141 books
—
126 voters
“
[E]ach culture is just like a tree whose essence and whole potential are already contained in the seed. Nothing during the course of a civilization is ever discovered, or invented, or created, which was not already present inside that seed.
”
― A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tibet and the Destiny of the Western World
― A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tibet and the Destiny of the Western World
“
Here is what a person is: a set of basically compatible long-range interests that have co-opted a sufficient army of short-range interests into their coalition to maintain stable equilibrium. A person is that person just so long as her revealed preferences at the whole-person level don’t significantly cycle. This is why we can model people as (nonstraightforward) economic agents—just as we sometimes can, and should, model countries. Of course, a biological H. sapiens individual goes through chan
...more
”
―
―
