The author begins by sharing their personal experience of helping their dad with building projects as a teenager and how it taught them that reality is full of surprising details. They use the example of building stairs to illustrate this point, explaining the various subtasks and challenges involved. They then extend this concept to other domains, highlighting that everything from gardening to programming involves fiddly details that may not be immediately apparent. The author emphasizes the importance of paying attention to these details, especially when attempting difficult tasks or facing intellectual challenges. They caution against getting stuck in one’s current way of thinking and advocate for seeking out new details and perspectives to avoid this.
http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail