every time I’ve asked you why someone is acting insane, you’ve claimed that it’s secretly a sane response to someone else acting insane. Where does this process bottom out?

So a realistic lifetime of trying to adapt yourself to a broken civilization looks like: 0-2 lifetime instances of answering “Yes” to “Can I substantially improve on my civilization’s current knowledge if I put years into the attempt?” A few people, but not many, will answer “Yes” to enough instances of this question to count on the fingers of both

It’s that there are too many people advocating changes in the system for their own reasons, who could also draw diagrams that sounded equally convincing to someone who didn’t already understand Nash equilibria.

With cardiac surgeons, a group of researchers recently figured out how to detect when the most senior cardiac surgeons were at conferences, and found that the death rates went down while the most senior cardiac surgeons were away.9

borked.

No hospital would benefit from being the first to publish statistics, so none of them do.

found that what mainly predicted voting behavior wasn’t how much the voter liked their preferred party, but how much they disliked the opposing party.

meditate on the details of what you can do, what there is to be done, and how one might do it.

off-the-cuff