Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

in academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world, there is.

There are two ways to make citizens safe from large predators, say, big powerful corporations. The first one is to enact regulations—but these, aside from restricting individual freedoms, lead to another predation, this time by the state, its agents, and their cronies.

Those who give lectures to large audiences notice that they—and other speakers—are uncomfortable on the stage. The reason, it took me a decade to figure out, is that the stage light beaming into our eyes hinders our concentration. (This is how police interrogations of suspects used to be run: beam a light on the suspect, and wait for him to start “singing.”)

The rule is:
Those who talk should do and only those who do should talk
with some dispensation for self-standing activities such as mathematics, rigorous philosophy, poetry, and art, ones that do not make explicit claims of fitting reality

Replacing the “natural,” that is age-old, processes that have survived trillions of high-dimensional stressors with something in a “peer-reviewed” journal that may not survive replication or statistical scrutiny is neither science nor good practice

By definition, what works cannot be irrational; about every single person I know who has chronically failed in business shares that mental block, the failure to realize that if something stupid works (and makes money), it cannot be stupid.

As per Fat Tony’s motto:
You do not want to win an argument. You want to win.

Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.

in Fat Tony’s terms: don’t give crap, don’t take crap. His more practical approach is
Start by being nice to every person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him.

social justice warriors have been accused of “treating people as categories, not individuals.”)

“Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it will become a universal law.” (Kant 1785: 4:421)

Systems learn by removing parts

The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding,

You will never fully convince someone that he is wrong; only reality can.

Decentralization is based on the simple notion that it is easier to macrobull***t than microbull***t.