There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.
Experience is devoid of the cherry-picking that we find in studies.
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.
The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see.
When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
I’m a private intellectual, not a public one.
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.