# Human World (Human World Rules)

> 30 people and books on how the world actually works, across 2,600 years
> See how people before you handled it.

A knowledge base of the durable rules people have worked out about strategy, money, power, human nature and building things — drawn from 30 figures and classic texts across 2,600 years. Each entry gives the one idea that person is actually remembered for, the story behind it, the sub-principles with worked examples, and how it applies today.

## Read it

- Site: https://ourword.ai/en/
- Everything on one page: https://ourword.ai/en/all/
- Every entry has its own static page: https://ourword.ai/en/i/<slug>/
- Full text of everything, one file: https://ourword.ai/en/llms-full.txt
- All URLs: https://ourword.ai/en/sitemap.xml
- RSS: https://ourword.ai/en/feed.xml

## Topics

- [Modern](https://ourword.ai/en/t/modern/) — 15
- [The industrial age](https://ourword.ai/en/t/the-industrial-age/) — 8
- [Family and relationships](https://ourword.ai/en/t/family-and-relationships/) — 7
- [Mind and feeling](https://ourword.ai/en/t/mind-and-feeling/) — 7
- [Body and daily life](https://ourword.ai/en/t/body-and-daily-life/) — 5
- [Learning and growth](https://ourword.ai/en/t/learning-and-growth/) — 5
- [Pre-Qin and classical](https://ourword.ai/en/t/pre-qin-and-classical/) — 3

<!-- chapters:begin -->
## Deep reads

Long-form chapters hanging off a person page. Not part of the entry index above.

