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January 22 - October 9, 2024
You never win an argument until they attack your person.
The first one who uses “but” has lost the argument.
Since Cato the Elder, a certain type of maturity has shown up when one starts blaming the new generation for “shallowness” and praising the previous one for its “values.”
is a very powerful manipulation to let others win the small battles.
Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize the distance between a decision-maker and the risks of the decision.
Life is about early detection of the reversal point beyond which your own belongings (say, a house, country house, car, or business) start owning you.
Just as there are authors who enjoy having written and others who enjoy writing, there are books you enjoy reading and others you enjoy having read.
Half of suckerhood is not realizing that what you don’t like might be loved by someone else (hence by you, later), and the reverse.
What I learned on my own I still remember.
The difference between the politician and the philosopher is that, in a debate, the politician doesn’t try to convince the other side, only the audience.
You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.
For social mobility to work, it needs to be a two-way highway, with a large number of pre-rich and an almost as large one of post-rich.
I trust everyone except those who tell me they are trustworthy.
To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
In a conflict, the middle ground is least likely to be correct.
In the medical and social domains, treatment should never be equivalent to silencing symptoms.
It is perplexing but amusing to observe people getting extremely excited about things you don’t care about; it is sinister to watch them ignore things you believe are fundamental.
For the classics, philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for us, a life of leisure can be the product of philosophical insight.
If something (say, a stock price) looks slightly out of line, it is out of line. If it looks way out of line, you are wrong in your method of evaluation.
It is easier to macrobullshit than to microbullshit.
One of the failures of “scientific approximation” in the nonlinear domain comes from the inconvenient fact that the average of expectations is different from the expectation of averages.*
To have a great day: 1) Smile at a stranger, 2) surprise someone by saying something unexpectedly nice, 3) give some genuine attention to an elderly person, 4) invite someone who doesn’t have many friends for coffee,
Bring the good news in trickles, the bad news in lumps.
Humans need to complain just as they need to breathe. Never stop them; just manipulate them by controlling what they complain about and supply them with reasons to complain. They will complain but be thankful.
It is easiest to do the most when you have nothing to do.
It isn’t what you know that makes you knowledgeable and rigorous; it is in the type of mistakes that you don’t make.
Prosperity comes with three terminal diseases: debt, obesity, and (standardized) tourism.
Never debate your enemies. Make them angry and get them to complain endlessly and repeatedly.
If you like them, wish them financial security. If you dislike them, wish them extreme wealth.
When you are shown a picture of an unspoiled, lush, and picturesque lakeside forest, imagine that, in person, you would be exposed to the summer heat, high humidity, and, mostly, exasperating mosquito bites.
Those obsessing over inequality want the rich to become poorer rather than the poor getting richer.
Summarizing the principles in the Incerto: that something is knowable doesn’t mean that you know it; that something is unknowable doesn’t imply that you can’t do anything about it.
Unless you are into pediatrics or developmental medicine, aging should not be seen as certain distance from birth, but rather expected distance from death.
If you can guess someone’s commentary with reasonable precision given 1) her or his name, 2) the news of the day, then you must treat that commentator as nonexistent.
The phony tries to have prominent friends; the righteous will have prominent enemies.
Our preference for money appears unbounded, with no explicit satiation level. But just as there’s an optimal height, weight, and muscle mass beyond which one appears malformed, there’s a subtle optimal wealth. It’s the level of wealth above and below which your sleep degrades.
If someone finds fault with everything you say or do, ignore. But there is information from those who differ on occasion.
I treat my friends as temporary pre-enemies, my enemies as temporary pre-friends, and my post-friends as permanent enemies.
The freer and more transparent a society, the more you will hear complaints about freedom and transparency.
To insult your foes, don’t try to win arguments.
