nothing without skin in the game.

simplify for now as follows: it is harder for us to reverse-engineer than engineer; we see the result of evolutionary forces but cannot replicate them owing to their causal opacity.

Groups are units on their own. There are qualitative differences between a group of ten and a group of, say, 395,435. Each is a different animal, in the literal sense, as different as a book is from an office building. When we focus on commonalities, we get confused, but, at a certain scale, things become different. Mathematically different. The hi

When the beard (or hair) is black, heed the reasoning, but ignore the conclusion. When the beard is gray, consider both reasoning and conclusion. When the beard is white, skip the reasoning, but mind the conclusion.

If your private life conflicts with your intellectual opinion, it cancels your intellectual ideas, not your private life. And a solution to the vapid universalism we discussed in the Prologue: If your private actions do not generalize, then you cannot have general ideas.

And that is what plagues socialism: people’s individual interests do not quite work well under collectivism.

the skeptical enterprise is being used to silence skeptics. Disrespect for

There is a difference between a charlatan and a genuinely skilled member of society, say that between a macrobull***ter political “scientist” and a plumber, or between a journalist and a mafia made man. The doer wins by doing, not convincing.

Eponymy indicates both a commitment to the company and a confidence in the product.