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May 15 - August 5, 2019
one debases a principle by endlessly justifying it.
Their three flaws: 1) they think in statics not dynamics, 2) they think in low, not high, dimensions, 3) they think in terms of actions, never interactions.
The principle of intervention, like that of healers, is first do no harm (primum non nocere); even more, we will argue, those who don’t take risks should never be involved in making decisions.
Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.
Decentralization reduces large structural asymmetries.
You will never fully convince someone that he is wrong; only reality can.
The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding,
Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.
Things designed by people without skin in the game tend to grow in complication (before their final collapse).
If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing.
Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is “good for you” while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn’t directly affect him.
to some extent, the modern world, seem to have
What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.
Contemporary peers are valuable collaborators, not final judges.
“Give me a few lines written by any man and I will find enough to get him hung”
It is much more immoral to claim virtue without fully living with its direct consequences.
Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake.
Survival comes first, truth, understanding, and science later.
How much you truly “believe” in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it.
If humans were immortals, they would go extinct from an accident, or from a gradual buildup of misfitness. But shorter shelf life for humans allows genetic changes across generations to be in sync with the variability of the environment.
In a strategy that entails ruin, benefits never offset risks of ruin.
