Skip to main content

Book Quotes 2021

Black Swan​

Nassim Niclas Taleb

  • Vicissitudes: A Change in circumstance or fortune
  • Epistemological: Læren om viten eller erkjennelse
  • Black swans are unknown unknowns.
  • Fractals (From Benoit Mandelbrot) has numerical or statistical measures that are somewhat present across scales.
  • Activist Nobel family member calls the Nobel prize in Economics a public relations coup aiming to put economics on a higher footing than it deserves.
  • Fractal theory implies that the probability distribution is scaleable and that its properties are constant across scales. A mountain is probable to have a brother that is higher than it.
  • Double-Double: Missing on both the probability and payoff.
  • Ad Hominem: Personal attacks.
  • "Don´t be a sucker" - N.N. Taleb
  • Missing a train is only painful if you run after it.
  • VUCA, Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.

The Innovators​

Walter Issacson

  • On the transistor team: "Excellent team not a single S.O.B. on the team ... Maybe I am the S.O.B?" - Melvin Keller
  • Bardeen on the discovery of the transistor to his wife while she was peeling carrots, almost mumbling: "We discovered something important today"
  • Understand which industries are symbiotic so that you can capitalize on how they spar each other on.
  • Linear model of innovation: invention -> innovation -> capitalization
  • During the early days of Apple (Just before they funded the company), Steve Wozniak´s father went to Steve Jobs's house and berated him for wanting a 50-50 split of Apple. "You haven't made any contributions to the firm," Wozniak's father said. He made Steve Jobs cry and wanting to cancel the whole apple affair.
  • Venture Capitalist Andressen (Mosaic) favors start-ups with working code or customer service rather than charts and presentations.
  • Finance industry is like a big oil tanker, you need to compartmentalize the industry to prevent massive losses in case it goes wrong. Chaos is inherent in the system.
  • When IBM launched its internal electronic mail service they estimated the number of emails based on previous correspondence; memos, letters, etc. The estimate was so wrong that the server crashed within a day.
  • Kobayashi Maru: No win scenario meant to test the leader in defeat as all things go wrong.

Stealing Fire​

Steven Kotler & Jaime Wheal

  • Proselytizing: Act or fact of religious conscience
  • 4.4 million American youths have used Adderal (Ritalin) for performance-enhancing (Studying) purposes.
  • Traipse: Move or walk wearily or reluctantly.
  • "No one dances sober unless he is insane" - Cicero
  • Ipso-facto: by that very fact or act
  • You can't read the label while you are sitting inside the jar.
  • "When all you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" - Abraham Maslow.
  • Although the term "brainwashing" was invented by the CIA (The term came from an op-ed, part of the testing of tag phrases by the CIA) it came to be the greatest fear of the American people during the cold war. Even though this phenomenon was only dreamed up by the CIA themselves.
  • Jerusalem Syndrome: Temporary fit of madness when visiting a holy place (Extreme ego inflation)
  • The term "Worth his salt" came from ancient Rome where legionaries where paid in salt.

Invisible Women​

Caroline Criado Perez

  • "Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth" - Simone de Beauvoir
  • Shibboleth: Custom or tradition that distinguishes one group from another.
  • Women are 3 times more likely to be harassed at a transit stop than on public transport.
  • The pharmaceutical agent in Viagra was discovered when looking for remedies for dysmenorrhea (Period pain). After the discovery of the effects on erectile dysfunction, the research was discontinued.
  • Pollyanna principle: Tendency to bias the positive items more accurately than the unpleasant ones. (Pollyanna is a book about how a poor young woman moving in with her strict old aunt makes everyone better)

Fooled by Randomness​

Nassim Niclas Taleb

  • Coup de Foudre: Flash of lightning.
  • Blowing up: When a trader loses more money than expected, thereby firing himself.
  • Masters of the universe: Traders who got lucky and made a lot of money
  • Inured: Accustomed to hardships
  • Never ask a man if he is from Sparta. If he were, he would let you know such an important fact. And if he were not, you might hurt his feelings.
  • Epiphenomena: Secondary phenomenon occurring parallel to a primary phenomenon.
  • Bhai: Hindi slang for mate or brother.
  • Godel´s theorem: No consistent axioms that make it possible to solve all truths about arithmetic of natural numbers.
  • Peche-mignon: Indulgence
  • "If I am forced to eat pork, it better be the best kind" - Yiddish saying
  • Yield hogs: People chasing higher yields from junk bonds.
  • Firehose effect: A propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels (such as news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency.
  • Computational finance, which, as the name implies, consists solely of running computer programs overnight.
  • Emotion is the accelerator agent of our logical system, i.e. the thing stopping us from debating problems endlessly in our head.
  • Journalists are hired on their communication skills and not on their knowledge, leading to some pretty funny mistakes.
  • A gambler is a person who gets a thrill of betting on a randomized outcome, regardless of the odds of winning.

Hate .Inc​

Matt Taibbi

  • Aphorisms: Concise statement of scientific principle.
  • Phlegmatic: Peaceful, relaxed quiet persons.
  • Habeas corpus: No jailing without trial
  • Mehipstophelian: Cunning of the devil.
  • Maquiladora: Custom-free factories.
  • AIG sunk in part because the executives did not understand its financial products.
  • Deviancy amplification spiral: Using invented problems to drive concourse.
  • 100-1 laws: Giving 100 times longer sentences for crack cocaine as powder cocaine.
  • The internet and advertising through adverts on the web have been instrumental in wrangling the monopoly of ads away from newspapers.
  • Tumescence: Being Engorged.

Zero to One​

Peter Thiel

  • Technology is miraculous because we do more with less.
  • "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" - Peter Thiels asking potential candidates.
  • "A startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future" - Peter Thiel
  • A company exists to make money, not lose it.
  • Principles of startups: It is better to risk boldness than triviality A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters as much as products.
  • It is better to risk boldness than triviality
  • A bad plan is better than no plan.
  • Competitive markets destroy profits.
  • Sales matters as much as products.
  • Monopolies lie so that they can protect their monopoly. For example, Google has a near-monopoly on search but frames itself as just another tech company (Gmail, GCS, etc.)
  • A monopolist can think about other things than money, non-monopolists cannot.
  • Monopoly is the condition of any successful business.
  • Proprietary technology must be at least 10 times as better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage.
  • Businesses rarely gets started by MBA types, they lack the imagination to look beyond their slide deck.
  • Brand, scale, network effects and technology in some combination define a monopoly.
  • To succeed; first, you must study the endgame before anything else.
  • "Victory awaits him who has everything in order" - Roald Amundsen
  • Eroom´s law: (Moore´s law backward): The number of new drugs per billion dollars spent on R&D has halved every 9 years since 1950.
  • The best VC investment should contribute all the returns from the investment capital.
  • Fundalism says that there are simple truths that all must obey and things that cannot be explained.
  • Hewlett Packard, a cautionary tale about how lack of innovation (or lack of focus on innovation) can ruin a company. Also how politics and gossip can kill a company.
  • Andrew Wiles spent 9 years working on Fermat´s last theorem.
  • In a start-up, one must be wary of people with a non-stake. All in! No half measures!
  • Do not pay CEOs, they become champions of the status quo.
  • No company has a culture, a company is a culture.
  • Recruiting should never be outsourced.
  • Strongly defined rules lessens conflict.

Renewable energy​

Bent Sørensen

  • Meridional: North-South on the planet.
  • Adiabatical: No heat exchange
  • Evapotranspiration: Release of water from plant-based soil.
  • The amount of solar energy on earth is around 175 petawatt. Around 50 petawatts are reflected back.
  • Energy conversion in human society produced around 8.2 TW of heat waste (1970)
  • Same amount of recoverable energy from oil and gas as uranium^235 -> 10^22 Joule.
  • White Earth: A phenomenon where the entire earth will be frozen. A decrease in solar radiation of 1.6 % will lead to a cascading effect where less and less heat will be absorbed by the earth and make the entire planet freeze over. (idealized model)
  • Turbidity: Measure of liquid losing its transparency.
  • The power of the wave system is of 10^-3 magnitude of the wind system.
  • Plant Growth decreases from deprivation of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, decreasing in order of magnitude from first to last.

H2O​

Phillip Ball

  • Chaos: From ancient greek meaning "gas"
  • Protolysis: Splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.
  • Amazon delivers around 1/5 of the world's fresh water to the ocean.
  • The tidal current is governed by a 24hours + 50 minutes cycle.
  • Tropical cyclones are created when water reaches a temperature of 27 Celsius or warmer.
  • Certain types of plankton produce the gas DMS (Dimethyl sulfide), which is the cause of the invigorating smell of the ocean.
  • Hydro-gene means water former
  • Oxy-gene means acid former.
  • Oxygen released from millions of cyanobacteria resulted in a holocaust for life more profound than any human activity (Or natural for that matter)
  • Plants take in water by osmosis, glucose in roots ensures instability and as the glucose molecules are too large to pass through the membrane, water must enter.

Antifragile​

N.N. Taleb

  • "No skill to understand it, mastery to write it" - Arab saying.
  • "A man is truly free when he judges the world, and other men, with uncompromising sincerity" - George Santayana
  • Damocles sword: The Sicilian despot Dionysis the second holds a feast for the adventurer Damocles, but above Damocles hangs a sword held by a single horsehair. An allusion to the imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power.
  • Flaneur: Walking observer of the metropolis.
  • Econophysics: Applying physics to solve economics.
  • "It never happened before" - Alan Greenspan explaining the financial crisis of 2007 to congress.
  • "Revolution feeds on oppression" - Not known
  • Wolff effect (law): Your bones adapt based on stresses and demands placed on them.
  • Uomo d´onore: Cosa nostra expression of an honorable man (not a rat)
  • Simplicity is most dangerous when some thing is nonlinear and is assumed to be linear. Most common procrustean bed.
  • Procrustean bed - Forcing someone to fit or conform, generally through violence.
  • "Avoid making the wrong mistakes" - Yogi Berra
  • One cannot compare governments across sizes, Singapore cannot be compared to India.
  • Dr. Semmelweis(Discoverer of importance of hygine in hospitals etc.) said that the establishment of doctors is a bunch of criminals.
  • Nordics had a number of severe crises in 1990, leading to austerity and tough fiscal policies that ensured that they became relatively unscathed by the financial crisis 20 years later.
  • Metaphysical: Philosophy of first principles.
  • Write the resignation letter before you start the job
  • "If This student is smart the teacher takes the credit " - Yiddish Saying
  • Empiricism is organized charlatanism. - Common thinking in ancient times
  • Focus is not saying yes to the great idea it is saying no to all the 100 good ideas" - Steve Jobs
  • Bergerson's Razor: A philosopher should be known for a single idea, not more.
  • Tempus redux veram: Time removes everything.
  • Lindy effect: The old is expected to live longer than the young. ( expected life is proportional to live life ).
  • Neomania: obsession with the new.
  • If all medications were dumped into the Sea it would be better for mankind but not for the fish
  • " Behind you is the sea, before you, the enemy. You have left now only the hope of your courage and your constancy." - Commander Tariq Ibn Ziyad after burning his fleet.
  • Anything that needs to be marked heavily is either an inferior product or an evil one.

Phoenix Project​

Gene Kim

  • CIO stands for career is over (Not chief information offices)
  • "Any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck is an illusion" - Dr. Eliyaha Goldratt
  • Smoke test: Testing term used by circuit engineers. If you turn the circuit on and no smoke comes out it will probably work.
  • Perfection is not the enemy of good, lack of competence is the enemy of good.
  • Four types of work: Business projects Internal projects Transformations Unplanned work
  • Business projects
  • Internal projects
  • Transformations
  • Unplanned work
  • Unplanned work is the interest of technical debt.
  • Until code is in production, no value is created.
  • Swarming: Entire organization swarms a local problem.

Digital Minimalism​

Cal Newport

  • All of the main selling points of the iPhone were integrating an iPod touch with a phone. The killer apps is making calls.
  • Big Tobacco engineered cigarettes to be more addictive.
  • Wearing A red shirt on a dating profile leads to more interest. A red shirt on a dating profile leads to more interest.
  • Digital minimalism: A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.
  • Principles of digital minimalism Clutter is costly. Optimization is important. Intentionality is satisfying.
  • Clutter is costly.
  • Optimization is important.
  • Intentionality is satisfying.
  • "The cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it." - Thoreau
  • Amish hacking: Choose the tools and technologies based on whether the technology provides more value than it costs(time, energy).
  • Digital D clutter process 30 day break from optional technologies. Explore during the break activities you find satisfying and meaningful. Re-introduce optimal technology determined from what value and how detrimental it is and how you can maximize its value.
  • 30 day break from optional technologies.
  • Explore during the break activities you find satisfying and meaningful.
  • Re-introduce optimal technology determined from what value and how detrimental it is and how you can maximize its value.
  • "Lead yourself first" - Keith Ledge
  • "Well, if you think I can render some service, I will" - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after appointment to lead them on call Montgomery bus boycott.
  • "Conversations enriches understanding, but solitude is the school of geniuses" - Edward Gibbon
  • Sine qua non - Something you cannot disperse of.
  • Solitude deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time along with your own thoughts and are free from input from other minds.
  • Bennet Principle: How to use a lot of energy on leisure to maximize benefits.
  • "If electricity can be made visible in the middle part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted by electricity." - Samuel Morse

Accelerate: the science behind DevOps : building and scaling high performing technology organizations​

Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim

  • "Executives often overestimate their progress compared to the boots on the ground." - Klovens et. al.
  • High performers versus low performers: 46 times more frequent called deployment. 440 times faster lead time from commit to the poor. 170 times faster mean time to recover from downtown. 5 times over change failure rate.
  • 46 times more frequent called deployment.
  • 440 times faster lead time from commit to the poor.
  • 170 times faster mean time to recover from downtown.
  • 5 times over change failure rate.
  • Teams achieve this by improving ride capabilities. Teams achieve this by improving ride capabilities.
  • Incommensurable: Cannot be measured or compared.
  • Measure should focus on outcomes, not output.
  • Lead time is the time it takes to go from a customer making a request to a request being satisfied.
  • Product delivery lead time: Code committed to code in production.
  • Truism of Dev-Ops that culture is of huge importance.
  • Typology of organizational culture: Pathological (power-oriented) Silos Bureaucratic (rule-oriented) turf based Generative (performance-oriented) mission-based
  • Pathological (power-oriented) Silos
  • Bureaucratic (rule-oriented) turf based
  • Generative (performance-oriented) mission-based
  • The DevOps generative mentality is good for data science as we encourage responsibility and share risk with the product team.
  • The goal of bureaucracy is to ensure fairness by applying rules to administrative behavior. Rules are the same, no preferential treatment.
  • Rule-oriented culture firms, following rules is more important than achieving the mission.
  • Continuous delivery is a set of capabilities that enables us to get changes of all kinds, features, configuration changes, bug fixes, or experiments into production or in the hands of your users safely quickly and sustainably.
  • "Quality is value to some person" - Weinberg, software quality expert
  • Inverse Conway maneuver: Organizations should evolve their team and organizational structure to achieve the desired architecture.
  • Deployment pain: Fair and anxiety that engineers feel when their push code into production. It is important to make sure because highlights fixing between development and operations.
  • Technical practices that improve our ability to deliver software with both speed and stability also reduce stress and anxiety he associated with pushing code to production.
  • Continous Delivery -> Lean Practises -> Job satisfaction -> Organizational.
  • Practices like proactive monitoring, and test and deployment automation and enable automation -> Job satisfaction
  • Teams with more diversity are smarter teams. But teams and organizations must be inclusive. (Rock & Grant 2016)
  • Yak shaving describes doing some seemingly useless task that is necessary to complete another task, which is necessary to complete other tasks, which eventually will allow you to complete your initial goal.
  • Organize internal YAK days, where teams get together to work on technical debt.
  • Bezos 2 pizza rule: no team can be so large that it will require more than two pizzas to feed them.
  • Teams with more women tend to fall above average on the collective intelligence scale(Wolley & Malione 2011).
  • Since nearly every company relies on software, delivery performance is critical to any organization doing business day.
  • *24 key capabilities that drive performance:

Continous delivery: Use version control for all production artifacts. Ultimate deployment process. Implement continuous integration. Your strength-based deployment methods. Implement test automation. Support test data management. Shift left on security. Implement continuous delivery.

Architecture: Use loosely coupled architecture. Architect for empowered teams.

Product and process: Gather and implement customer feedback. Make workflow visible through the value stream. Work in small batches. Foster and amenable team experimentation.

Lean Management & Monitoring Have a lightweight change approval process. Monitor across application and infrastructure. Check system health proactively. Improve processes and manage work with WIP. Visualize work to monitor quality and communications.

Cultural Support generative culture. Encourage and support learning. Support And facilitate collaboration among teams. Provide resources and tools to make work meaningful. Support/body transformational leadership.

High performers are twice as likely to exceed organizational performance goals and non-commercial performance goals as low-performance teams. Four measures of software delivery performance: Deployment frequency Meantime to restart Lead time Change failure percentage No trade-offs between improving performance and achieving higher levels of tempo. Deployment frequency is highly correlated with version control comprehensive use and continuous deployment. Lead time is highly correlated with version control and automated testing. High performers have the shortest integration times. Branch life less than one day.*

