Thaddeus

“In the effort to understand, we may go too far in personalizing institutions, and even entire industries; we may forget that none of these things really exist. It is only individual human beings who have agendas—and these agendas are themselves complex expressions of political and personal drives, some unconscious. So long as institutions must be comprised of individuals, then, institutions will have fractures, gradients; they will be many things, and in combinations that will change over time. We speak and think in models. And so we say that “The New York Times” wants to accomplish this, or that “the CIA” is after that. So long as we recognize this as shorthand, necessary”
― Barrett Brown, My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir

“If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“be. So I follow the Lindy effect as a guide in selecting what to read: books that have been around for ten years will be around for ten more; books that have been around for two millennia should be around for quite a bit of time, and so forth.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder