Ask me: Ask me anything
Contact: andrei@canciu.ro
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Narrow passions are a sign of narrow minds (those of people who can’t see behind the details that everything is just more of the same). Hopefully someone else didn’t say this before - I can certainly see it behind many things/writings.
I’m not sure why investors like the countries that can print their way out of debt better. As if they were really getting their money back.
“ The tourist is almost the exact opposite of the philosopher. ”
Very approximate quote from Nassim N. Taleb; if he disowns this quote, I’ll gladly assume ownership.
The empty is the most potentially evil (the first thing that grows in there will be unstoppable).
Knowledge: Sacrificing depth for breadth is usually a desirable compromise (…which will give you depth).
“ For it is neither love nor money that makes the world go ’round - but vanity. ”
Bonner, W. & Wiggin, A. (2009). The New Empire of Debt: The Rise and Fall of an Epic Financial Bubble.
Corollary to the “Dunning–Kruger effect”: If one does not entertain, in any enterprise, for a significant amount of time, the idea that the [“bad side” of the] “Dunning–Kruger effect” may apply to oneself, then it likely does. :P
“ If you try to hide the complexity of the system, you’ll end up with a more complex system. Layers of abstraction that serve to hide internals are never a good thing. Instead, the internals should be designed in a way such that they NEED no hiding. ”
Aaron Griffin
“ Don’t duck pain. It’s precious, it’s your gold mine, it’s the gold in your mine. ”
Richard G. Stern
“ I found not quite to my liking the two lines in your letter where you say that you feel no remorse at all for the act you committed in the bank. There is something higher than the conclusions of reason and the ever-present extenuating circumstances, something to which everyone is subject (that is, again something similar to a banner). Perhaps you are sufficiently intelligent not to take offense at the frankness and unsolicited nature of my remark. First of all, I myself am no better than you or anyone else (and this is not at all false modesty, what would that bring me?), and secondly, if I justify you in my own way in my heart (as I invite you to justify me), then it is still better if I justify you rather than you justify yourself. ”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (letter to G. A. Kovner, 1877)
“ […] the project of promoting maximal economic growth is, perhaps, the most vulgar ideal ever put forth before suffering humankind. The myth of open-ended progress is not an ennobling myth, and it should form no part of conservative philosophy. The task of conservative policy is not to spread the malady of infinite aspiration, to which our species is in any case all to prone, but to keep in good repair those institutions and practices whereby human beings come to be reconciled with their circumstances, and so can live and die in dignified and meaningful fashion, despite the imperfections of their condition. ”
John N. Gray
“ Both science and religion are systems of symbols that serve human needs - in the case of science, for prediction and control. Religions have served many purposes, but at the bottom they answer to a need for meaning that is met by myth rather than explanation. A great deal of modern thought consists of secular myths - hollowed-out religious narratives translated into pseudo-science. Dennett’s notion that new communications technologies will fundamentally alter the way human beings think is just such myth. ”
John N. Gray
“ In The God Delusion, Dawkins attempts to explain the appeal of religion in terms of the theory of memes, vaguely defined conceptual units that compete with one another in a parody of natural selection. He recognizes that, because humans have a universal tendency to religious belief, he argues, it must have had some evolutionary advantage, but today, he argues, it is perpetuated mainly through bad education. From a Darwinian standpoint, the crucial role Dawkins gives to education is puzzling. Human biology has not changed greatly over recorded history, and if religion is hardwired in the species, it is difficult to see how a different kind of education could alter this. Yet Dawkins seems convinced that, if it were not inculcated in schools and families, religion would die out. […] Dawkins makes much of the oppression perpetrated by religion, which is real enough. He gives less attention to the fact that some of the worst atrocities of modern times were committed by regimes that claimed scientific sanction for their crimes. ”
John N. Gray
