Written with Saksham Sinha for Split Decisions. Breakthroughs rarely follow the clean path textbooks imply. Through Hamming, Ulam, Kepler, Newton, Ehrlich, and Hedy Lamarr, we explore how outsider perspectives, wrong goals pursued rigorously, and collapsing cross-domain barriers can produce genuinely new ideas—and why, as AI makes execution cheaper, creativity and judgment become the real constraints. Read the full essay on Split Decisions →