Even political systems follow a form of rational tinkering, when people are rational hence take the better option: the Romans got their political system by tinkering, not by reason. Polybius in his Hi...
Este mult mai dificil să pierzi într-un joc pe care l-ai pus la punct tu însuți.
Engineers and tinkerers develop things while history books are written by academics; we will have to refine historical interpretations of growth, innovation, and many such things.
Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
Education is an institution that has been growing without external stressors; eventually the thing will collapse.
Education has benefits aside from stabilizing family incomes. Education makes individuals more polished dinner partners, for instance, something non-negligible. But the idea of educating people to imp...
Curiosity is antifragile, like an addiction, and is magnified by attempts to satisfy it—books have a secret mission and ability to multiply, as everyone who has wall-to-wall bookshelves knows well.
Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider
Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider the Ayn Rand phenomenon: her books Atlas S...
Corporations are in love with the idea of the strategic plan. They need to pay to figure out where they are going. Yet there is no evidence that strategic planning works—we even seem to have evidence...
Consider that all the wealth of the world can’t buy a liquid more pleasurable than water after intense thirst.
Cherry-picking has optionality: the one telling the story (and publishing it) has the advantage of being able to show the confirmatory examples and completely ignore the rest—and the more volatility a...
By the mechanism of retrospective determinism we will find the cause—actually,
By all means, avoid words—threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words!
But we don’t correct for the difference in science, medicine, and mathematics, for the same reasons we didn’t pay attention to iatrogenics. We are suckers for the sophisticated. In institutional resea...
But the technology is only trivial retrospectively—not prospectively.
But I also buy the opposite argument that regulating street signs does not seem to reduce risks; drivers become more placid. Experiments show that alertness is weakened when one relinquishes control t...
Breaking a fast feels like the exact opposite of a hangover.*
Black Swan logic makes what you don't know far more relevant than what you do know.
Black Swan Is Relative to Knowledge