Rules are devised so that at each new juncture in life we won’t have to think through everything all over again. Usually, there’s little need to consider the ramifications of each new decision. So we just plug in the rule and get on with it, and things go swimmingly. For example, wise people long ago figured out that “please and thank you” go a long way towards ridding social interactions of needless friction. So we employ those lubricants, those rules, without thinking about them. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once observed: “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” Rules facilitate that. Rules simplify our lives, and goodness knows we need simplicity. Rules, however, sometimes don’t suffice. Sometimes something novel happens for which we don’t have a ready-made rule, and we’re forced to think. If the new something sticks around,...(Read Full Article)