Wittgenstein’s ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.
Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.
He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.
Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.
Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.
We should reward people, not ridicule them, for thinking the impossible.
Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters-you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.
My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: I don’t know...
For many people, commuting is the worst part of the day, and policies that can make commuting shorter and more convenient would be a straightforward way to reduce minor but widespread suffering.
What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don’t say about themselves.
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist.
My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism.
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.
Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.
By all means, avoid words – threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words!
Luck is the grand equalizer.
It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
But they never notice the following inconsistency: this so-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time.
It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.
Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility.