This could be the most important blog post you've ever read about resources, by @ToKTeacher: tokcast-bretthall-31ddc0.net…

Why does the world always seem to be full of more pessimists than optimists? It’s easier to be a pessimist than an optimist. It’s hard to guess how life is going to improve; it’s easier to extrapolate how it’s going to get worse. @naval

We can make all of the Earth rather like the best parts of New York, or Paris, or Sydney. Picturesque, clean, and comfortable. We can then set about to make the rest of the solar system like the Earth. @ToKTeacher

Can you simulate universes with entirely different laws of physics? (In the sense that “let’s not have general relativity, let’s have something completely different,” or, “let’s not have quantum theory, let’s have something completely different.”) @ToKTeacher

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude. — Karl Popper

A problem is only a problem because we lack a solution. @ToKTeacher

If you’re a pessimist, you get your feedback from other people. It’s a social act. You’re convincing other people of your pessimism. But entrepreneurs get feedback from nature and free markets, which are much more realistic feedback mechanisms. @naval

During the course of a creative process, one is not struggling to distinguish between different explanations of nearly equal merit; typically, one is struggling to create even one good explanation, and, having succeeded, one is glad to be rid of the rest. @DavidDeutschOxf

We can see that the ancient idea that living matter has special physical properties was almost true: it is not living matter but knowledge-bearing matter that is physically special. @DavidDeutschOxf

Mathematics is characterized by its use of proofs in the same way that science is characterized by its use of experimental testing; in neither case is that the object of the exercise. @DavidDeutschOxf

To choose an option, rationally, is to choose the associated explanation. Therefore, rational decision-making consists not of weighing evidence but of explaining it, in the course of explaining the world. @DavidDeutschOxf

Every generation has its doomsayers, Cassandras, and modern Malthusians who say, “On this trajectory, we’re all going to die.” They’re very popular for the same reason that zombie movies and vampire movies are popular. @naval

The anti-rational solution to curing starvation was to not allow liberty in the form of the free market—or rather a more free market. It was instead to centrally plan and then coerce a solution onto the populace. @ToKTeacher

Science is the engine that pulls humanity forward. @naval

Critical thinking is about showing how something is wrong. To what end? To improve things, of course. @ToKTeacher

All problems can be solved through creativity. @ToKTeacher

The theory reaches out, as it were, from its finite origins inside one brain that has been affected only by scraps of patchy evidence from a small part of one hemisphere of one planet – to infinity. @DavidDeutschOxf

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit. — Karl Popper

It took some time before I recognized that [egalitarianism] as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; that, if freedom is lost, there will be no equality among the unfree. — Popper

In a non-democratic state, the only way to achieve reasonable reforms is by the violent overthrow of the government, and the introduction of a democratic framework. — Karl Popper

Necessary truth is merely the subject-matter of mathematics, not the reward we get for doing mathematics. The object of mathematics is not, and cannot be, mathematical certainty. It is, and must be, mathematical explanation. @DavidDeutschOxf