Not to opine in public on matters that surpass one’s understanding — this is the most neglected of civic duties.
Mar 022017
Erring
Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.
—Cunningham
Jan 312017
We are constantly warned against sunk cost, yet sunk belief is so much more expensive.
Jan 232017
To speak for those who cannot speak for themselves is impossible and impertinent.
Jan 062017
You can talk a man into anything, as long as there’s nothing you have to talk him out of.
Jan 042017
Ugliness, incompetence, immaturity: these have become ideologies — no longer failures but ends in themselves.
Dec 232016
You don’t build machines smarter than the designer for the same reason you don’t write novels with characters smarter than the author.
Dec 122016
Two parties will often heatedly dispute a fact which, if it could be definitely established, would change the opinion of neither.
Dec 082016
Facts, n. Values that one is unwilling or unable to articulate.
Nov 172016
Sometimes we encounter ideas that cannot be reconciled with what we already believe, and these we call untrue.
Nov 142016
It is because we regard conforming opinions as virtue that we treat deviant ones as vice.