Category: Notes

• “No one transgresses me with impunity.”
• Fights break out, conspiracies stew
• Only princes can afford to send out an army
• The weaker party has to be secret
• Conspiracies must have more than one person
• Conspirators transition from ‘fighting for evil’ to ‘fighting for others, with or without their permission’
• “Choose your enemies wisely because you will become just like them.”
• (You cannot be both unconquerable and the underdog)
• “Anyone who is threatened and is forced necessarily to suffer or act is a very dangerous man to the prince.”
• We mistake a clear view for a short distance
• (Be right about the things that others are not even aware of.)
• Secrets are not forever; you need to be able to live with them coming out
• “Culture trumps strategy any day”
• “Never interrupt an event as making a mistake.”
• Trials are the performance of all that practice
• Argue law to the judge, argue fact to the jury
• “You should not only leave a line of retreat for your enemies, you should pave it.”

• Randomness is the enemy of safety
• “High speeds are a design issue but low speeds are an enforcement issue”
• Street widening should be called such instead of “street enhancements”
  • (If you claim to not be making value decisions, then your words need to reflect that)
• Speed and mobility
• Pre-automobile definitions:
  • Road: high-speed connection between two places
  • Street: A platform for building community wealth (places people want to be)
• Cars were ruled as “ferocious beasts” and the owner’s responsibilities to manage
• Perception of risk changes as safety is improved
• Drivers drive at the speeds that feel safe and let us cruise on System 1
  • (Humans want to move as fast as they can feel safe)
• High value per acre is always where people get out of their cars
• Cities are designed to favor the out-of-town commuters
• Congestion builds pent-up demand and encourages option development
• Benefits of reduced travel time does not mean boost economic growth
• Transit needs to have priority

• Achievement can either come from conformity or originality
• Firefox and Chrome users tend to stay longer perform better, and miss less work than IE our Safari
• What made the difference is how you get the browser
• Disadvantaged groups tend to be more entrenched in the state quo
  • (It is harder to let go of the familiar when you have a lot to lose relative to what you have)
• We justify the default
• Practice makes perfect but nothing original
• Achievement motivation crowds out originality
• Originality it’s not about taking big risks
• We tend to manage risk as a portfolio, so risky in one place and stable in all other places
• The difficulty with originals is in selecting winners not in generating ideas
• Great ideas are a numbers game (aim for 25)
• Peer evaluation is best
• Domain experience and intuition go together
• Passion is in the heart, not the sleeves
• The way success was achieved matters (execution) more than the idea itself
• Sometimes it is better to embrace the establishment to change it from the inside
• When presenting great ideas, remember that you are living with the ideas in your head while everyone else is hearing them for the first time
• Short, mixed presentations are best for warming people up to a new idea
• We do better at remembering open tasks than completed tasks
• Stopping mid-way through the project is the best time to discuss how to proceed with it
• Percolate the ideas!
• Settlers tend to outlast pioneers
• Pioneers tend to overextend
• Get in when the market cools
• Moving first is a tactics not a goal
• Zero to start
• Experimental approaches enable creative longevity
• Horizontal hostility is common and deadly
• Similarities are actually bad for inter group alliances
• Pull back on radicalism at first
• Frenemies and ambivalent relationships are literally more exhausting than enemies
• It is better to try to convert enemies than it is to continue to placate frenemies
• Start with novelty but add a dose of familiarity
• “The point is to push the envelope not to tear it.”
• Later-born children tend to take more risks including in creativity
• Calculation of rationality vs appropriateness
• Praise the person in moral domains but action in skill domains
• Phrase as nouns instead of verbs
• Commitment culture is good for launching but grow slower and struggle to evolve
  • Shifting blueprints later is difficult
  • Make dissent a core commitment
• Dissent with respect to foster better ideas
• Cohesion is not the problem in groupthink; overconfidence and reputational concerns are
• Pretend or assigned dissent is not enough, find someone who believes it
• “I am excited” is more productive than “I am scared”
• Lean into the energy of the fear
• Leaders should present the vision and have users endorse it
• Show the problems with the status quo then show what could be

• Context limits but also provides insight
• “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.” Darwin
• Things, especially cave paintings, often do not progress from simple to complex
• The Theory of Evolution is not a Theory of Progression, it is a Theory of Better Adaptation
• Evolution tends towards bushiness, not singularity
• Known events do not preclude unknown events
• Heritage does not guarantee preservation like biology can, but heritage can evolve much faster
• When in doubt, go to the primary documents
• We are not willing to fully embrace evolution because we are not ready for humans to be less important
• Question simple explanations, few things are actually simple
• Wealth can help genius be exposed
• Evolution is constantly adapting to current circumstances, not to overall complexity
• Question the explanations you know best, they are often wrong
• Many creatures “simplify” as they diversify

Note: Gould’s book is a good reminder at how science is a process wielded by imperfect humans and as such can be corrupted.

• You have to sneak up on generalities, not assault them head-on
• God is in the details, so is the devil
• The existence of illness genes does not mean intelligence comes from a gene
• Science is done be people and is therefore fallible
• Humans have a need to reify then order everything
• IQ tests were originally developed to ensure children got pepper educational help
• Pearson’s R represents the shape of an ellipse. 1 is a perfect ellipse (a flat line) and -1 is a circle
• Beware of drives to unify
• “Factors are useful at the borders of science”
• Cultural evolution is more powerful than biological evolution
• Genes set ranges, not blueprints
• Race should not be a thing!