- [John Boyd · The OODA loop](https://ourword.ai/en/i/boyd/ooda/): John Boyd · The OODA loop — Fast means turning, not moving. He was a fighter instructor who could win from any position in forty seconds. What 'fast' meant in the loop he built.
- [John Boyd · To be somebody, or to do something](https://ourword.ai/en/i/boyd/to-be-or-to-do/): John Boyd · To be somebody, or to do something — The fork in the road. He made colonel and never rose again. The speech he gave every young officer who wanted to follow him.
- [John Cacioppo · Loneliness is a kind of hunger](https://ourword.ai/en/i/cacioppo/loneliness-is-a-signal/): John Cacioppo · Loneliness is a kind of hunger — A signal, not a personality. What loneliness actually is. Why thirty years of research put it in the same category as hunger and thirst.
- [John Cacioppo · Loneliness makes you misread faces](https://ourword.ai/en/i/cacioppo/hypervigilance/): John Cacioppo · Loneliness makes you misread faces — The more watchful, the more alone. Why loneliness feeds itself. The loop Cacioppo found, and where you can cut it.
- [John Cacioppo · More socialising doesn't fix it](https://ourword.ai/en/i/cacioppo/not-more-socializing/): John Cacioppo · More socialising doesn't fix it — The meta-analysis ranks it third. The most common advice for loneliness performs worst. What came first in the data.
- [Winston Churchill · The wilderness years](https://ourword.ai/en/i/churchill/wilderness-years/): Winston Churchill · The wilderness years — The decade nobody called him. Shut out, nobody consulting you, and no end in sight. What Churchill did with each of those days.
- [Winston Churchill · Saying it and nobody listening](https://ourword.ai/en/i/churchill/no-one-listened/): Winston Churchill · Saying it and nobody listening — He put it in a form you could check. You see something others haven't, you say it, nobody listens. How he said it during those years.
- [Winston Churchill · The year he turned sixty-five](https://ourword.ai/en/i/churchill/sixty-five/): Winston Churchill · The year he turned sixty-five — The call came a decade later. You've been accumulating a long time with no way out in sight. What the day he was waiting for actually required.
- [C.S. Lewis · Nobody told me grief felt like fear](https://ourword.ai/en/i/cs-lewis/grief-feels-like-fear/): C.S. Lewis · Nobody told me grief felt like fear — A Grief Observed. What the feeling actually is when you've just lost someone. Why Lewis called it fear, and what that's for.
- [C.S. Lewis · My faith turned out to be a house of cards](https://ourword.ai/en/i/cs-lewis/house-of-cards/): C.S. Lewis · My faith turned out to be a house of cards — You find out when it's knocked down. What held you up your whole life didn't hold this time. What Lewis wrote when he found that out about himself.
- [C.S. Lewis · I'm afraid of replacing her with my memory of her](https://ourword.ai/en/i/cs-lewis/not-replacing-her/): C.S. Lewis · I'm afraid of replacing her with my memory of her — The harder you grip, the more it warps. You're afraid time will erase them. Lewis found the opposite problem, and it frightened him more.
- [Marie Curie · She took over his course](https://ourword.ai/en/i/curie/the-lecture/): Marie Curie · She took over his course — Starting where he stopped. The person who mattered most is suddenly gone and the days still have to continue. What she did seven months later.
- [Marie Curie · A notebook written to the dead](https://ourword.ai/en/i/curie/journal-of-grief/): Marie Curie · A notebook written to the dead — What you can't say aloud, write to him. There are things you cannot say to a living person. Where those go. What she put in the notebook that year.
- [Marie Curie · The little Curies](https://ourword.ai/en/i/curie/the-little-curies/): Marie Curie · The little Curies — Put the skill where it's needed now. Your skill and what's in front of you don't match. Where she put hers when the war started.
- [Carol Dweck · Praise the process, not the talent](https://ourword.ai/en/i/dweck/praise-the-process/): Carol Dweck · Praise the process, not the talent — Praising cleverness makes people avoid challenge. One sentence of praise changes what a child picks next. This piece is about where the change happens.
- [Carol Dweck · The effect is much smaller than the popular story](https://ourword.ai/en/i/dweck/effect-size/): Carol Dweck · The effect is much smaller than the popular story — The boundary worth drawing. The concept got told as a master key. This piece is about how big it actually is.
