Skip to content
4 min read Principles

Contaminated thinking

What does a contaminant actually *do* to the substance it's contaminating? And what are the implications for us? 🔬

Contaminated thinking
Photo by Chaozzy Lin / Unsplash

I really like the notion of contamination, I think it's fascinating.

I heard Syd Banks talking once about ‘contaminated thinking’ and it struck me as a bit odd. I didn't really understand what he meant—was he talking about ‘bad’ thoughts or something?—and I resolved to figure it out.

I never did, naturally. Whenever ‘I’ (i.e. the Giles Ego Construct 📦) resolves to force some kind of answer it thinks it deserves out of thin air, it generally comes up empty-handed.

I must have given up or mostly put it on the back burner or something because the next time I became aware of ‘contamination’ as a thing, I found myself idly musing with a glass of water in my hand.

I was looking at it, thinking… Contaminant. Water. Contaminant. Water. And then it suddenly hit me: