This suggests that taking the outside view is an effective response to the planning fallacy: rather than trying to predict how many hiccups and delays your plans will run into by reflecting in detail on each plan’s particulars (the “inside view”), you can do better by just guessing that your future plans will work out roughly as well as your past plans.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Inadequate Equilibria

On a well-oiled team, different people will be willing to play different roles at different times, depending on what the team needs.

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile; but he thinks he knows something when he does not; whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.

— Plato and Benjamin Jowett (Translator), Dialogues on the Trial & Death of Socrates

…people mistakenly think about interests, I pointed out. They don’t realize they need to play an active role in developing and deepening their interests.

— Angela Duckworth, Grit

For nearly all of history, people’s lives have been governed primarily by ignorance. … Failures of ignorance we can forgive. If the knowledge of the best thing to do in a given situation does not exist, we are happy to have people simply make their best effort. But if the knowledge exists and is not applied correctly, it is difficult not to be infuriated. … It is not for nothing that philosophers gave these failures so unmerciful a name—ineptitude.

— Adam Barr, The Probelem With Software