Silver bullets are very rare.

Silver bullets are very rare. Silver swarms are very common.

Everyone wants there to be a single, obvious, high-leverage unlock.

But often the constraints are a complex web of interrelated forces; there is no single silver bullet.

And wasting all of your time looking for a non-existent silver bullet will waste a ton of time.

But that doesn't mean it's hopeless.

Often there are silver swarms.

That is, a swarm of smaller ideas or adaptations, executed by a bottom-up swarm, that collectively change the top-level characteristics.

Any individual part of it looks like nothing.

But the swarm overall is the secret.

People can be looking right at it and not see it.

"Wait but where is the silver bullet? What is the singular thing that fixed it?"

Sometimes it's a secret not because you aren't being told the answer but because the answer is in your blind spot, and it literally doesn't look like anything to you.

Most people when they see a swarm, just see a diffuse cloud of ambiguity.

But train yourself to blur your vision a bit; and to marvel at the shifting, shimmering silver cloud.