…the most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary.

— Angela Duckworth, Grit

…the dog boasts to the wolf all the contraptions of comfort and luxury he has, almost prompting the wolf to enlist. Until the wolf asks the dog about his collar and is terrified when he understands its use. “Of all your meals, I want nothing.” He ran away and is still running.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

…there is never an Idea so true that it’s wrong to criticize any argument that supports it. Never. Never ever never for ever.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind

…rather than spending tons of time trying to analyze which will work and which will not, we allow many small experiments. Those that gain momentum continue to grow, while those that don’t are allowed to wither away.

— Jim Whitehurst and Gary Hamel, The Open Organization

To create content is to be distracted. To create the “platform” is to focus on the true structure of reality. Shaping media is better than shaping the content of such media. It is the person who makes the “platform” who becomes a billionaire. The person who provides the content—be it reviews on Yelp, self-published books on Amazon, your own car and waking hours through Uber—is a rube distracted by a glittering but pointless object.

— Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking