Volume 4 · The Ledger and the Loom · Essay 86

Explore/Exploit Tradeoff

Explore/Exploit Tradeoff is a small handle on a large fact. Grip it, and the fact becomes easier to carry.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

Watch two shopkeepers in the same lane during a lean month. One cuts quality, the other cuts margin. In a year, one has customers and the other has stock.

Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.