Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people's actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.
Greene overstates ("terrorize") because that's his framing. The right read in modern operating practice: have principled unpredictability — the counterparty can predict your principles, but not which principle you'll prioritize in any given situation. That's not terror, it's judgment, which is exactly Naval's judgment principle. L17 is judgment — the practice of it shows variance because the principles themselves are in tension.
Predictability is exposure to optimization. The operator pairs this with Naval's appearing-vs-being: deliberate, but not visibly so. Don't randomize; show variance only in the dimensions that matter.
appearing-vs-being: deliberate, but not visibly so. Don't…
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