Paul GrahamVerified account

A secret I’ve learned from reading @paulg’s writing is the use of the word “surprising” or “secret.” When you’re told something is “a secret” or “surprising”, your ears perk up, you sit forward, and pay attention. It’s great way to snap the reader into focus.

You can't just stick such labels on a random observation though. The real secret is to discover things that are genuinely surprising.

That’s totally fair, but I think the distinction between a secret and something surprising sometimes falls to how much you respect the author.

Most people can have a secret (I guess, if you have a history of banal secrets, you’ll lose the reader), but when you respect a writer... for example something surprising to @paulg about startups: I can’t help but pay attention.

I feel like the power of something surprising ties to reputation.

This is all obviously in regard to how an idea is presented. I’m confident that to even be at a place where something you think is surprising is worth someone else paying attention to requires you to actually discover something genuinely surprising at first.

surprise happens when something deviates from your expectations if your expectations are similar to other people's (usually the case since people inherit most of their expectations from a shared social pool), then what surprises you should surprise others