A comparison chooses a feature before it chooses a winner.

REFLECTION

WHAT THIS MEANS

Every comparison smuggles in a criterion. Before anything is judged better, somebody has decided that speed matters, or price, or durability, or how it looks in a photograph, and that decision does most of the work while looking like no decision at all. Change the feature and the winner changes with it. Arguments about which option is best are usually arguments about which axis was chosen, conducted without anyone naming the axis.

When a comparison is put to you, ask what it is measuring on. If the answer is not the thing you actually care about, the ranking is true and irrelevant to you.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Which measure are you using to decide that you fall short?

MORE IN MEANING & PERSPECTIVE

Free, with nothing to buy inside it.