- [Excellent Sheep · Good at hurdles, bad at choosing a road](https://ourword.ai/en/i/excellent-sheep/hurdles/): Excellent Sheep · Good at hurdles, bad at choosing a road — Two completely different abilities. Why people who succeeded at every stage go blank the moment the standards stop. What they never practised.
- [Excellent Sheep · Give yourself time with no scoreboard](https://ourword.ai/en/i/excellent-sheep/no-scoreboard/): Excellent Sheep · Give yourself time with no scoreboard — Any standard becomes a thing to optimise. How to find out what you actually want. The condition that has to be true first.
- [Fan Li · In a drought, stock boats](https://ourword.ai/en/i/fan-li/stock-the-opposite/): Fan Li · In a drought, stock boats — Buy it when nobody wants it. When is a thing cheapest? At the moment everybody agrees it is useless.
- [Fan Li · Long neck, beak like a bird](https://ourword.ai/en/i/fan-li/leave-at-the-top/): Fan Li · Long neck, beak like a bird — Read the ending off the person. He left the moment Yue destroyed Wu, at the highest point. What he was reading when he decided.
- [John Gottman · The four horsemen](https://ourword.ai/en/i/gottman/four-horsemen/): John Gottman · The four horsemen — Four signals that predict a breakup. He watches fifteen minutes of one argument. This piece is about what he is actually watching.
- [John Gottman · Repair attempts](https://ourword.ai/en/i/gottman/repair-attempts/): John Gottman · Repair attempts — Whether you fight matters less than whether you stop. Healthy relationships argue fiercely too. So where do they differ from the ones that break.
- [Mark Granovetter · The strength of weak ties](https://ourword.ai/en/i/granovetter/weak-ties/): Mark Granovetter · The strength of weak ties — Opportunity arrives from people you rarely see. Who to ask when you're looking for work. Your instinct gives the wrong answer; here's what the data gave.
- [Mark Granovetter · No strong tie is a bridge](https://ourword.ai/en/i/granovetter/no-strong-tie-is-a-bridge/): Mark Granovetter · No strong tie is a bridge — The people closest to you know what you know. It sounds like a turn of phrase. It's a structural result, and here is what it rests on.
- [Han Feizi · Don't build a system that needs good people](https://ourword.ai/en/i/han-feizi/not-counting-on-goodness/): Han Feizi · Don't build a system that needs good people — Make the right move the cheap one. A system that only runs when people are conscientious hasn't started working yet. How to design rules that don't need it.
- [Han Feizi · The two handles](https://ourword.ai/en/i/han-feizi/two-handles/): Han Feizi · The two handles — Reward and punishment can't be lent out. What power actually consists of. It turns out to be two things, and neither can be handed to anyone.
- [Han Feizi · Match the deed to the word](https://ourword.ai/en/i/han-feizi/form-and-name/): Han Feizi · Match the deed to the word — What was said, what was done. The hard part of review isn't setting standards. It's what you do when the standard and the facts disagree.
- [Harvard Study of Adult Development · Your relationships at 50 predict your body at 80](https://ourword.ai/en/i/harvard-study/relationships-predict-health/): Harvard Study of Adult Development · Your relationships at 50 predict your body at 80 — More accurate than cholesterol. What actually decides how healthy you are late in life. What eighty years of tracking put in first place.
- [Harvard Study of Adult Development · Relationships need training, like a body](https://ourword.ai/en/i/harvard-study/social-fitness/): Harvard Study of Adult Development · Relationships need training, like a body — Untrained, they decline. Everyone knows a body declines without training. So do relationships. What social fitness actually asks you to do.
- [Harvard Study of Adult Development · Who can you call at 2am](https://ourword.ai/en/i/harvard-study/someone-to-count-on/): Harvard Study of Adult Development · Who can you call at 2am — The count doesn't matter, the catch does. The shortest way to measure your relationships. Why this question is so hard to fool.
- [Arlie Hochschild · The second shift](https://ourword.ai/en/i/hochschild/second-shift/): Arlie Hochschild · The second shift — The shift that starts when work ends. Housework and care have never appeared on a timesheet. Who ends up paying when nobody counts them.
- [Arlie Hochschild · Emotional labour](https://ourword.ai/en/i/hochschild/emotional-labor/): Arlie Hochschild · Emotional labour — That smile isn't hers. Some jobs ask you not only to do the work but to feel the right thing. What that requirement costs.
- [Huineng · There was never a thing there](https://ourword.ai/en/i/huineng/originally-not-a-thing/): Huineng · There was never a thing there — Subtraction is harder than addition. Two verses. Everyone admired one; the other went to an illiterate kitchen worker. What separates them.
- [Huineng · The practice is here, not elsewhere](https://ourword.ai/en/i/huineng/in-the-world/): Huineng · The practice is here, not elsewhere — There is no better place to start. People wait for a quiet enough setting to begin. Why Huineng said that setting doesn't exist.
- [John Ratey · Exercise is for the brain](https://ourword.ai/en/i/john-ratey/exercise-for-the-brain/): John Ratey · Exercise is for the brain — You can feel the return the same day. Filing exercise under the gym leaves the cheapest medicine unused. What it's actually changing.
- [John Ratey · When anxious, move before you think](https://ourword.ai/en/i/john-ratey/move-before-you-think/): John Ratey · When anxious, move before you think — Start with the physiology. The more you think, the worse it gets, and knowing that doesn't stop it. Why this is the moment to go outside.
- [Carl Jung · You can't run the afternoon on the morning's programme](https://ourword.ai/en/i/jung/afternoon-of-life/): Carl Jung · You can't run the afternoon on the morning's programme — Not wrong. Expired. Something feels wrong around forty. Is it a fault? Jung said it's the hour.
- [Carl Jung · What you push down comes back](https://ourword.ai/en/i/jung/the-shadow/): Carl Jung · What you push down comes back — It jumps out of other people. The kind of person you can't stand — why they can enrage you instantly. Jung said part of you is in there.
- [Carl Jung · Wear the mask long enough and it grows in](https://ourword.ai/en/i/jung/the-persona/): Carl Jung · Wear the mask long enough and it grows in — Necessary, but it has to come off. What happens after years inside a role. Jung says the mask isn't the problem — here's where the problem is.
- [Garry Kasparov · After losing to it, he changed the rules](https://ourword.ai/en/i/kasparov/advanced-chess/): Garry Kasparov · After losing to it, he changed the rules — Let people bring machines to the board. When a machine wins at your craft, what's left of it. Why Kasparov invited the computer onto his own board.
- [Garry Kasparov · The winner wasn't the best human or the best machine](https://ourword.ai/en/i/kasparov/process-beats-both/): Garry Kasparov · The winner wasn't the best human or the best machine — It was the pair with the best process. What human plus tool is actually good at. Why two amateurs won a tournament where everyone could use a computer.
- [Garry Kasparov · He spent years arguing the match didn't count](https://ourword.ai/en/i/kasparov/excuses-cost-years/): Garry Kasparov · He spent years arguing the match didn't count — Conceding is cheaper than appealing. What the first year after being replaced usually looks like. What he did, and what he said twenty years later.
- [Li Ka-shing · Ninety per cent of the time, thinking about failure](https://ourword.ai/en/i/li-ka-shing/ninety-percent-failure/): Li Ka-shing · Ninety per cent of the time, thinking about failure — Think about losing before winning. The richest man in Hong Kong describes his own split of attention, and it is not what you'd expect.
- [Li Ka-shing · Knowing where to stop](https://ourword.ai/en/i/li-ka-shing/knowing-when-to-stop/): Li Ka-shing · Knowing where to stop — The two characters on his office wall. A businessman famous for expansion looks up at a scroll telling him to stop. Stopping and not daring aren't the same.
- [Christina Maslach · Burnout has three parts. Tired is one](https://ourword.ai/en/i/maslach/three-signs/): Christina Maslach · Burnout has three parts. Tired is one — The other two warn you earlier. Tired and burnt out are not the same thing. The three measures Maslach used to separate them.
- [Christina Maslach · Fix the job, not the person](https://ourword.ai/en/i/maslach/fix-the-job/): Christina Maslach · Fix the job, not the person — Teaching people to relax repairs the wrong thing. What to do about burnout. The mainstream answer may have the whole thing backwards, and she says why.
- [Christina Maslach · Six ways to be mismatched](https://ourword.ai/en/i/maslach/six-mismatches/): Christina Maslach · Six ways to be mismatched — Workload is only the first. Same hours, and one person breaks while another doesn't. The six places she found the mismatch.
- [Maria Montessori · Change the environment before the behaviour](https://ourword.ai/en/i/montessori/prepared-environment/): Maria Montessori · Change the environment before the behaviour — Out of reach is what looks like defiance. Children considered unmanageable changed when the room changed. What was it that actually changed?
