认识论和递减的知识
自柏拉图以来，西方人的思想和知识理论一直把真伪矛盾作为关注的焦点；尽管这很不错，但我们确实该把关注点转移到强壮与脆弱的矛盾，以及愚人与非愚人的社会认识论上了。
知识的问题在于，由观鸟者撰写的关于鸟类的书籍，远比由鸟类撰写的关于鸟类的书籍和由鸟类撰写的关于观鸟者的书籍多得多。
完美的愚人知道猪会盯着珍珠看，但却不知道他自己有时也处在同样的情况中。
我们需要杰出的智慧和自控力才能承认，许多事情的逻辑是我们所不了解的，并且比我们自己的逻辑更加聪明。
知识是递减的，不是递增的；是我们减掉的内容（什么行不通，什么不该做），不是我们增加的内容（什么该做）。[1]
他们认为智力就是注意到有关系的事情（感知事物的模式）；在复杂的世界里，智力就是忽略掉无关的事情（躲避虚假的模式）。
幸福：我们不知道它是什么意思，怎样测量它，怎样达到它，但我们非常清楚如何躲避“不幸福”。
天才的想象力远远超过他的学问，书呆子的学问远远超过他的想象力。
如果教育只包含三个科目，最理想、对社会危害最小的安排是数学、逻辑和拉丁文；拉丁文著作的阅读量要加倍，以补偿数学带来的智慧流失；数学和逻辑只要足够避免说空话和花言巧语就够了。
影响力最大的四个现代人：达尔文、马克思、弗洛伊德和（作为科学家的）爱因斯坦，他们都是学者，但不是书呆子。在学术界做点真正意义上的事情，从来都是件难事。
[1]《怎样识别吹牛的人：某人（例如咨询师或者股票经纪人）告诉你该做什么，而不是不该做什么。
EPISTEMOLOGY AND SUBTRACTIVE KNOWLEDGE
Since Plato, Western thought and the theory of knowledge have focused on the notions of True-False; as commendable as it was, it is high time to shift the concern to Robust-Fragile, and social epistemology to the more serious problem of Sucker-Nonsucker.
The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds.
The perfect sucker understands that pigs can stare at pearls, but doesn't realize he can be in an analog situation.
It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.
Knowledge is subtractive, not additive; what we subtract (reduction by what does not work, what not to do), not what we add (what to do).
They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).
Happiness; we don't know what it means, how to measure it, and how to reach it; but we know extremely well how to avoid unhappiness.
The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination.
The ideal trivium education, and the least harmful one to society, would be mathematics, logic, and Latin; a double dose of Latin authors to compensate for the severe loss of wisdom that comes from mathematics; just enough mathematics and logic to control verbiage and rhetoric.
The four most influential moderns: Darwin, Marx, Freud, and (the productive) Einstein were scholars but not academics. It has always been hard to do genuine work within institutions.