Stuff to bring up at a dinner party

People don't understand that the person above them who seems so powerful and in control often has insecurities. The truth is, the higher up you go in a hierarchy, the more insecure you become. The more you worry about whether people truly respect you.

They too must serve masters who hold the purse strings. And their great intellectual powers can make the master feel insecure, as if he were only there to supply the funds—an ugly, ignoble job. The producer of a great work wants to feel he is more than just the provider of financing. He wants to appear creative and powerful, and also more important... See more

Rationality can sometimes (not always) be self-defeating. If you are feeling joy, you can easily talk yourself out of it. You can change your mood by reasoning your way into misery. But if you are feeling miserable, good luck trying to talk yourself out of it. It’s not so easy to change your mood by reasoning your way into happiness. It’s not impos... See more

Producing original or interesting or creative work is a delicate balance between believing what you are doing is incredibly important (otherwise why are you doing it?) and believing that it is not particularly important (otherwise you will be paralyzed into inaction or its close cousin, perfectionism).

To put the point another way: Nobody expects a computer simulation of a hurricane to generate real wind and real rain. In the same way, a computer model of the brain may only ever simulate consciousness, but never give rise to it.

A typical commercial airplane is off course 90% of the time, yet it almost always arrives at its destination because it knows exactly where it’s going and makes constant small corrections along the way

Common sense is like oxygen: the higher you go, the thinner it gets.