  • Continous delivery: Use version control for all production artifacts. Ultimate deployment process. Implement continuous integration. Your strength-based deployment methods. Implement test automation. Support test data management. Shift left on security. Implement continuous delivery.
  • Use version control for all production artifacts.
  • Ultimate deployment process.
  • Implement continuous integration.
  • Your strength-based deployment methods.
  • Implement test automation.
  • Support test data management.
  • Shift left on security.
  • Implement continuous delivery.
  • Architecture: Use loosely coupled architecture. Architect for empowered teams.
  • Use loosely coupled architecture.
  • Architect for empowered teams.
  • Product and process: Gather and implement customer feedback. Make workflow visible through the value stream. Work in small batches. Foster and amenable team experimentation.
  • Gather and implement customer feedback.
  • Make workflow visible through the value stream.
  • Work in small batches.
  • Foster and amenable team experimentation.
  • Lean Management & Monitoring Have a lightweight change approval process. Monitor across application and infrastructure. Check system health proactively. Improve processes and manage work with WIP. Visualize work to monitor quality and communications.
  • Have a lightweight change approval process.
  • Monitor across application and infrastructure.
  • Check system health proactively.
  • Improve processes and manage work with WIP.
  • Visualize work to monitor quality and communications.
  • Cultural Support generative culture. Encourage and support learning. Support And facilitate collaboration among teams. Provide resources and tools to make work meaningful. Support/body transformational leadership.
  • Support generative culture.
  • Encourage and support learning.
  • Support And facilitate collaboration among teams.
  • Provide resources and tools to make work meaningful.
  • Support/body transformational leadership.
  • High performers are twice as likely to exceed organizational performance goals and non-commercial performance goals as low-performance teams.
  • Four measures of software delivery performance:
  • Deployment frequency
  • Meantime to restart
  • Lead time
  • Change failure percentage
  • No trade-offs between improving performance and achieving higher levels of tempo.
  • Deployment frequency is highly correlated with version control comprehensive use and continuous deployment.
  • Lead time is highly correlated with version control and automated testing.
  • High performers have the shortest integration times. Branch life less than one day.

The tyranny of Metrics​

Jerry Z. Muller

  • Maybe one of the biggest reasons why the US has the most expensive healthcare system in the world is due to obesity, poverty and an extremely good ability to capture diseases and start treatment.
  • Post hoc ergo propter hoc: After this, therefore because of this. It is a fallacy for assuming causality from correlation.
  • Checklist for metrics: What kind of information will you measure. What is its distribution? How are used for this information? It's what you are measuring a proxy for what do you want to know? How useful are the metrics? Measured performance to detect outliers. What is the cost of not relying on standard measurement. To whom will you make information available.
  • What kind of information will you measure. What is its distribution?
  • How are used for this information? It's what you are measuring a proxy for what do you want to know?
  • How useful are the metrics? Measured performance to detect outliers.
  • What is the cost of not relying on standard measurement.
  • To whom will you make information available.

Giganten​

Aage Storm Borchgrevink

  • A.P. Møller Maersk sikret seg på 1960 tallet en retten til utvinning av hydrokarboner på dansk sokkel. Angivelig var statsråden som signerte avtalen full.
  • Oljeselskapenes 7 søstre: BP, Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Exxon, Texaco, Gulf Oil (Senere Chevron).
  • Polemisere: Er å drive polemikk, å argumentere sterkt imot noe.
  • Brent: Navnet på et oljefelt, fordi britene kalte oljefeltene sine opp etter fugler (Brent Goose). Brent blend er standard betegnelsen på nordsjøolje.
  • Hjemme-brent: Norsk nordsjøolje
  • Phantom-wanker: En person som runket på soverrommene til roughnecks på riggene og kom på hodeputene.
  • Arakisk: Oksygenfattig
  • "Å samarbeide med Statoil er som å gå til sengs med en elefant" - CEO of Mobil
  • Condeep: Concrete deep water structure
  • "Vi later som vi jobber, og de later som de betaler oss" - Sovjetisk Vits
  • "Kapitalistene vil selge oss repet vi skal henge dem med." Vladmir Ilyich Lenin
  • Den som gikk ut mot Statoil, risikerte å bli omringet av selskapets venner i media og distriktene, og få landets eneste rikskringkaster på nakken.
  • Byråkratene i olje- og energi departementet mislikte at Arve Johnsen oppførte seg som en halvgud.
  • "Denne var dom itte heldig med" - Oddvar Nordli om Maotai, tradisjonell kinesisk brennevin.
  • "At de beste tingene i livet er gratis, er et idiotisk uttrykk som er ment å berolige dem som ikke har penger." - Alexis i Dynastiet
  • Industrikomiteen på Stortinget, kalt Parkveiens venner, Norvik holdt leiligheten, Due spriten og Kristiansen politikken.
  • Flerfase teknologi: Teknologi som angår transporten av forskjellige fluider i rør. Tenk olje/gass/vann/slag.
  • Statoil dro Thor Heyerdahl med til Aserbajdsjan for å smøre diktatoren der. Han sa ja og tilføyde at Aserbajdsjan er et jævla spennende land. Notat: Heyerdahls teorier som fremkalte latter akademia.
  • Statoils nasjonale profil under Norvik. De viktige sakene, de riktige mediene.
  • I tenåra hadde Stoltenberg hatt falsk id kort for å kjøpe øl der han lød navnet Hubert Stoltenberg.
  • Hvis økonomisk historie har en sentral lærdom, er det å ikke stole på ekspertene.
  • "Russland hadde gått fra å være det onde imperiet til å bli en ond bananrepublikk som importerte bananer fra Finland." - Victor Pelevins, forfatter
  • "Norges handelshøyskole er ikke perfekt men jeg elsker denne skolens mangler og svulstighet. Enkelte så det bar galt av sted. Eg var en av dei." Selleresi i TV serien Mammon.
  • Statoil var interessert i å få til en avtale i Iran som kunne tåle en forside i DN.
  • En Mong / En Lødd (Av Mongstad og Løddesøl, leder av den norske kredittbank som tapte 1.5 milliarder kroner under bankkrisen på 90 tallet.): En fantastisk mengde penger så forsvinner mellom hendene på ambisiøse næringslivsledere.
  • Første bruk av nordmenn og Norge (Novegr) var på 800 tallet protokollene til kong Alfred den Store av Wessex.
  • I Angola forsvant 250 milliarder av skatteinntekter fra olje-næringen til korrupte statsmann.
  • Hummer og Kanari : Uttrykk fra jobbetiden under første verdenskrig, der mange ble nyrike på shipping. Disse ville gjerne vise sin nye rikdom, og bestilte gjerne hummer og dessertvin fra Kanariøyene (Kalt Kanari blant kjennerne). Salt hummer og søte dessertviner passer særdeles dårlig sammen, men var av underordnet viktighet siden disse tingene var de dyreste valgene på menyen.

