Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.

My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism

If you let markets - in general, my belief is that if you let markets give you information, they'll give you the information rather than artificially prop up everything.

The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination

It might be useful to be able to predict war. But tension does not necessarily lead to war, but often to peace and to denouement.

Never take advice from someone wearing a tie.

Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave.