ZeV

“All organisms are shaped to behave in ways that increase fitness even if that decreases health and happiness. Did you ever desperately want to have sex with someone even though you knew that could lead to disaster? Most people have, with sometimes dire consequences. Then there are the rest of our desires and the inevitable suffering because they cannot all be fulfilled. We want so badly to be important, rich, loved, admired, attractive, and powerful. For what? the good feelings from succeeding are just about balanced by the bad feelings from failure. Our emotions benefit our genes far more than they do us.”
― Randolph M. Nesse, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

“Like painting, most software is intended for a human audience. And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work. You have to be able to see things from the user’s point of view.”
― Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

“And so it’s this quality—honesty—that makes body language an ideal medium for coordinating some of our most important activities. It’s simply too easy, too tempting, to lie with words. So in matters of life, death, and finding mates, we're often wise to shut up and let our bodies do the talking.”
― Kevin Simler, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

“There’s a saying in politics that “a good political idea is one that works well in half-baked form,” and the same goes for engineering processes. The processes should have value even when they are not followed perfectly, and that value should largely lie in the act of socializing change or risk to the team as a whole.”
― Camille Fournier, The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change