Atomic Habits​

James Clear

  • "To write a great book, at first you must become the book." - Naval Ravikant, investor
  • Aggregation of marginal gains: Philosophy of searching for improvement even time in margins in everything you do.
  • Cancer spends about 80% of its life undetected and then takes over the body in months.
  • Plateau of latent potential: Something you need to break through in order to see your results.
  • Goals are about the results you want to achieve, systems are about processes that lead to those results.
  • "The score takes care of itself." - Bill Walsh American Football coach
  • Problems of goals: Winners and losers have the same goals. Achieving a goal is only a momentary change. Goals restrict your happiness. Goals are at odds with long-term progress.
  • Winners and losers have the same goals.
  • Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.
  • Goals restrict your happiness.
  • Goals are at odds with long-term progress.
  • Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
  • Atomic Habits is a little habit that is part of a larger system.
  • Changing our habits is difficult for two reasons: . We tried to change the wrong thing. Changing our habits is difficult for two reasons: We tried to change the wrong thing. We try to change our habits the wrong way.
  • We tried to change the wrong thing.
  • We try to change our habits the wrong way.
  • The goal is not to read the book the goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon the goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to learn an instrument the goal is to become a musician.
  • Nonconscious: Anything you're not consciously thinking about.
  • Focus: Decide what type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
  • Decide what type of person you want to be.
  • Prove it to yourself with small wins.
  • Focus on who you want to become not what do you want to achieve!
  • Behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to repeat.
  • Dichotomy: A division or contest between two things.
  • Pointing and calling: Safety system designed to identify critical objects in the meeting them on their status.
  • "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct you and you will call it fate." -Carl Young
  • Uncategorized habits, ask if it contributes to you reaching your decided state.
  • Diderot effect: Obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.
  • Habit stacking: After the current habit I will new habit. After a cup of coffee, I will meditate. After I meditate, I will write a to-do list.
  • 45% of Coca-Cola sales came from the end of aisle rack sales.
  • Every habit is initiated by a cue, and we are more likely to notice cues that stand out.
  • If you want to practice guitar more often, place it in the middle of the living room.
  • If you want to drink more water, fill up a few bottles and place them in common locations around the house.
  • Create separate spaces for different tasks "one space - one use!"
  • If you are not careful about cues, you can cause the very behavior you want to stop. You can break a habit, but you are likely to forget it.
  • People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It is easier to avoid than resist temptation. Self-control is a short term strategy, not a long term one parent
  • Supernormal Stimuli: Heightened version of reality that elicits a stronger response than usual.
  • The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.
  • The goal is to transform every habit into supernormal stimuli, although not practically possible.
  • We need to make habits attractive because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place.
  • Ronin Farm hacked his PC so that it would only play Netflix if the stationary bike was producing power.
  • Temptation bundling: Linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
  • Premack's principle: "The more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.
  • Habits are all about associations. These associations determine whether we predict the habit to be worth repeating or not.
  • "it is a motion that allows us to mark something as good, bad, indifferent" - Antonio Dumasio, a neuroscientist.
  • Create a motivational ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.
  • Long-term potentiation: strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain based on the recent past tense of connectivity. -Hebb´s law: "Neurons that fire together, wire together"
  • Law of least effort: When deciding between two similar options, people will naturally gravitate towards the option that requires the least amount of effort.
  • The less energy a habbit requires, the easier it will occur.
  • The idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Much of the battle comes down to finding ways to reduce friction associated with our good habits and increase friction associated with our bad ones.
  • Prime your environment to enforce good habits. Prepare in advance to make future actions easier.
  • The two-minute rule: When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do! Run 10 km, becomes tie my running shoes. Studying for class becomes open my notes.
  • The point is to master the habit of showing up. The habit must be established before it can be improved.
  • The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it is that you can sleep into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.
  • Victor Hugo, in order to finish his next book, asked his servants to lock away all his clothes suitable to go outdoors. He then remain in yesterday and finished his work within the deadline; The hunchback of Notre Dame
  • Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.
  • Commitment device: A choice you make and the person that controls your actions in the future. This is also called the Ulysses pact or Ulysses contract.
  • The key is to change the task so that it requires more work to get out of the good habit than to get started on it.
  • The best way to get rid of a bad habit is to make it impractical to do.
  • Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking of them, i.e. Technology.
  • Time inconsistency: The way your brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across time (also called hyperbolic discounting).
  • Questions to narrow down/in on habits: What feels fun to me, but work to others. What makes me lose track of time. Where do I get great returns to the average. What comes naturally to me.
  • What feels fun to me, but work to others.
  • What makes me lose track of time.
  • Where do I get great returns to the average.
  • What comes naturally to me.
  • "Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort." -Scott Adams, cartoonist Dilbert
  • "Men desire novelty to such an extent that those two are doing well with us for a change as much as those who are doing badly." - Machiavelli
  • Goldilocks rule: Humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.
  • Variable reward: Varying the reward increases behavior. Use variable rewards to amplify a craving.
  • Professionals stick to a schedule, amateur lets life get in the way.
  • The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
  • Sorites paradox: One small action can have a profound effect on repeated enough times.
  • "Being poor is not having too little, it is one thing more. " -Seneca

So Good they can´t ignore you​

Cal Newport

  • Passion Hypothesis: The key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you're passionate about and then find a job that maintains that passion.
  • Compelling characters often have complex origins. Reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion.
  • A job: Away to pay the bills. A calling: Work is an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity. A career: a path towards better work
  • Dilletante: Personal practices art or science for their amusement.

