Justin

“After World War II, physicist Richard Feynman was asked to serve on the State Curriculum Commission, to choose high school science textbooks for California. To his consternation, the texts appeared to leave students more confused than enlightened. Each book he examined was worse than the one prior. Finally, he came upon a promising beginning: a series of pictures, of a windup toy, an automobile, and a boy on a bicycle. Under each was a question: “What makes it go?” At last, he thought, something that was going to explain the basic science, starting with the fundamentals of mechanics (the toy), chemistry (the car), and biology (the boy). Alas, his elation was short lived. Where he thought to finally see explanation, real understanding, he found instead four words: “Energy makes it go.” But what was that? Why did it make it go? How did it make it go? These questions weren’t ever acknowledged, never mind answered. As Feynman put it, “That doesn’t mean anything. . . . It’s just a word!” Instead, he argued, “What they should have done is to look at the windup toy, see that there are springs inside, learn about springs, learn about wheels, and never mind ‘energy.’ Later on, when the children know something about how the toy actually works, they can discuss the more general principles of energy.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“your answer to the “what I want to accomplish” question must be flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances. If the available information changes, so should you. Don’t be afraid to deviate from a preset plan when it serves the greater objective”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge. That state of knowledge, in turn, is some variation of “I’m not sure.”
― Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

“Our understanding of our world is systematically biased to perceive meaning rather than randomness and to infer cause rather than coincidence.”
― Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us