A Few Observations

Taken from A Few Rules

• The person who tells the most compelling story wins.
• Something can be factually true but contextually nonsense. Bad ideas often have at least some seed of truth that gives their followers confidence.
• Tell people what they want to hear and you can be wrong indefinitely without penalty.
• Government “is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.”
• Behavior is hard to fix, [people] underestimate how much of their previous mistake was caused by emotions that will return when faced with the same circumstances.
• Logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe
• Being good at something doesn’t promise rewards.
• What’s rewarded in the world is scarcity, so what matters is what you can do that other people are bad at.
• The world is governed by probability, but people think in black and white because it’s easier.
• Show me a man who thinks he’s objective and I’ll show you a man who’s deceiving himself.
• People learn when they’re surprised. Not when they read the right answer
• Most fields have only a few laws
• The only thing worse than thinking everyone who disagrees with you is wrong is the opposite: being persuaded by the advice of those who need or want something you don’t.
• Simple explanations are appealing even when they’re wrong.
• Self-interest is the most powerful force in the world.
• Almost everything has been done before. The characters and scenes change, but the behaviors and outcomes rarely do.
• Don’t expect balance from very talented people. People who are exceptionally good at one thing tend to be exceptionally bad at another, due to overconfidence and mental bandwidth taken up by the exceptional skill.
• No one should be shocked when people who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you don’t like.
• Progress happens too slowly to notice, setbacks happen too fast to ignore. There are lots of overnight tragedies, but no overnight miracles.
• It is way easier to spot other people’s mistakes than your own. We judge others based solely on their actions, but when judging ourselves we have an internal dialogue.
• Reputations have momentum in both directions.
• History is driven by surprising events, forecasting is driven by predictable ones.