Civil War of US and Reconstruction​

David Blight

  • Burkean conservatism: The world order is set and not for men to tinker with.
  • Traditionalist conservatism: The world is just the way it is and we shouldn't change it.
  • Can you read the Bible and her both arguments for and against slavery.
  • Slavery persistent because there was a massive economic incentive for Southern elite to continue slavery. It was so damn profitable.
  • Chutzpa: extreme self-confidence in Yiddish
  • Four major reform areas in American history American revolution Antenox Temperance and the Great Depression Vietnam and the civil rights movement.
  • American Revolution
  • Antenox
  • Temperance and the Great Depression
  • Vietnam and the civil rights movement.
  • Abolitionists were at the most, never more than 15% of the population of the northern states.
  • The American contradiction: The largest slave state in the world built on the first thriving republic.

Stuff Matters​

Mark Miodownik

Chaos​

James Gleick

  • Classic physics can be seen as mankind's trivial attempt at fitting the universe to our primitive monkey brain.
  • Topology is geometry on rubber sheets.
  • Chaos and instability are not the same things. Chaos is globally stable but locally unstable.
  • Birfurcation: point or area where something divides into two branches or parts.

Too Big to Fail​

Andrew Ross Sorkin

  • Affability: Friendly and good-natured mannered.
  • Obfuscating: Obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by being difficult to understand.
  • "For the last several weeks, Lehman has complained about short-sellers. Academic research and our experience indicate that when management teams do that, there is a sign that the management teams are attempting to distract investors from serious problems." David Einhorn, Investor

The Lean Startup​

Eric Ries

  • Lean thinking is radically altering the way supply chains and production systems are run. Its tenants are : Drawing of knowledge and creativity of individual workers. Shrinking batch sizes. Just-in-time production and inventory control. Acceleration of cycle times.
  • Drawing of knowledge and creativity of individual workers.
  • Shrinking batch sizes.
  • Just-in-time production and inventory control.
  • Acceleration of cycle times.
  • Metcalfe´s law: The value of the networks is proportional to the square of the number of participants.
  • Lean thinking defines value as providing benefits to the customer, everything else is wasted.
  • The irony of venture capital is But it is often easier to raise money when you have zero revenue, zero customers and zero traction, rather than a small amount of those things.
  • Success is not delivering a feature, success is learning how to solve the customer's problem.
  • The 3 A´s of metrics: Actionable: Clearcut and effect. Accessible: Needs to be simple. Auditable: As close to the real world as possible.
  • Actionable: Clearcut and effect.
  • Accessible: Needs to be simple.
  • Auditable: As close to the real world as possible.
  • "Metrics are people too" - Common saying

The Big Short​

Michael Lewis

  • Wall Street liked immigrant mortgages because they had good (but short) FICO scores. No defaults when there were no loans.
  • Rating agencies analysts weren´t allowed to downgrade mortgages without their bosses' approval.
  • To win in financial markets, you either expose flaws in the system, or you go on a lucky run.
  • Thornwal Capital hired a statistics Ph.D. from Berkely but he quit after they asked him to analyze the pork belly market. He was a vegetarian and against capitalism, the pork thing pushed him over the edge.
  • Potemkin village effect: Impressive facade designed to hide undesirable facts or conditions.

The Logic of Life​

Tim Harford

  • Amateurs/rookies are more inclined to endowment syndrome than more experienced actors.
  • Griffen goods: A good that is such a necessity that a price increase, in turn, increases demand. Potatoes, rice, and wheat are examples of Griffen goods.
  • John von Neuman created the game theory field to mathematize the world of poker.
  • Addiction is rational. People calculate that the pleasure of the stimulant outweighs the pain.
  • Addictive goods are more affected by price increases the non-addictive. Addicts must eliminate habit entirely, but light users can cut back somewhat.
  • In cities where men are rich, women are plentiful.
  • Rich men are turn-on and rich women are turn-off. From online dating data
  • I large cities women outnumber men 9 to 8. In New York age 20 - 34 there are 860,000 men and 910,000 women. Sex and the city effect.
  • Single women would rather compete with others for rich men than relocate.
  • A lot of the unskilled labor in the cities is taken by women (Waitresses secretaries etc.). While men take skilled labor in the countryside.
  • No-fault divorce reduced domestic violence by 30 % in the United States.
  • People living in high-rise buildings are much more likely to be the victim of a crime, and fear crime more than people living in low rises. The eyes on the street mentality.
  • By delaying the birth of a child by one year, a woman increases her lifetime earnings by 10%.

Digital Gold​

Nathaniel Popper

  • Attributes of good money:
    • Portable
    • Durable
    • Divisible
    • Uniform
  • The word Money comes from the Roman god Juno Moneta. In her temple coins were minted.

The Narrow Corridor: States, societies and the fate of liberty​

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

  • "Constitutions should be short and obscure." - Charles-Maurice Talleyrand
  • Article 15 of all 6 Congolese consitutions 'Debroaillez-cous' (Fend for yourself).
  • Liberty is the absence of dominance.
  • Norway has a homicide rate of 0.5 per 100,000, 10 times less than in the US.
  • De rigeur: Required/necessary according to etiquette, protocol, or fashion.
  • During the great leap forward communist party communalized kitchens so that anyone disobedient was denied food.
  • " If a chicken separates itself from the rest, a hawk will get it." - Asanti Proverb
  • Draconian: From Greek (Athens) ruler Draco, known for laws whose punishment often was death.
  • There is a red queen effect between society and the leviathan (State).
  • The society and the state or not the same, nor will it ever be, they are competitors.
  • Superstitions about witchcraft were a mechanism to control influential/powerful actors from getting too powerful and becoming despots.
  • Fare from restitution is a more likely case for giving/sharing customs than altruism. This implies you do not have secure property rights.
  • Laffer curve: Normal distributed relationship between taxation and tax income.
  • The four towns in the county of Champagne: Bur-sur-Aube, Langy, Provins and Troyes.

Edge of Chaos​

Dambisa Moyo

  • Most of those who quit the Navy Seals training did so during breakfast or lunch. They quit because they feared they would fail. The third best indicator of success in the Navy Seal training was being on the water polo team. The second best was being on the wrestling team, but the top indicator was a high school level of expertise in chess.
  • Myopia: Short-sightedness

Beginning of Infinity​

David Deutch

  • Transmutations: Changing a chemical element into another (Hydrogen -> Helium)
  • Modern telescopes can see more galaxies than there are stars in our own galaxy.
  • The competitive aspect of nature is self-evident from a first principles point.
  • No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.
  • Fallibilism: No reliable means of justifying ideas as true or probable.
  • Conjecture: Opinion or idea form without proof or evidence.
  • "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." -Sherlock Holmes in 'A study in Scarlet'
  • Parochial: Locally true but not globally.
  • "Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves." -Richard Feynman
  • "My pencil and I are more clever than I" - Albert Einstein
  • Problems are inevitable but soluble.
  • Lamarckism : A mistaken evolutionary theory based on the idea that biological adaptations are improvements acquired by an organism during its lifetime and inherited by its descendants.
  • Quale: The subjective aspect of a sensation.
  • There has been no significant progress in the field of artificial general intelligence (AGI) because we do not understand how creativity works.
  • Science is the 'Art of the soluble'
  • Systems of government should be judged not by their ability to choose and install good leaders, but by their ability to remove bad ones that are already there.
  • Popper´s criterion: Good political institutions are those who makes it as easy as possible to detect whether a ruler or policy is a mistake, and to remove said rulers or policies without violence when they are.

Life on the Edge​

Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) uses powerful magnets to align the axis of spinning nuclei of hydrogen atoms within a patient's body. These atoms are then zapped with a pulse of radio waves, which forces the aligned nuclei to exist in that strange quantum state of spinning in both directions at once.
  • Lavoisier "proved" (demonstrated) that living animals consume oxygen and exhume carbon dioxide, they were having a sort of combustion.
  • All chemical processes involved the exchange of heat and are, at the molecular level, all driven by thermodynamic principles that are based on random motion.
  • Chloroplast organelles (cell subunits) perform photosynthesis inside plant cells.
  • Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle remains one of the most important theories in the whole of science and is one of the foundation stones of quantum theory.
  • Yeast is single-celled fungi.
  • Enzyme is derived from the Greek word for yeast.
  • " Beautiful theory, killed by an ugly fact" - Thomas Huxley, an evolutionary biologist.
  • "Where in the bird is the laser?" - Hershbach when shown a laser that could navigate using magnetic fields, and the idea that birds use this phenomena to navigate.
  • Man-made magnets pulses disrupt migratory birds from navigating.
  • Some biologists would argue that self-replication is life´s defining future.
  • Mutations in DNA are usually less than one in a billion.
  • Mutation rate is not affected by environment or external stressors. For example, bacteria does not evolve protections for the virus if exposed to them.
  • In an attempt to simulate primordial life conditions, Stanley Miller filled a bottle of water, toppled with gases he thought would be present in the atmosphere (methane, hydrogen, ammonia and water vapor). He then simulated lightning bolt igniting the mixture with electric sparks. After only a week of sparking the primordial atmosphere, significant quantities of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins have appeared. This is called the Miller-Urey experiment
  • Richard Feynman´s dictum: If we cannot engineer artificial life, we do not understand it. "What I cannot make, I cannot understand."
  • "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself, I seem only like a boy playing at the seashore, and the diverting myself in now and then finding a prettier shell than the ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." - Sir Isaac Newton

Naked Economics​

Charles Wheelan

  • It is estimated that every one dollar increase in the price of gasoline results in additional 1500 motorcycle deaths annually in the US.
  • When the Berlin wall fell, it was estimated that East-German car factories actually destroyed value. They took good steel and ruined them by creating shitty cars.
  • Mergers are rarely for the benefit of shareholders. They do have a, however, benefit CEOs by driving attention to himself and leave him running a bigger company.
  • "Stock options are managerial heroin." - Michael Jensen, professor at Harward.
  • Every single economist polled said the Trump-era tax cut would increase debt, 100%.
  • All college degrees return a 10% return on investment.
  • Rule of 72: take 72 and divide it by the interest rate and you get roughly how long it will take for a quantity to double.
  • A wealthy man is someone who earns a dollar a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
  • Only 8% of hedge funds outperformed index funds over a 15-year horizon.
  • Studies have shown that people with brain damage are particularly good investors.
  • Finance exists because capital is scarce.
  • Obama stimulus package includes funding from "green" golf carts to a polar ice breaker. All due to special interest groups.
  • A tax shelter is some kind of investment or behavior that would not make sense in the absence of tax considerations.
  • When Albert Einstein arrived at Princeton, he was not legally qualified to teach high school physics.
  • The best predictor of governmental regulation of an industry is the size and position of the professional association for that industry.
  • Obama's first spending bill had over 9000 earmarks for special interest groups.
  • A lasting and successful marriage is estimated to be worth $100,000 a year.
  • In most post-WW2 recessions, Congress did not pass legislation in response to the downturn until after it had ended.
  • Okum´s law: GDP of 3% will be unemployment unchanged.
  • Fiat currency is just a fancy way of saying paper money.
  • When the IMF and World Bank had a joint meeting in Prague, KFC and Pizza Hut ordered replacement glass in advance.
  • The case for keeping people poor because it's good for the planet is economically and morally bankrupt.
  • Tropical climate is bad for food production and conducive for disease, making growth harder.
  • "Anyone who is not a socialist before he is thirty has no heart, and then one who is still Socialist after he is 30 has no head." -French saying
  • "Diamonds are a guerrilla´s best friend." - Paul Collier

Skin in the Game​

N.N. Taleb

  • Being wrong at no cost doesn't count.
  • Pathemate mathemata: Learning through pain
  • Dead people don't do drugs, so no incentive to make drugs for high-risk patients.
  • Kosher rules are much broader and stricter than Halal.
  • McDonald's thrives because they are proportionally less likely to be vetoed in a group setting.
  • Genes follow a majority rule, languages follow the minority rule.
  • Kurt Godel started arguing about the intolerant-tolerant incoherence of the US Constitution during his naturalization exam. Einstein, his witness, saved him.
  • The Romans judged their political system by asking not whether it made sense but whether it worked.
  • A free person does not need to win arguments, just win.

Rational Optimist​

Matt Ridley

  • "Aid doesn't work, hasn´t worked, won´t work. It is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem, in fact, it is the problem." - Dambisa Moyo
  • One of the reasons Botswana did well was because it experienced little colonial rule. The British took it to hinder the Germans from taking it.

The great Degeneration​

Niall Ferguson

  • "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." - Milton Friedman
  • Stationary state: Coin by Adam Smith when low wages of majority is coupled by an elitist minority.
  • "Institutions are what matters." - Hernando de Soto
  • The Arab Spring can be seen as a revolt of entrepreneurs against extractive institutions.
  • "The great social contract is not between the state and its citizens, but rather between the generations." - Paraphrased from Burke
  • Complex regulation is the disease that pretends to be the cure.
  • A system that becomes stronger than subjected to perturbations is anti-fragile.

We did Nothing​

Linda Polman

  • Blue helmets are obligated to follow the rules of their host government, even when that government commits acts of genocide.
  • "Governments lie, it is in the nature to do so." - Mort Rosenblum
  • "If governments are not deceiving their citizens with a preconceived goal in mind, they are busy deceiving themselves." - Mort Rosenblum

Humanocracy​

Gary Hammel

Finansplaneten​

Niall Ferguson

Serengeti Rules​

UltraLearning​

Scott H. Young

The Evolution of Everything​

Other Quotes​

  • Effrontery: Insolent or impertinent behavior.
  • Gresham's law: Bad money drives out good. The coin of cheaper metals will replace coins of more expensive metals.
  • "Carolinas in the spring is a paradise, in the summer hell and in the autumn a hospital." - German visitor to the Carolinas before the revolutionary war. The Carolinas were known for being infested with malaria-bearing mosquitos.
  • The use of a central bank as a lender of last resort creates a moral hazard for the financial system, in which firms have a lender of last resort who will be able to bail them out.
  • The use of the US federal reserve policy of driving down interest rates to keep the stock market afloat and save Wall Street after the dot-com bust was the single biggest cause of the housing market bubble. The so-called Greenspan put.
  • The subprime bubble was a top-down political project, mandated by Congress and implemented by federal corporations(Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac)
  • "The Fannie Mae saga demonstrates that once crony capitalism captures the arm of the state, its potential for cancerous growth is truly perilous." - David Stockman
  • Cantillon effect: If central banks pump more money into the economy, the price increase yes uneven/does not happen evenly. Creation on their benefits nose closest to the source.
  • In Kenya, people started to use mobile phone minutes as an alternate source of money.
  • Observe Orient Decide Act (OODA). In dog fights between the Mig-15 and F-85, the superior plane (Mig-15) is constantly lost. The reason for this was that the moving sticks of the Mig-15 were harder to move than F-85, making it harder for the pilot to act on observations. -Boyd´s law of iteration: Speed of iteration beats the quality of iteration.
  • Le Chateliers principle: If you disturb a chemical equilibrium, the system will adapt to oppose and absorb the change.
  • Electrolytically generated hydrogen is around 10 times more costly than the amount of natural gas required to produce the equivalent energy, and 3 times more costly than petroleum. The catch 22 of hydrogen.
  • Sardonically: Grimly mocking or cynical
  • Vituperative: Bitter and abuse. "A vituperative outburst"
  • "If you torture the data long enough, nature will confess" - Roald Coase
  • "All models are wrong, but some are useful" George Box
  • Accolade: Dubbing a man with a sword. It also means great honor.
  • Status quo ante Bellum: Same as before the war.
  • Tsjerenenkov effect. Some particles move faster than light through a medium.
  • "First rule of central banking, when the ships start to sink central bankers must bail like hell" - James K. Galbraith, economist
  • Smart contracts with Oracle. Two parties are agreeing on the contract that the third-party condition will initiate. This third party is called an Oracle.
  • "To you know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." - Copernicus
  • "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." - Solow (1987)
  • The worst dictatorships are those with the fewest key supporters. Those that rely on oil, gold, etc.
  • Farming subsidies have nothing to do with production. It is a reward to key supporters. If not farmers are not a relevant voting group then no farming subsidies.
  • Kabuki : Japanese theater. Sometimes used to illustrate theatrical tricks.
  • Amuse-bouche: A small hors d’oeuvre of that is used as an appetite appetizer. Means mouth joy.
  • Hors d'oeuvre - means outside of opus/the artwork. Can be translated as an appetizer. A similar term in Italian is anti-pasta.
  • Esoteric: Intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with special specialized knowledge or interest.
  • Machine learning provides a means for people who don't know anything about the subject to publish papers in the field. So it's just like getting a Ph.D. in economics.
  • Etymologi: Lærenom ordenes opprinnelse.
  • "Last words are for fools that have not said enough" - Karl Marx
  • The invention of containers increased international trade more than all free-trade agreements put together.
  • "Et vennskap som ikke tåler alt som blir sagt, holder ikke i det avgjørende øyeblikk." - Joachim Hambro
  • Homonym : Ord som skrives likt men har forskjellig betydning (Finne: fisk/person fra Finland)
  • Paraphilia: Sexual preferences that are not based on another person.
  • Dunbar´s number: Suggested cognitive number of the number of people with whom we can have and maintain stable slow social relationships (about 150 people).
  • Bizet Reaction: Is one of a class of reactions that serve as a classical example of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, resulting in the establishment of a nonlinear chemical oscillator.
  • Edvard Lorenz coined the butterfly effect for his influential talk; 'Does a flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil cause a hurricane in Texas.'
  • "En ting er å legge planer, noe ganske annet er å vite hvor man har lagt dem." - Ole Henrik Magga, Sametingspresident.
  • "If your beliefs were consistent and sound, it is definitely because they are incomplete and not universal. If your beliefs were complete and universal, it is definitely because they contain inconsistencies." - Kurt Godel
  • When Einstein delivered his Ph.D. thesis, he was asked by his reviewers to add more text. He thought about it for a weak, added 1 sentence and passed.