- [Maria Montessori · Help me to do it myself](https://ourword.ai/en/i/montessori/help-me-do-it-myself/): Maria Montessori · Help me to do it myself — Doing it for them saves your time. Doing it for them takes two minutes. What those two minutes bought, and what they cost.
- [Esther Perel · Security and desire want opposite things](https://ourword.ai/en/i/perel/security-and-desire/): Esther Perel · Security and desire want opposite things — Which is why the better it gets, the flatter. The steadier life gets, the less you feel, and most people assume they changed. Perel says the structure did it.
- [Esther Perel · Feeling nothing isn't the same as something being wrong](https://ourword.ai/en/i/perel/not-a-problem-to-solve/): Esther Perel · Feeling nothing isn't the same as something being wrong — First tell a wound from an emptiness. 'We can't go on like this' can sit on top of two completely different things. Tell them apart before you act.
- [Esther Perel · It isn't how often. It's not being there](https://ourword.ai/en/i/perel/quality-not-frequency/): Esther Perel · It isn't how often. It's not being there — Present in the room, absent in attention. You live in the same place. So why does it feel like long distance? What she says to count instead.
- [Pu Songling · Forty years of sitting the exam](https://ourword.ai/en/i/pu-songling/forty-years-of-failing/): Pu Songling · Forty years of sitting the exam — Never passing, and never a turning point. There's a kind of failure with no decisive battle in it. How you get through that kind of life.
- [Pu Songling · The main thing failed. The side thing didn't](https://ourword.ai/en/i/pu-songling/the-side-thing/): Pu Songling · The main thing failed. The side thing didn't — And he never knew. What he spent his life trying to do never happened. What he did on the side did. Can that be arranged?
- [Pu Songling · Collecting stories by the road](https://ourword.ai/en/i/pu-songling/collecting-at-the-roadside/): Pu Songling · Collecting stories by the road — Using the hours nobody wants. Forty years of a tutor's scattered hours. What he did with them, and how the material accumulated.
- [Rat Park · Swap the cage for a park](https://ourword.ai/en/i/rat-park/rat-park/): Rat Park · Swap the cage for a park — Same rat, different situation. The most famous addiction experiment gave a conclusion against intuition. What happens when you change the cage.
- [Rat Park · Back home, most of them simply stopped](https://ourword.ai/en/i/rat-park/vietnam-veterans/): Rat Park · Back home, most of them simply stopped — The hardest natural experiment there is. Is there harder evidence than rats? What the numbers on returning soldiers actually showed.
- [Rat Park · Take the cage apart before the willpower](https://ourword.ai/en/i/rat-park/change-the-cage/): Rat Park · Take the cage apart before the willpower — And where this stops being true. Once you know the situation matters, what exactly do you move? How to take the cage apart one bar at a time.
- [Robert Sapolsky · Built for escape, left switched on](https://ourword.ai/en/i/sapolsky/stress-mismatch/): Robert Sapolsky · Built for escape, left switched on — The problem is that it won't turn off. People and zebras run the same stress system. Why only one of them gets sick from it.
- [Robert Sapolsky · Uncertainty hurts more than intensity](https://ourword.ai/en/i/sapolsky/predictability/): Robert Sapolsky · Uncertainty hurts more than intensity — Predictability and control. Same pressure, and one person breaks while another doesn't. What the actual variable turns out to be.
- [Su Shi · No wind, no rain, no sun](https://ourword.ai/en/i/su-shi/no-wind-no-rain/): Su Shi · No wind, no rain, no sun — Switching off the scoring. Everyone else on the road was miserable. He was not. What exactly did he switch off in that moment?
- [Su Shi · Huangzhou, Huizhou, Danzhou](https://ourword.ai/en/i/su-shi/three-exiles/): Su Shi · Huangzhou, Huizhou, Danzhou — Doing real work where you were sent to rot. Asked at the end of his life to name what he'd accomplished, he named three places he'd been banished to. Why those?
- [Su Shi · I see no bad people](https://ourword.ai/en/i/su-shi/no-bad-people/): Su Shi · I see no bad people — Treating a person as a person. A man whose enemies nearly had him executed said he could see no bad people anywhere. This is not naivety.
- [Su Shi · Clear the ground first](https://ourword.ai/en/i/su-shi/east-slope/): Su Shi · Clear the ground first — The first thing he did when the salary stopped. Exiled to Huangzhou, his salary essentially gone. The first thing he did was not write poetry.
