@TheStoicEmperor:

• "Critical theory" and "critical thinking" are antonyms, not synonyms.
• "I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything." -Richard Feynman
• A false understanding of human nature will prove fatal in love, war, and marketing.
• A life of purely transactional encounters is a quiet tragedy.
• A man who can find no fault with himself is not looking very closely.
• A toxic relationship with the past poisons the future. This is true for individuals and for nations.
• A trend in pseudo-journalism: -Contrive a narrative -Find five tweets that support it -Publish -Hope that will generate organic behavior -Write a 2nd story covering what you provoked -Ad revenue
• Agile individuals presently have many advantages over sluggish institutions.
• Arguments about facts should not be confused with arguments about priorities. Both are essential, but they must be separated. 1. You must establish the facts. 2. You must have a discussion about how to prioritize and act on the facts. If you start with 2, you corrupt 1.
• Authoritarians are outraged by harmless opinions because they can't imagine that anyone could hold an opinion and not wish to forcibly impose it upon others.
• Debate is now largely impossible. Most do not listen to arguments. They listen for signals of shared affiliation. If they get the right signals, they listen. If they get the wrong signals, they object. Argument without signalling is something they can't interpret at all.
• Deep knowledge of any discipline will allow you to notice the grotesque errors that are commonplace in press coverage. This brings about the disturbing realization that this must be just as true for areas you know nothing about.
• Distraction is a Faustian bargain. You trade away your irretrievable time in order to avoid self-awareness. You fill your head with noise to avoid noticing how much you despise yourself and your life. Silence will allow those truths to surface.
• Don't live in a manner that makes you despise being alone with yourself.
• Don't recklessly throw resources at schemes that sound good but continually fail to bear fruit.
• Don't sacrifice the present by dreaming of the hypothetically perfect future. Don't sacrifice the present by obsessing over a nostalgically distorted past.
• Drama is distraction. Many intentionally cultivate drama in their lives. They stay in a state of constant crisis and reactivity. This gives them an excuse to avoid changing. How can they act with so much to react to? They find like-minded enablers and play this game for years.
• Envious sabotage likes to masquerade as principled criticism.
• He that is blown around by the winds of opinion will eventually be blown away by them.
• Highly efficient way to internalize a complex non-fiction book: -Read on Kindle. -Highlight heavily. -Export highlights. -Edit down to core insights. -5-10 minutes of reading. -Keep that in cloud. Can pull this up on any device and quickly recall my core takeaway
• Honest thinkers not only describe their opponent's position accurately, they'll actually improve on it if they can. They will state the opposing argument in a manner that their opposition would approve of and endorse. Only then will they dismantle it.
• How do you provoke a fake culture war? -Identify sacred values of a group. -Repeatedly suggest bad actors are violating them. -Urge group to combat illusory bad actors. Do it with many groups at once for total chaos.
• I'll take the uncredentialed man who has actually built something over the man with a piece of paper which asserts he is capable of it.
• I'm often less interested in the rightness of your answer than in the clarity of your chain of reasoning. Right answers can be borrowed or chanced upon. Clear reasoning is the hallmark of a broadly well-ordered intellect.
• If a headline presumes to know my opinion, I don't click. I am sorry if this is the only way to monetize your journalism degree, 23 year old content slave. Keep it up for a few years, maybe you'll get that blue check mark you're after.
• If others don't value your time it is because you don't value it enough. You allow it to be bought too cheaply, training others to expect access on demand. Generosity is good, but you'll make more impact if your energy is directed. Invest time carefully, don't gamble with it.
• If you're overwhelmed by constant anxiety: -Schedule when you'll deal with a problem. -Focus deeply at the scheduled time. -Forbid yourself from obsessing over it at other times. -Bring your attention to the present if you find yourself problem solving as a background process.
• Institutions are risk averse, terrified of liability. They do not react quickly to cultural change because they fear being the first to move. This is why their cultural signalling is 3 years behind.
• Internet memes. Memes are ways of signalling shared knowledge. Memes are symbols of tribal affiliation. Memes provide a symbolic backdrop that imposes context on disorder. Memes move the consensus. This is deep and ancient power. Continually underestimated.
• It is better to fall in love with the hard truth than to fall in love with your own hypothetical genius.
• It is fashionable in enlightened circles to decry "tribalism" in all its forms. This view is understandable, but incomplete. Human beings are inherently tribal. The leeway is in how we choose to define the tribe.
• It is good to have a goal, but bad to let your goal have you. Focus is good, but focus that is too narrow becomes blindness.
• It is not about the goal. It is about becoming the person who can achieve the goal. That person will be able to achieve many other goals. This isn't about a prize. This is about becoming a prizefighter.
• Live at the bleeding edge of your competency.
• Look at those who do wrong. Grapple with why it is so tempting. Think how much you'd like to do the wrong you're not doing. Fully conceptualize just how much you'd enjoy it. Understand entirely. Then don't do it.
