Defeasibility Theory

A theory is a map somebody drew after walking the terrain. Defeasibility Theory is a useful map, provided you remember it is not the terrain.

The theory's gift is vocabulary. Once you have the word, you can see the thing — in your office, in your family, in the news. Before the word, it was only a vague discomfort after dinner.

It is worth keeping in your pocket not because it is always right, but because it is always available. A tool you carry beats a perfect tool you left at home.

Picture the government office at four in the afternoon. The file moves only when someone owns it; until then it is everybody's business, which is to say, nobody's.

An organisation is only a group of people who have agreed, for now, to pull in roughly the same direction. Do not memorise it. Notice it. Noticing is the senior discipline.