---
title: "On instinct"
description: "The difficulty of proof, units of measurement, and the magic of the valley,"
author: "Ghaith Ayadi"
site: "Verbatim"
collection: "Hokum"
url: "https://verbatim.ayadighaith.com/hokum/on-instinct"
date: 2026-10-18
updated: 2026-10-18
---
# On instinct

There are many things that we know instinctively that are hard to prove.

"Love is desirable" is one of those positions. Try to prove that. it's so trivial that you'd find it hard to construct a robust arguement. You still can. You can write a whole book as many writers have. But the strongest argument will always remain: Duh!

Here's another example of something intuitive: "You can't refer to your employees as heads". I heard Marc benioff say: "We're reduced to headcount of our salesteam from 9000 heads to 5000 heads thus cutting 4000 jobs". That is a strange thing to say. It's self evident that you can't refer to people as heads. There's nothing technically wrong with it. But it's just in poor taste and feels disgusting. that's the intuitive reaction. Heads are a unit of measurment of Cattle, not people. Duh!

So why does this guy allow himself to say this?

There seems to be something about being in Scilicone vallery that makes this ok. The biggest thing probably is that every other asshole says it like that. it looses its punch. becomes normal. the same way I can use asshole without feeling uneasy about this atroscious word. Too much exposure makes it normal.