Move to the Edge, Declare it Center

Chapter 1A FRAMEWORK TO MAKE DECISIONS UNDER COMPLEXITY AND UNCERTAINTY

I have a long history with insomnia. I wake up around 2 a.m. and stay awake for several hours. In Brazil, this time is called the madrugada, a time for creative expression without the filter of rational, conscious thinking.¹ At my best, I use the time to pursue my curiosity, making connections between different domains in art, sports, psychology, and history. Like the phenomenon of getting your best ideas in the shower, I dictate ideas into my phone without censoring. Most ideas are worthless, but I value the exploration.

One night in 2015, I was watching Andy Warhol, A Documentary Film² on the career of Andy Warhol. My curiosity was piqued because both my parents share his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and my great‐uncle Mozelle, another gay, Pittsburgh‐native visual artist, arrived in New York during the same period in the early 1960s.

The New York art scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s was dominated by the abstract expressionists – Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning, for example – and the galleries and patrons were uninterested in Andy Warhol. His style couldn't be more antithetical to the intuitive sweeps and drops of Jackson Pollock, and he couldn't get anyone to show his Campbell's Soup can paintings. His first show was in Los Angeles, and with that success, Warhol doubled down on his ...