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.

In the United States large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation’s funeral at our expense.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events "unlikely."

I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.

The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death