Rafael Hansen

“For Nietzsche and Dostoevsky alike, freedom—even the ability to act—requires constraint. For this reason, they both recognized the vital necessity of the dogma of the Church. The individual must be constrained, moulded—even brought close to destruction—by a restrictive, coherent disciplinary structure, before he or she can act freely and competently.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“Nietzsche, for his part, posited that individual human beings would have to invent their own values in the aftermath of God’s death. But this is the element of his thinking that appears weakest, psychologically: we cannot invent our own values, because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our souls. This was Carl Jung’s great discovery—made in no little part because of his intense study of the problems posed by Nietzsche.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“By now Soros had melded Karl Popper’s ideas with his own knowledge of finance, arriving at a synthesis that he called “reflexivity.” As Popper’s writings suggested, the details of a listed company were too complex for the human mind to understand, so investors relied on guesses and shortcuts that approximated reality. But Soros was also conscious that those shortcuts had the power to change reality as well, since bullish guesses would drive a stock price up, allowing the company to raise capital cheaply and boosting its performance. Because of this feedback loop, certainty was doubly elusive: To begin with, people are incapable of perceiving reality clearly; but on top of that, reality itself is affected by these unclear perceptions, which themselves shift constantly. Soros had arrived at a conclusion that was at odds with the efficient-market view. Academic finance assumes, as a starting point, that rational investors can arrive at an objective valuation of a stock and that when all information is priced in, the market can be said to have attained an efficient equilibrium. To a disciple of Popper, this premise ignored the most elementary limits to cognition.”
― Sebastian Mallaby, More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild