Travis Shui

“The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Three factors greatly facilitated the emergence of more inclusive political institutions following the Glorious Revolution and the French Revolution. The first was new merchants and businessmen wishing to unleash the power of creative destruction from which they themselves would benefit; these new men were among the key members of the revolutionary coalitions and did not wish to see the development of yet another set of extractive institutions that would again prey on them. The second was the nature of the broad coalition that had formed in both cases. For example, the Glorious Revolution wasn’t a coup by a narrow group or a specific narrow interest, but a movement backed by merchants, industrialists, the gentry, and diverse political groupings. The same was largely true for the French Revolution. The third factor relates to the history of English and French political institutions. They created a background against which new, more inclusive regimes could develop. In both countries there was a tradition of parliaments and power sharing going back to the Magna Carta in England and to the Assembly of Notables in France. Moreover, both revolutions happened in the midst of a process that had already weakened the grasp of the absolutist, or aspiring absolutist, regimes. In neither case would these political institutions make it easy for a new set of rulers or a narrow group to take control of the state and usurp existing economic wealth and build unchecked and durable political power.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

“As everyone from ancient times till today knows, clerks and accountants think in a non-human fashion. They think like filing cabinets. This is not their fault. If they don’t think that way their drawers will all get mixed up and they won’t be able to provide the services their government, company or organisation requires. The most important impact of script on human history is precisely this: it has gradually changed the way humans think and view the world. Free association and holistic thought have given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed. Memory function is an attribute of System 1. However, everyone has the option of slowing down to conduct an active search of memory for all possibly relevant facts—just as they could slow down to check the intuitive answer in the bat-and-ball problem. The extent of deliberate checking and search is a characteristic of System 2, which varies among individuals.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow