The observation of the numerous misfortunes that attend all conditions forbids us to grow insolent upon our present enjoyments, or to admire a man's happiness that may yet, in course of time, suffer c...
The number of cultured people dropped below some critical level. Suddenly the place became a vacuum. Brain drain is hard to reverse, and some of the old refinement may be lost forever.
The mechanism is a probabilistic method called conditional information: Unless the source of the statement has extremely high qualifications, the statement will be more revealing of the author than th...
The major problem with inference in general is that those whose profession is to derive conclusions from data often fall into the trap faster and more confidently than others. The more data we have, t...
The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in ways not predicted by its components.
The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something s...
The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults lik...
The future ain’t what it used to be, Berra
The fragility of every startup is necessary for the economy to be antifragile, and that’s what makes, among other things, entrepreneurship work: the fragility of individual entrepreneurs and their nec...
The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.
The engineer and historian of engineering Henry Petroski presents a very elegant point. Had the Titanic not had that famous accident, as fatal as it was, we would have kept building larger and larger...
The chief ethical rule is the following: Thou shalt not have antifragility at the expense of the fragility of others.
The central point: had Stiglitz been a businessman with his own money on the line, he would have blown up, terminated. Or had he been in nature, his genes would have been made extinct—so people with s...
The brilliant British mathematician, eccentric, and computer pioneer Alan Turing came up with the following test: A computer can be said to be intelligent if it can (on average) fool a human into mist...
The Pyrrhonian skeptics were docile citizens who followed customs and traditions whenever possible, but taught themselves to systematically doubt everything, and thus attain a level of serenity. But w...
Technothinkers tend to have an engineering mind—to put it less politely, they have autistic tendencies. While they don’t usually wear ties, these types tend, of course, to exhibit all the textbook cha...
Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker’s life while convincing him that it is becoming more efficient. - The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully...
THE ONE THING YOU MUST DOThere is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there's nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else a...
Some people do not know their own interest—just consider addicts, workaholics, people trapped in a bad relationship, people who support large government, the press, book reviewers, or respectable bure...
So let us call here the teleological fallacy the illusion that you know exactly where you are going, and that you knew exactly where you were going in the past, and that others have succeeded in the p...