You simply can’t thrive in a state of constant daily evaluation of the truth-conduciveness of your social world, any more than a flowering plant can flourish if its owner digs up its roots every morning to see how it’s doing.

— Alan Jacobs, How to Think

Poverty needs no explanation; it is the natural state of humankind. What needs an explanation is wealth. For most of human history, around 90 percent of humanity lived in what we today call extreme poverty. In 2020, less than 9 percent do…

— Steven Pinker, Rationality

So, you want to be an expert? You need to budget about ten years of effort, regardless of the subject area.

— Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

I do not know, I cannot imagine, any group which does not include among its current ideas an enormous dose of lies. That being the case, the alternative is inevitable: either one must like falsehood, or one must dislike the familiar setting of daily life.

— Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought

Automation did, in fact, lead to mass unemployment. We have simply stopped the gap by adding dummy jobs that are effectively made up.

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs