“ The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ We're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We're all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn't bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were v… Neal Stephenson
“ My classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity's phoniness, nerdiness, and philistinism...many philistines reduce my ideas to an opposition of… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I attended a symposium, an event named after a fifth century (B.C.) Athenian drinking party in which nonnerds talked about love; alas, there was no drinking, and mercifully, nobody talked about love. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Star Trek? I asked her. Really? What? she demanded, bending unnaturally black eyebrows together. There are two kinds of people in the universe, Molly, I said. Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. This i… Jim Butcher
“ The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this nerdification, to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination Nassim Nicholas Taleb
