Interesting Quotes
Interesting Quotes
Job Quotes
“As long as we work hard, our boss will soon be able to live the life he wants!”
Fun Quotes
The England Footbal team visited an orphanage in Russia. “It’s heartbreaking to see their little faces wth no hope”, said Vladimir, aged 6.
Academia Quote
“Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
- Sayre’s Law “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.”
Product Quote
I want people who use my product to be happy with it. If they are not, I dont want them bad mouth me. When someone is unhappy, that an excellent opportunity for me to learn, so I want to incentivize my customer to engage with me in a productive and not antagonistic way.
Talent Quote
Talent is universal, while opportunity is not
- Nicholas Kristof
Complexity
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
- Alan Perlis
Meaning of Life
“If our life is the only thing we get to experience, then it’s the only thing that matters. If the universe has no principles, then the only principles relevant are the ones we decide on. If the universe has no purpose, then we get to dictate what its purpose is”
- Kurzgesagt
Not Stupid
If it is stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid ― Mercedes Lackey
Simple
“You live simple, you train hard, and live an honest life. Then you are free.” ― Eliud Kipchoge
Writing
“Writing is Nature’s way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is”
- Bob Mugele
It is difficult to know what you should know when you have a lot to learn and are in an intelligence-signaling environment. A side effect of having written detailed technical notes is that I calibrate my confidence on a topic. If I now understand something, I am sure of it and can explain myself clearly. If I don’t understand something, I have a sense of why it is difficult to understand or what prerequisite knowledge I am missing.
Collection
Education
The biggest benefit from education isn’t facts, its the research and critical thinking skills you develop. The primary thing you should be deriving from your university education is how to conduct effective critical analyses. You’re learning how to learn. While also getting some useful field-specific information out of it. Structure and standards. Finding the right information, in the right order isn’t easy for everyone. Education isn’t really about acquiring information; its about learning methods to engage with materials and information to draw conclusions and then express further possibilities in written and spoken form.
Metric
Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.
- Goodhart’s law
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
- Goodhart’s law by Marilyn Strathern
Brandolini’s Law (the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle): The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
Shirky Principle: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution,”
Putt’s Law: “Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand.”
Putt’s Corollary: “Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion.” –> technically competent people remain directly in charge of the actual technology while those without technical competence move into management.
Dilbert principle: “leadership is nature’s way of removing morons from the productive flow” –> that companies tend to systematically promote their least competent employees to management, to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing.
Parkinson’s law is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. –> growth of the bureaucracy The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource (If the price is zero).The reverse is not true.
Data expands to fill the space available for storage.
Poems
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Will Rogers Phenomenon
The Will Rogers phenomenon is obtained when moving an element from one set to another set raises the average values of both sets:
When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence level in both states.
The effect will occur when both of these conditions are met:
- The element being moved is below average for its current set. Removing it will raise the average of the remaining elements.
- The element being moved is above the current average of the set it is entering. Adding it to the new set will raise its average.
Judgement
My willingness to judge something should be proportional to how much I know about it.
Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.
Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking - Farnam Street
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