# Subtraction Necessitates Addition We as humans are often [resistant to *subtractive change*](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/08/30/162-leidy-klotz-on-our-resistance-to-subtractive-change/). Given a problem our instinct is to bring in some new idea in order to solve it. We seek an **addition**. This shows up in every corner of life: * Our modern financial system. Every problem it encounters is met with a new idea or tool that is expected to save the day. * Organizations confronting lack of productivity are almost certain to add in a new “productivity task force” that adds additional meetings. Good luck convincing them to *subtract* meetings that are leading to reduced productivity in the first place. * The married couple whose relationship has been struggling is likely to try and mix things up by adding a trip to some fun, exotic location instead of subtracting their smartphones from the dinner table. It has been wonderfully explored in *Antifragile* that *subtraction* is [far more robust compared to addition](https://fs.blog/a-wonderfully-simple-heuristic-to-recgonize-charlatans/). I won’t recapitulate those ideas again here. However, there is an angle of this problem that I have yet to see explored: > Any subtraction ***necessitates*** an addition. What exactly do I mean by that? Consider the following subtractive scenarios: * A busy entrepreneur removes three recurring meetings from their calendar. * An urban planner removes car lanes from a city center layout. * A software engineer removes 500 lines from a module of heavily used code (including a few bells and whistles). You likely see where I am going with this. In each scenario by performing a **subtraction** we also experienced an **addition**. * By removing three recurring meetings the entrepreneur *gained* time and space to think, reflect, and take on more important work. * By removing car lanes the city *gained* more space for its citizens to congregate and connect. * By removing 500 lines of code the software engineer gained crucial brain space, once occupied with the nuances of the module, now freed up to think about more innovative and creative things. There is a deep, fundamental reason for this: > No objects exist in **isolation**. They are all connected via **relationships**. In mathematics we have equations of the form: $a = b + c$ Where we are specifically encoding a *relationship* between our objects $a, b, c$. We can do this with any of our above examples. For instance: $\text{Entrepreneurs Total Time} = \text{Time in Meetings} + \text{Time thinking and reflection}$ The total time that the entrepreneur has is fixed (in this case by the physical constraint of 24 hours in the day). As time is *subtracted* by being spent in meetings this *relationship* necessitates that time spent thinking and reflecting is added to. In this example the underlying quantity being moved around is *time*, but of course it could be anything! Take the city lanes example. It may look like: $H : \text{city center space} \rightarrow \text{human connection} $ Where we are just saying that human connection is a function of the available city center space. Then we have: $\text{Total city center space} = \text{bus lane space} + \text{human congregation space}$ By the above relation, as we *remove* bus lane space we *add* to our human congregation space. Then, via our function $H$ we map this newly added city center space to an increase in human connection. It’s worth pointing out that, especially when laid out in this way, this is not a novel idea. I’d be hard pressed to find someone who’d argue that in the world we live objects aren’t related to other objects. We certainly don’t need a mathematical formalism to tell us that. However, the reason for laying this out so plainly is to hammer home the point that any subtraction necessitates and addition. The next time you are confronted with a problem and gravitate towards an additive solution, stop and ask yourself “how could I subtract something instead?”. You actually can have your cake and eat it too[^1]. --- Date: 20230108 Links to: Tags: #review References: * [162 | Leidy Klotz on Our Resistance to Subtractive Change – Sean Carroll](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/08/30/162-leidy-klotz-on-our-resistance-to-subtractive-change/) * [A Wonderfully Simple Heuristic to Recognize Charlatans - Farnam Street](https://fs.blog/a-wonderfully-simple-heuristic-to-recgonize-charlatans/) * *Antifragile*, Nassim Taleb [^1]: The careful reader may be shouting “viewed in this light any subtractive change is *also an addition*! So we can’t escape additive changes no matter what we do, so why does this framing help us?”. This is a great question, but requires a bit of nuance in the answer. It comes down to the notion of *active* vs *passive*. Generally we default to adding via an *active* intervention, while on the other hand the act of subtraction is viewed as *passive* (as though no action has been taken whatsoever). My argument here is that a *passive subtraction* will lead to a passive addition; whereas on the other hand an *active addition* comes tied to a second order effect negation (the most concrete example would be a financial system acted upon via an *active* intervention-the addition-that then suffers from an unintended consequence, the *subtraction* of resilience to unknown unknowns). See *Antifragile* Book IV for a great overview of these ideas.