Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time.

Those who think through possible outcomes with discipline, forge connections, in so doing, to other cosmi in which those outcomes are more than mere possibilities. Such a consciousness is measurably, quantitatively different from one that has not undertaken the same work and so, yes, is able to make correct decisions in an Emergence where an untrained mind would be of little use.

Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it.

I don't even want you to nod, that's how much you annoy me. Just freeze and shut up.

An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.

They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.

I feel that I am entitled to trample all other considerations into the dirt in my pursuit of a satisfying pun.