- [Su Shi · The mud had to go somewhere](https://ourword.ai/en/i/su-shi/silt-into-a-causeway/): Su Shi · The mud had to go somewhere — Turning the by-product into the thing. Dredging a lake leaves you holding the mud. What he did with it is still there a thousand years later.
- [Su Shi · I dare not write](https://ourword.ai/en/i/su-shi/no-more-writing/): Su Shi · I dare not write — Stopping the defence is a decision. After his own words were used to build a case against him, did he keep writing? The question is which kind he stopped.
- [Thomas Gordon · The I-message](https://ourword.ai/en/i/thomas-gordon/i-message/): Thomas Gordon · The I-message — Say the effect, not the character. The same event, said one way, starts a fight; said another, starts action. Where the structural difference is.
- [Thomas Gordon · Whose problem is this](https://ourword.ai/en/i/thomas-gordon/problem-ownership/): Thomas Gordon · Whose problem is this — Different owner, opposite method. Your child is upset, you explain, and each explanation pushes them further away. What to do in that moment.
- [Lev Vygotsky · The zone of proximal development](https://ourword.ai/en/i/vygotsky/zpd/): Lev Vygotsky · The zone of proximal development — Look at the second line. Two people at the same level today may end up far apart. Which measure the difference shows up in.
- [Lev Vygotsky · Scaffolding: give it, then take it away](https://ourword.ai/en/i/vygotsky/scaffolding/): Lev Vygotsky · Scaffolding: give it, then take it away — Left up, it becomes dependence. How much help is the right amount? The test is whether it comes down.
- [Wang Yangming · Knowing and doing are one thing](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wang-yangming/unity-of-knowing-and-doing/): Wang Yangming · Knowing and doing are one thing — Not done means not known. 'I understand it, I just can't do it.' Wang Yangming argued that the sentence itself is the error.
- [Wang Yangming · You are polished by events](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wang-yangming/polish-on-things/): Wang Yangming · You are polished by events — Sitting still trains nothing. Someone said he felt perfectly steady sitting quietly and fell apart the moment anything happened. Why that steadiness doesn't count.
- [Wang Yangming · Act on what you already know](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wang-yangming/innate-knowing/): Wang Yangming · Act on what you already know — The answer is in your first reaction. Most of what we call being unable to decide is being unwilling to admit. Why he said the judgement is already there.
- [Wang Yangming · The bandits inside](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wang-yangming/bandits-in-the-heart/): Wang Yangming · The bandits inside — The hardest battle is the interior one. He never lost a campaign. Why he said all of those were the easy ones.
- [Norbert Wiener · He wrote to the union first](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wiener/wrote-to-the-union/): Norbert Wiener · He wrote to the union first — Before automation landed. Is there a move to make before a technology reaches you? What the man who built it did first.
- [Norbert Wiener · What a machine can do, and what to give it](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wiener/human-use/): Norbert Wiener · What a machine can do, and what to give it — Two separate questions. Which work belongs to a tool and which doesn't. Why Wiener said capability doesn't settle it.
- [Norbert Wiener · Control is a loop, not an order](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wiener/feedback-not-command/): Norbert Wiener · Control is a loop, not an order — Seeing the result beats issuing instructions. Why the thing you carefully explained still comes back wrong. How Wiener defined control instead.
- [Zhuangzi · The use of being useless](https://ourword.ai/en/i/zhuangzi/use-of-uselessness/): Zhuangzi · The use of being useless — What nobody requisitions lives longest. Making yourself useful is instinct. What being useful costs you at the same time.
- [Zhuangzi · The cook and the ox](https://ourword.ai/en/i/zhuangzi/ox-carving/): Zhuangzi · The cook and the ox — Go along the gaps. One cook replaces his blade monthly, another hasn't in nineteen years. Where exactly the difference sits.
- [Zhuangzi · Things being equal](https://ourword.ai/en/i/zhuangzi/equalizing-things/): Zhuangzi · Things being equal — Whose ruler is this. Two people argue to the end and neither is convinced. Why Zhuangzi says a third person won't settle it either.

