Sunil Pai: original thoughts have terrible UX — adopted opinions are a better deal
threepointone · x · 2026-10-13
Cloudflare engineer Sunil Pai published a satirical essay arguing that "thinking for yourself is a terrible business model":
- Brutal economics: an original thought shows up unbidden, then costs days to understand and shape, with no guarantee of a useful outcome — while adopting an existing endorsed opinion takes ten seconds and yields the same or better social payoff.
- Turnkey opinions win: established views ship with a built-in audience, community, vocabulary, and even designated disagree-ers to engage with.
- They don't scale: every new idea needs fresh investment, work isn't reusable, and discovering a flaw in a belief forces weekend-long re-examination of everything else you believed.
Framed as a product review, the piece treats independent thinking as a shippable product with terrible UX and a broken cost model — a pointed jab at how easily people default to pre-packaged conclusions.
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