A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill.
Frank Borman
Flying Lessons, Federal Aviation Administration (8 January 2008)
From book “Just enough research”
In order to influence decisions with evidence, you have to work with existing beliefs, not against them. You need to create interest and establish credibility before the results come in, or your findings will pile up and gather dust. And you don't even have to get people to care about "research" as a concept, as long as you can get them to embrace reality as a constraint. I like "evidence-based design" as a rallying cry, because if your design isn't based on evidence, then what is it based on? Keep the focus on shared goals and decisions.
"Conservatives say they long for the simpler times of their childhood, but what they miss is that the reason they lived simpler lives back then wasn't that the times were simpler; rather, it's because they were children."
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."
"Just because you're on their side, it doesn't mean they're on your side."
Edmund Burke once said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I think that begs a question.
If you do nothing, what makes you any fucking good?
(UK)
That's some pretty big talk from the world's leading supplier of independence days.
Scalzi’s law: The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”
Dwyer’s corollary: The failure mode of friendly is “creepy.”
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
“No innovation, no matter how life-changing and transformative, prospers unless it finds a receptive environment. It needs to be born into the right time and place, or it will fail. No innovation succeeds on its own merit.”
We can solve our problems, but it's not clear that we can solve our problems and get rich at the same time, and that is the current requirement for all solutions.
When you have a lack of quality teachers, when people don't know what to do, they begin to grasp at certain ideas that they don't really understand.
Every previous revolutionary movement in human history has made the same basic mistake. They’ve all seen power as a static apparatus, as a structure. And it’s not. It’s a dynamic, a flow system with two possible tendencies. Power either accumulates, or it diffuses through the system. In most societies, it’s in accumulative mode, and most revolutionary movements are only really interested in reconstituting the accumulation in a new location. A genuine revolution has to reverse the flow. And no one ever does that, because they’re all too fucking scared of losing their conning tower moment in the historical process. If you tear down one agglutinative power dynamic and put another one in its place, you’ve changed nothing. You’re not going to solve any of that society’s problems, they’ll just reemerge at a new angle. You’ve got to set up the nanotech that will deal with the problems on its own. You’ve got to build the structures that allow for diffusion of power, not re-grouping. Accountability, democratic access, systems of constituted rights, education in the use of political infrastructure.
Face the facts. Then act on them. It’s the only mantra I know, the only doctrine I have to offer you, and it’s harder than you’d think, because I swear humans seem hardwired to do anything but. Face the facts. Don’t pray, don’t wish, don’t buy into centuries-old dogma and dead rhetoric. Don’t give in to your conditioning or your visions or your fucked-up sense of ... whatever. Face the facts. Then act.
Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
Guys like you confuse words with action. I don't. So I will be very, very clear. If you, or anyone in your family try to take her away from me, we will be done. There will be nothing left to say. And believe me, the last thing you want is me with nothing left to say.
The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.