A Whale on a Grasshopper
Imagine a whale riding on a grasshopper. It seems rather impossible at first blush. But consider how ants move objects much larger than their own bodies. They do that by working in groups. Very few other animals besides humans ants work in groups to move objects. Evidently rats are among them. Beyond that, an individual ant can carry 10–150 times its body weight. So in teams, they’re quite capable. But grasshoppers aren’t known for such feats.
Thus far you’re probably assuming I’m referring to grasshoppers the greenish-brown insects. What if I told you I was actually referring to my vivid green Lotus Evora GT, nick-named grasshopper? Now it seems a bit more feasible. I’ve already implied that Lotuses aren’t known for having a large payload capacity, especially when the payload is a sea mammal, but at least a mass many orders of magnitude greater than an ant or insect grasshoppper. Still, it’s hard to envision a whale on my grasshopper car ending in anything other than a very smushed British sports car. A Lotus weighs less than two tons while a whale can weigh as much as 150 tons. But what if we’re talking about a dwarf sperm whale?
A dwarf sperm whale weighs only 400–600 pounds. It’s feasible to imagine I could rig a rack that would allow a dwarf sperm whale to ride on top of grasshopper, my car. There you have how a whale could ride a grasshopper.
Of course, my point isn’t that I should start a whale rack for Lotuses business. The audience for that might be a bit too niche. Typically I recommend that a business have an addressable market of greater than zero customers. But I would like to point out that you probably made at least one if not more incorrect assumptions about this piece just from the title. Most whales are rather enormous. If you’re into crypto or a mobile gaming entrepreneur you might have assumed I’d be writing about the human sort of whale; a big spender, gambler, or trader. And even if you know me well enough to know I have a car named grasshopper, you probably wouldn’t have thought of it because, why would I be talking a whale and a car?
We always make assumptions. That’s how our brain works; we can’t help it. Most are made subconsciously. That’s how we pare down the glut of information our brain receives into what is consciously parsable. We can’t change that but we can be aware of it. A title that seems absurd at first blush may be less so with the clarification that our initial assumptions about it are off. I try to give most ideas that I immediately doubt that benefit of the doubt; more often than not it proves worthwhile.
