086 On hypocrisy

And the derangements of science, the wonders of evolution, technology, and more

Being a hypocrite feels good because you get the best of both worlds: the illusion of being a particular kind of person, and the comfort of not matching that identity with your actions.

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The Amazing Things & Ideas List

1. What I’m reading

Science & Human Values by Jacob Bronowski

“There is no more threatening and no more degrading doctrine than the fancy that somehow we may shelve the responsibility for making the decisions of our society by passing it to a few scientists armored with a special magic.”

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2. Peter Thiel on the derangements of science

"… we’ve had all these derangements of science where… in the name of science we've done these rather unscientific things..."

So much so that when you hear someone stress that they’re doing “science”, it’s usually a good indication they’re not.

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3. On the effect of technology on people

Marc Andreessen @pmarca

We did not live in a calm, placid, rational, happy world before smartphones. People have been bananas forever. On most metrics, people were more bananas in the past than they are now. If anything, technology may be calming people down.

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4. The wonders of evolution

“In man, some of the biological characteristics which developed to cope with the environment changed that environment in the most spectacular ways: the human hand is only one example.”

— Bryan Magee, Philosophy and the Real World: An Introduction to Karl Popper

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Onward,
Arjun

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