• Many are praised for saying "brave" or "controversial" things that everyone in their in-group already agrees with. No risk. Being courageous singles you out as an individual. Being a coward will help you fit in.
• Many people want to be seen to be something more than they want to be that something.
• Many who desire control over others have very little control over themselves. Beware the person who wishes to regulate your behavior but can't seem to regulate their own.
• Modern media pipeline: -AP/Reuters does real reporting. -Major paper puts minor ideological slant on it. -23 year old intern at content farm puts outrageous ideological slant on it. -Celebrity tweets that link with insightful commentary like "say what?!" -200,000 retweets.
• Most of what people describe as boredom is in fact a deep dissatisfaction that emerges when the level of ambient stimulation is low enough to allow for self-awareness. Awareness is kept at bay with compulsive activity.
• Note when your attention drifts. Note what it drifts to. Identify what you find instinctively captivating. This may be valuable information about what you are capable of focusing deeply on
• Pain is the not the only way to learn a lesson, but it is the surest way to never forget one.
• People who come to you with complaints aren't always looking for a solution. Often they are looking for an audience, someone to empathize with what they perceive to be an intolerable situation. They will respond to solutions with annoyance. They simply want to be heard.
• People who don't know much history tend to assume the one bit they remember is completely applicable to the present.
• People will embrace absurd positions to avoid disagreeing with their former selves. We often choose what is consistent over what is correct.
• Planning and routinization offers insurance against future moodiness and inconsistency. Outsource the set of mundane daily decisions to a clear set of principles.Don't waste your cognitive powers on the banal and repetitious. Make space for innovative thought.
• Political correctness is the art of making five sentences out of what should be one.
• Predictable people tend to create predictable models which predict that other people will be predictable. They are unfailingly surprised by the terrible and wondrous creativity of the human spirit.
• Reading is not a chore. Reading is theft. It is a robbery. Someone smarter than you has spent 20 years beating their head against the wall trying to solve the problem you're dealing with. You can steal that hard won knowledge and make it yours. That is power.
• Rewriting a sentence eight times will tend to affix a few fairly melodious variations of it into your readily accessible memory.
• Self-criticism is productive and healthy. Self-loathing is neurotic and destructive. Don't mistake one for the other.
• Silence seems safe, but beware of swallowing your words too often. One day you'll choke on them.
• Skilled propagandists don't rewrite history with lies, they do it with emphasis.
• Skilled propagandists weaponize words. Master propagandists weaponize images.
• Smart people get away with a lot of messiness, knowing their capacities will save them. The most effective individuals are those rare smart people that develop habits and systems as smart as they are. They don't compete with the field. They try to reach their own limits.
• Some people simply want a reaction. They detest peace and stability. When you reject them, they try to seduce you with good behavior. If you forgive them, they set about trying to alienate you again. Positive or negative, all they seek is attention. Don't give it to them.
• The best manipulators are nearly untraceable. You'll re-examine your reasoning and think you made all your own choices. They set up the board and left you to move the pieces.
• The best thing about consistent reading is that it takes the pressure off each individual book. If reading is a daily habit, then a single deep insight makes a book well worth it. On to the next one.
• The easiest way to appear smart is to know your own sphere of competence very well and to avoid making declarative statements outside of it.
• The news allows you to dedicate massive amounts of energy and attention to things you probably cannot impact while the things you can impact go unaddressed.
• The smart can learn quickly. The smart and wise can unlearn as quickly as they learn.
• The whispered reaction when someone says something brave and true: "I agree, though they didn't say it in the best way." Perhaps, but you didn't say it at all.
• The worst unnerve us, a reminder of the lows we could fall to. The best shame us, a reminder of the heights we could reach.
• Think well to write well. Write well to think well. Clean writing is clear thinking. Unclear writing is usually the product of unclear thinking.
• Thoughts on writing: The first draft gives you a problem to solve. Every unwritten work is a masterpiece, yet when you put pen to paper it rarely comes out that way. Hypothetical perfection must be dashed on the rocks. Now your problem solving brain can get to work.
• To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child. - Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC
• Was asked how a young person can impress an experienced boss: -Devour all the books they don't have time to read. -Become an expert on their enemies. Mention weaknesses you see. -Admit ignorance when you are out of your depth. -Be available when someone else fails.
• We project our fantasies onto things we don't have. We project our insecurities onto things we do have. In both cases we are blind to the true nature of the thing.
• We're trying to appease an imaginary jury.
• Weak people are ineffective, but easily led. Consider this when you encounter systems which consistently produce broken individuals. It may be aim as much as accident.
• Wisdom is what is needed, and wisdom is work. Work at wisdom every day, whether you're in a mansion or a gutter. Learn. Transform. Endure.
• You are very fortunate if the most painful part of your day is reading or hearing something unpleasant. 2nd hand "trauma" is victimhood vampirism.
• You won't identify what is wrong with the news media by looking at the picture. You must look at the frame.
• You'll find many statues of conquerors and creators, but not many of critics.