Sturgeon's Law
Origin
In 1957 SF writer Theodore Sturgeon wrote in Venture Science Fiction Magazine. When critics mocked "90% of SF is crap", Sturgeon replied: "Ninety percent of everything is crap — 90% of films, 90% of poems, 90% of books, 90% of everything." Dismissing SF misses the truth that 10% shines through in every field.
Meaning
The starting point of criticism shifts. "This field is rubbish" is not insight but the universal average. The real question: where is the 10%? — the value of curation. In the content explosion era, the truth grows heavier — the 90% is bigger than Sturgeon's time.
Lesson — Meeting Eastern Classics
Zhuangzi: "The Peng bird's back is thousands of miles wide; one flap carries it ninety thousand miles." Zhuangzi taught the vastness of the ordinary and the rarity of the extraordinary. Sturgeon named the ratio: 90/10.
"凡" depicts a stand — originally a vessel base, the ordinary. Analects: "Gentleman's virtue is wind, petty man's virtue is grass." Within 凡, the gentleman's wind hides — Sturgeon's 10%.