<!-- chapters:end -->
## Citing

Cite the individual page URL, not the homepage — each entry page is stable and dated. Attribute to "Human World (OurWord AI)".

## The rest of OurWord AI

- [OurWord AI](https://ourword.ai/site/)
- [Taste](https://ourword.ai/skill/?lang=en)
- [AI Bubble Monitor](https://ourword.ai/ai/)
- [Zouni](https://ourword.ai/zouni/)

## Index (30 entrys)

- [Arlie Hochschild](https://ourword.ai/en/i/hochschild/): Arlie Hochschild (1983 · UC Berkeley) — Work nobody counts. A sociologist who twice gave a name to work that had none. The Managed Heart (1983) named emotional labour: jobs that require not only that…
- [C.S. Lewis](https://ourword.ai/en/i/cs-lewis/): C.S. Lewis (1898–1963 · Oxford) — The notebooks after she died. A writer and professor at Oxford and Cambridge, author of Narnia and of many books arguing people into belief.
- [Carl Jung](https://ourword.ai/en/i/jung/): Carl Jung (1875–1961 · Zurich) — The afternoon has its own programme. The founder of analytical psychology, Freud's most valued student and his most famous defector.
- [Carol Dweck](https://ourword.ai/en/i/dweck/): Carol Dweck (2006 · Stanford) — Ability can grow. The Stanford psychologist behind the distinction between fixed and growth mindsets: whether you believe ability is a fixed quantity or something that…
- [Christina Maslach](https://ourword.ai/en/i/maslach/): Christina Maslach (1946– · UC Berkeley) — Burnout is the job. Burnout became measurable largely because of her work. Her 1981 inventory split it into three components — emotional exhaustion…
- [Esther Perel](https://ourword.ai/en/i/perel/): Esther Perel (1958– · Belgium and New York) — Flat isn't broken. Thirty years of couples therapy, nine languages, and a caseload across many cultures. She doesn't work on how to argue — Gottman…
- [Excellent Sheep](https://ourword.ai/en/i/excellent-sheep/): Excellent Sheep (2014 · William Deresiewicz) — Can clear, can't choose. A critique of elite education by someone who taught at Yale for ten years and sat on admissions.
- [Fan Li](https://ourword.ai/en/i/fan-li/): Fan Li (Spring and Autumn · 536–448 BC) — When to go. The most successful exit in Chinese history. He spent more than twenty years helping the king of Yue climb from hostage to hegemon, and walked…
- [Garry Kasparov](https://ourword.ai/en/i/kasparov/): Garry Kasparov (1963– · Baku) — After losing to the machine. World chess champion for fifteen years, from 1985 to 2000. In 1996 he beat IBM's Deep Blue in Philadelphia; in the May 1997 rematch in New…
- [Han Feizi](https://ourword.ai/en/i/han-feizi/): Han Feizi (Warring States · 280–233 BC) — Law, method, position. The systematiser of Chinese Legalism, who combined law, administrative method and positional authority into one theory of power.
- [Harvard Study of Adult Development](https://ourword.ai/en/i/harvard-study/): Harvard Study of Adult Development (1938–present · Harvard Medical School) — Relationships predict the end. The longest study of adult life ever run. It began in 1938 with 268 Harvard sophomores…
- [Huineng](https://ourword.ai/en/i/huineng/): Huineng (Tang · 638–713) — Already complete. An illiterate woodcutter from the far south who became the sixth patriarch of Chan Buddhism.
- [John Boyd](https://ourword.ai/en/i/boyd/): John Boyd (United States · 1927–1997) — Tempo. A US Air Force colonel known as Forty-Second Boyd, from a standing bet: any pilot, he starts from the disadvantaged position, and if he isn't on their…
- [John Cacioppo](https://ourword.ai/en/i/cacioppo/): John Cacioppo (1951–2018 · University of Chicago) — Loneliness is a signal. A founder of social neuroscience who spent a career on one question: what loneliness actually is in the body and the brain.
- [John Gottman](https://ourword.ai/en/i/gottman/): John Gottman (1994 · University of Washington) — Four fatal signals. A psychologist who recorded thousands of couples in a laboratory, coding expression, tone and heart rate frame by frame, then…
- [John Ratey](https://ourword.ai/en/i/john-ratey/): John Ratey (2008 · Harvard Medical School) — Move, then think. A professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who redefined what exercise is for. The primary return, he argues, is not the body…
- [Lev Vygotsky](https://ourword.ai/en/i/vygotsky/): Lev Vygotsky (1934 · Soviet psychologist) — One notch higher. A Soviet psychologist who died at thirty-seven and left concepts that shaped the whole of education.
- [Li Ka-shing](https://ourword.ai/en/i/li-ka-shing/): Li Ka-shing (Contemporary · 1928–) — Cycles. From a plastic flower workshop to a group spanning property, ports, telecoms, retail and energy.
- [Maria Montessori](https://ourword.ai/en/i/montessori/): Maria Montessori (1907 · Casa dei Bambini, Rome) — The room, not the discipline. One of Italy's first women doctors, who began with children with intellectual disabilities and then applied the same…
- [Marie Curie](https://ourword.ai/en/i/curie/): Marie Curie (1867–1934 · Warsaw and Paris) — She took his course. Physicist and chemist, born in Warsaw, in Paris from 1891, and in 1903 a Nobel laureate in physics alongside her husband Pierre.
- [Mark Granovetter](https://ourword.ai/en/i/granovetter/): Mark Granovetter (1973 · American Journal of Sociology) — Weak ties. A sociologist whose 1973 paper, The Strength of Weak Ties, has been cited tens of thousands of times.
- [Norbert Wiener](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wiener/): Norbert Wiener (1894–1964 · United States) — He warned them first. The founder of cybernetics: Cybernetics in 1948, The Human Use of Human Beings in 1950. His position here is unusual — he is both…
- [Pu Songling](https://ourword.ai/en/i/pu-songling/): Pu Songling (1640–1715 · Shandong) — The side thing won. At nineteen he came first in three examinations and was locally famous. Then he sat the provincial examination for forty years and never…
- [Rat Park](https://ourword.ai/en/i/rat-park/): Rat Park (1978 · Simon Fraser University) — Look at the cage. A set of experiments from the late 1970s, plus a natural experiment nobody designed, which together unsettled a piece of common sense…
- [Robert Sapolsky](https://ourword.ai/en/i/sapolsky/): Robert Sapolsky (1994 · Stanford) — Stress is a mismatch. A neuroendocrinologist who spent thirty years with a troop of wild baboons in East Africa while studying human stress physiology.
- [Su Shi](https://ourword.ai/en/i/su-shi/): Su Shi (Northern Song · 1037–1101) — Unbowed. One of the great Chinese poets, and also a calligrapher, a painter, a hydraulic engineer, a cook and a provincial governor.
- [Thomas Gordon](https://ourword.ai/en/i/thomas-gordon/): Thomas Gordon (1962 · Parent Effectiveness Training) — The I-message. A student of Carl Rogers who turned humanistic psychology into a course ordinary parents could take.
- [Wang Yangming](https://ourword.ai/en/i/wang-yangming/): Wang Yangming (Ming · 1472–1529) — Knowing is doing. A philosopher who was also the most effective general of his generation — an almost unheard-of combination.
- [Winston Churchill](https://ourword.ai/en/i/churchill/): Winston Churchill (1874–1965 · Britain) — Ten years out, back at 65. Politician and writer. He went out with the government in 1929, lost the Exchequer, and held no office for ten years — the…
- [Zhuangzi](https://ourword.ai/en/i/zhuangzi/): Zhuangzi (Warring States · c. 369–286 BC) — Free and equal. The second peak of Daoism, and a very different writer from Laozi. Where Laozi addresses the person who has to govern, Zhuangzi addresses…