institutions provided: community, meaning frameworks, moral education, care for the sick and poor, and social cohesion for millennia. Secular society hasn’t fully replaced these functions. Dismissing religion as “just superstition” is historically illiterate.

Confidence: 70%
Pushback level: Atheists AND religious people both disagree

IQ differences between individuals are real and matter

This is just true and well-documented. It’s also irrelevant to how we should treat individuals, doesn’t justify discrimination, and doesn’t mean people with lower IQ are less valuable as humans. But pretending cognitive differences don’t exist is science denial.

Confidence: 90%
Pushback level: This one gets you called names

Free will is an illusion, but we should act like it exists

Every choice you make is the product of prior causes: genetics, upbringing, brain chemistry, circumstances. Libertarian free will (the kind most people believe in) is incoherent. But the illusion of choice is useful and probably necessary for society to function.

Confidence: 85%
Pushback level: Philosophers nod; everyone else is disturbed

📝 How I Hold These

  1. Confidence levels are real. I’m more sure about some than others. The numbers are my actual credences.

  2. I want to be wrong. If you can change my mind with good arguments, please try. That’s the whole point.

  3. Context matters. These are general positions. Specific situations have specific considerations.

  4. I might update. These will change as I learn more. Check the Changelog.

If you violently disagree with something here, email me. The best conversations come from disagreement.

See also: What I Believe | Questions I’m Exploring | How I’ve Changed