Everything You Know Is Wrong

Assume all knowledge could be incorrect and rebuild understanding from first principles

Farhan Thawar
How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture

Everything You Know Is Wrong

"Everything you know is wrong. If all the knowledge you knew was incorrect, could you from first principles build up a view of the world? That's kind of how I like to think of things." - Farhan Thawar

What It Is

This life motto challenges you to treat all existing knowledge as potentially incorrect and rebuild your understanding from direct observation and experimentation. It's the foundation for first-principles thinking—instead of accepting conventional wisdom, test whether it's actually true.

The practical implication: try weird things constantly, even if they look stupid or violate "known" rules. Sometimes you'll discover that the rules were wrong all along.

How It Works

The Core Question: If everything you currently believe is wrong, could you reconstruct a correct understanding through direct experience?

Why This Works:

  • Conventional wisdom is often just habit or tradition
  • Expert knowledge can become outdated
  • Edge cases and exceptions often contain valuable insights
  • The willingness to be wrong enables faster learning

The Tesla Example: Farhan routinely switches gears on his Tesla while the car is still moving—something you'd never do with a traditional car. His wife hates it, but he discovered it works fine because there's no mechanical transmission to damage.

Everyone "knows" you can't do this. But on an electric car, it's just software.

How to Apply It

  1. Try things that "shouldn't work" - Test the edges of what's possible. Sometimes you'll break things (ruined clothes in experimental wash cycles), sometimes you'll find shortcuts nobody else knows.

  2. Question "best practices" - Who decided this was best? When? For what context? Does it still apply?

  3. Experiment constantly - From washing machine settings to management techniques, maintain a testing mindset.

  4. Accept looking stupid - Most experiments will fail or look dumb. That's the cost of finding the ones that work.

  5. Build from observation - When you discover something works differently than expected, reconstruct your mental model.

The Design Connection

Steve Jobs and Airbnb's founders share a related insight: everything around you was designed by other humans. Those humans weren't necessarily smarter than you, and their designs weren't necessarily correct. You can redesign anything.

The difference is in willingness to question and test.

Guardrails

"Everything you know is wrong" doesn't mean:

  • Ignore safety-critical constraints
  • Reject all expert knowledge
  • Be contrarian for its own sake

It means:

  • Hold knowledge lightly
  • Test assumptions when possible
  • Stay curious about edge cases
  • Be willing to discover you were wrong

Source

  • Guest: Farhan Thawar
  • Episode: "How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture"
  • Key Discussion: (01:34:10 - 01:35:57) - Life motto and first-principles mindset
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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