Quotes
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Beginner’s Mind in Engineering
“We’ve been putting together a team of engineers who, for the most part, are too young to say SpinLaunch couldn’t work,” he says. “They’re full of too much energy and excitement to find out what’s going to happen.” Jonathan Yaney Maybe he doesn’t know it, but Yaney refers to “beginner’s mind,” not youth.
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Back to the Blog
From Dan Cohen, “Back to the Blog“: It is psychological gravity, not technical inertia, however, that is the greater force against the open web. Human beings are social animals and centralized social media like Twitter and Facebook provide a powerful sense of ambient humanity—the feeling that “others are here”—that is often missing when one writes on […]
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The wound consists precisely in claiming to… –
The wound consists precisely in claiming to discover and to master meaning, in claiming to suture or to saturate, to fill this emptiness, to close the mouth. Imagine that someone claimed to have said everything that needed to be said on the subject of this poem or that line of Celan, that someone claimed to […]
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The Principle of Charity
First off, there is really only one thing to keep in mind when reading a philosophical text, and it’s the thing that seems to be the most lacking in new readers: The Principle of Charity. It asks that you read a text in the strongest, most persuasive way possible, regardless of whether you agree with […]
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Michael Pollan Debunks Food Myths
Novelty in biology is guilty until proven innocent. Michael Pollan
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Collective decision making defaults toward stasis
It’s easier to scare than to inform and we fear losses more than we desire gains so collective decision-making defaults toward stasis. Alex Tabarrok, Collective Action Kills Innovation, Marginal Revolution
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Naval
Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years. Naval Ravikant Of course, it’s no use reading these things if you don’t do anything with the information. This is why I write here: to integrate what I learn.
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Ignac Semmelweiss
When I was a kid, my dad told me the parable of the first physician to realize you should maybe mothers would not suffer quite so many horrifying deaths if doctors washed their hands between autopsies and childbirth. Unfortunately this doctor was an asshole, so everyone ignored him. He eventually went crazy from the stress […]
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What it’s like to work at WorkFlowy
“As the founder and only current employee of WorkFlowy, I’m just absolutely delighted by the company. The culture really fits me.” What it’s like to work at WorkFlowy
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Kamikaze 2.0
Random thought: Battleships in the coming years will become obsolete, like horses were in the age of the tank. Namely, thousands of drones being controlled by an AI can neutralize a battleship and are way cheaper. Imagine 500 tiny drones carrying a payload and ‘sacrificing’ themselves. How can a battleship defend against that? @joaoeira Kamikaze […]