Join 📚 Fabien's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Fabien's read, .
Failing is only productive when two things are true: first, the person who fails actually learns something from it and is thus motivated to try again; and second, the failure doesn’t permanently close future doors.
4. Relative Privation:
An all-too-common fallacy where people dismiss a concern because something else is worse.
“How can you talk about X when Y is happening?”
By this logic, how can anyone ever talk about anything other than literally the single worst thing in the universe?
My Friends, a New MEGATH...
@G_S_Bhogal on Twitter
Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn’t mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there’s no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn’t so, especially when our comrades know it too. Keep some perspective. Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic, or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That, or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don’t confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baaad, while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool. But what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
Enlightenment Now
Steven Pinker
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