Join Notes
A batch of the best highlights from what Tristan's read, .
I repeat that we are explanation-seeking animals who tend to think that everything has an identifiable cause and grab the most apparent one as the explanation. Yet there may not be a visible because; to the contrary, frequently there is nothing, not even a spectrum of possible explanations.
The Black Swan
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness, and man is equipped to respond in stereotyped ways to frequently occurring situations and stimuli like hunger, danger, and sex. But in a developed and complex civilization individuals are more differentiated and unique than in a primitive society, and many situations contain novel circumstances requiring modifications of instinctive response; custom recedes, reasoning spreads; the results are less predictable. There is no certainty that the future will repeat the past. Every year is an adventure.
The Lessons of History
Will Durant and Ariel Durant
At the core of every evolutionary system is a probabilistic computation that has the remarkable property of extracting purposeful information from randomly occurring events.
The Engine of Complexity
John Hollenbeck and John Mayfield
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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