Two thoughts from Jonathan Swift "When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him." “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

https://t.co/C3xVVxCt8P

"As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they think they're obligated to use the body of knowledge they have." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"people who see themselves as victims often feel entitled to mistreat others. The implicit moral logic seems to be 'because I’ve been wronged, I can do no wrong'...victimhood can lead to selfishness, aggression, and even revenge."

You should never need to utter the words "I promise," Your word should always be good enough. I promise.

Nothing drains a high performer faster than realizing their reward for excellence is cleaning up someone else’s incompetence.

When people disrespect you, silently thank them. They're giving you information. They're giving you the truth. You may not like the form that it came in but ultimately, it's information. They are, through their actions or words, telling you what they think. That's the truth.

A good way to understand somebody's perspective is to observe who they blame.

An agent is defined by its Buddhi, Manas, Ahankara and Chitta. By which I mean, its loss function, context vector, boundary, and world model.

5 magical Japanese words:

@rorysutherland Some bangers in there: "He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others." "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."

Only the monster can be nice

"When people speak in vague generalities...and use a lot of abstract terms like 'justice,' 'morality,' 'liberty,' and so on, without ever really explaining the specifics of what they are talking about, they are almost always hiding something." https://t.co/R8nQyBvrNP

Favorite thing Peter Thiel said in the Joe Rogan podcast: strategy is often a euphemism for procrastination.

Selectively breeding the most *individually* productive hens leads to lower overall egg production, so chicken farmers have cleverly learned to shift selection to the level of the *group*. Economists, on the other hand >

Notice the internal dial: how going fast doesn’t reduce travel time much. @rorysutherland on how we mis-optimize for time. How would transport be designed if the objective were not to strictly minimise time but increase enjoyment? #nudgestock2024

T.S. Eliot gets it:

You own something when you can walk away from it. If you can't, it owns you regardless of what you say you own.

Just found out about Milton Friedman’s Thermostat analogy. Very good explanation of an important concept. I think @causalinf has a similar analogy with a sailboat staying on course in the face of wind in the Mixtape.

Reason and logic fails because.. You can never change how something makes someone feel.