1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem It feels the CAP theorem was more talked-about in the years of NoSQL fre

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem It feels the CAP theorem was more talked-about in the years of NoSQL frenzy. It is of course still highly relevant. Despite being widely known and discussed, I think it fits the "non-intuitive" description because most people really want systems to have all three (consistency, availability and partition tolerance). 2. Buridan’s Principle ( http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/buridan.pdf http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/buridan.pdf ) - A discrete decision based upon an input having a continuous range of values cannot be made within a bounded length of time. This is more of a "philosophical" principle, but if you read the paper it does have practical implications.