Category: Reading

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!

Note: My notes here are a poor representation of the vastness of this book. It was like a who’s who of Europe over the past millennia.

• Much of historical grandeur is in posturing, not fact
• “Nothing succeeds like success”
• People are slowest to drop language for their numbers and their prayers
• “Borough” means “fort”
• Culture shifts with power
• Culture, education, and commerce go hand-in-hand
• Medieval countries were more like corporate brands than they were governments
• Modernization cannot guarantee survival of the state
• “Cassock” is adventurer in Turkish
• Nations and states sometimes bang out and sometimes fizzle out
• The oldest ones keep reinventing themselves

• None Overlapping Magisterium (NOMA)
• Follow the lines of inquiry suitable for your realm
• “NOMA cuts both ways”
• (Why does eternal life mean we cannot mourn our loss today?)
• Science does not perfect the mind or prevent justification of immortality
• It is a strange god that would make creatures suffer for us to learn a lesson

• Prosperity eroded trust in our neighbors (because we needed them less)
• Hitchhiking is a paradox to The Protestant Work Ethic: Youth feel entitled to a ride but need the charity of the driver to accomplish their work
• Cars used to be concentrated among farmers
• Hitchhiking becomes more acceptable with economic downturns
• Hitchhikers put effort into distinguishing themselves from vagrants
• Hippies embraced hitchhiking as a physical version of mind-altering drugs… Letting go and, literally, losing control
• Adjusting hitchhiking enforcement was a way to throttle the flow of hippies and liberal youth movements
• Reagan era politics shifted us from communal to personal
• As youth matured and gained wealth, they started to shun hitchhiking as a “poor person” thing

• A start-up is “the minimum number is people needed to make an idea happen”
• In business, money is either an important thing or the only thing
  • Only monopolies can afford to focus on anything else
• Monopolies are our definition of success
• In business, status quo is death
• Intersectionality is bad for startups
• Startups should avoid defining their target market so narrowly as to make them the top player
  • (If you, a start-up, will be a top player at launch, then the market must be tiny)
• Capitalism and competition are opposites
  • “Perfect competition” is communism without the central planning
• It is easier to dominate a smaller market
• Small does not equal non-existent
• Try to avoid disruption because it attracts undue attention and has inherent competition
• In an indefinite world, optionality is supreme
• “You are not a lottery ticket”
• “Leanness is a method, not a goal”
• (Be careful to not be so focused on adaptability that you fail to produce anything)
• Startups do better the less the CEO is paid
• Make your early team as personally similar as possible so they share a similar world vision
• Employees fight when they compete over responsibilities
• Sales is hidden in every business at every level
• A “product so good it sells itself” does not exist
• Great companies are more like feudal monarchies than democracies
• Complementariness is more powerful than competition