Some of my notes last week
Seeded watermelon tastes way better than seedless.
“Inquiry is fatal to certainty.”
Will Durant
“The idea that you can solve the social issues connected to the internet with anti-trust intervention is rather like thinking that you can solve the social issues that come from cars by breaking up GM and Ford.”
Benedict Evans
Dogs not barking can tell you more than dogs barking.
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.
The culprit was known by the dog.
Atoms at rest travel at the speed of light through the dimension of time but travel zero distance through spatial dimensions.
Photons travel at the speed of light in the spatial dimensions but travel zero distance through the dimension of time.
“Humans have always lived under the illusion that they can control markets, modify human nature, and get their spouse to change”
Nassim Taleb, Bed of Procrustes 3rd edition
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
Socrates
In 1623 Manhattan was purchased for $24 US dollars (60 guilders). In 2018 it was found to have a land value of $1.7 trillion.
Amazing, but equally amazing is that this works out to only a 6.5% annual growth rate.
“If that’s the world’s smartest man, God help us.”
Lucille Feynman, Richard Feynman’s mother, after Omni magazine named him the world’s smartest man.
“The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.”
unknown
“If you want to get good at something, find a way to make it fun. The rest will work itself out.”
Dan Loewenherz
“Change anchor to what did not happen rather than to what did happen.”
Nassim Taleb
The Media will never report on how they harm the mental health of viewers/readers.
Stop watching the News.
“Technology is us. There is no separation. It’s a pure expression of human creative will. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the universe. I’m rather sure of that.”
David Cronenberg
Milton Friedman one said that the idea that we need to elect better people is wrong – what we need to do is build systems that incentivize bad people to do good things.
“blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.”
David Foster Wallace
Assume PSYOP
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble,
there lies your treasure.
The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.
The damned thing in the cave
that was so dreaded has become the center.”
Joseph Campbell
WHEN DEALING WITH PEOPLE REMEMBER YOU ARE NOT DEALING WITH CREATURES OF LOGIC, BUT CREATURES OF EMOTION.
DALE CARNEGIE
Ever think about the fact that the largest creatures in the oceans can’t breathe underwater?
Why? Lungs are so much better than gills.
Another example: Largest birds are orders of magnitude bigger than largest insects.
Scott Manley
China has border disputes with 18 neighboring nations.
Constraints.
In 1956 The French Department of Education banned wine in schools for children under 14.
In 1981 France banned alcohol for all students in schools.
With the 500kg battery in one AUDI Q4 e-tron you could build 150 eBikes.
“It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
Alfred Adler
Starbucks is a milkshake company disguised as a coffee shop.
“What we achieve lags what we believe.”
Jack Butcher
The Gish gallop is a term for an eristic technique in which a debater attempts to overwhelm an opponent by excessive number of arguments, without regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments.
“It would appear that socialism really works under some circumstances.
Karl Marx just had the wrong species”
Edward O. Wilson,
Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration
“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people’s perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.”
Roy T. Bennett
“One should expect to find the genius, and the defects, of the human mind in its creations, as one always finds the autobiography of the artist in the art-work.”
Robert Anton Wilson
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious.
If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
Carl Sagan