Big Beliefs

Incentives are the strongest force in the world. They explain why good people do awful things, why smart people do stupid things, and why ordinary people do amazing things. Nearly everyone underestimates how much their own beliefs and actions are influenced by their incentives, many of which are designed to fulfill someone else’s goals.

A trick to learning a complicated topic is realizing how many complex details are a cousin of something simple. John Reed writes in his book Succeeding :

When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles – generally three to twelve of them – that g

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