Johanna

What's the purpose of a scientific conference? I think its twofold. One is you want to learn new important things without having to read all those papers. And the second one is meeting other people, making connections, getting into discussions.

A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks.

In 2012, the University of Maryland sociologist John P. Robinson reviewed more than 40 years of happiness and time-use surveys that asked Americans how often they felt they either were “rushed” or had “excess time.” Perhaps predictably, he concluded that the happiest people were the “never-never” group—those who said they very rarely felt hurried... See more

In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves... See more

If you’re five or 500 people, hire as many originals as you can. Yes, there are risks of hiring too many originals — but it’s even riskier to hire too few.

At the end of the day, though, what is needed is not a few reforms, but “metanoiete”: a deep repentance, a change to the industry‘s entire way of thinking. Devanney is not optimistic that this will happen in the US or any wealthy country; they‘re too comfortable and too able to fund fantasies of “100% renewables.” Instead, he thinks the best... See more