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Book cover for The Noonday Demon
Since the world is flawed, perfectionists tend to be depressed. Depression lowers self-esteem, but in many personalities, it does not eliminate pride, which is as good an engine for the fight as any I know.
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“The US postal system processes half a billion pieces of mail every single day. It’s a staggering number. If all seven billion people on the planet sent a letter or package, the postal service could process them all in a fortnight.”
Carl T. Bergstrom, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

Andrew Solomon
“It seemed to take the most colossal effort to do simple things. I remember bursting into tears because I had used up the cake of soap that was in the shower. I cried because one of the keys stuck for a second on my computer. I found everything excruciatingly difficult, and so, for example, the prospect of lifting the telephone receiver seemed to me like bench-pressing four hundred pounds. The reality that I had to put on not just one but two socks and then two shoes so overwhelmed me that I wanted to go back to bed.”
Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon

“A p-value describes the probability of getting data at least as extreme as those observed, if the null hypothesis were true.”
Carl T. Bergstrom, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

“In Latour’s Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science, he explains: “When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become.”
Carl T. Bergstrom, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

“Cohen suggests a test for unclarity: If you can negate a sentence and its meaning doesn’t change, it’s bullshit. “Shakespeare’s Prospero is ultimately the fulcrum of an epistemic tragedy, precisely because of his failure to embrace the hermeneutics of the transfinite.”
Carl T. Bergstrom, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

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