Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.

...maximize the serendipity around you.

Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history

Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.

In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations

You want to favor systems that benefit from error, disorder, variability and things like that. You want to favor these systems and unfortunately, when - there's something I call the Soviet Illusion. The more the government becomes intrusive, the more things have to follow a script, and it can't handle this kind of system.