The most robust contribution to knowledge consists in removing what we think is wrong—subtractive epistemology.
Knowledge and Opinion
Knowledge and Expertise
Reading All The Time
In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.
Identifying Losers vs Picking Winners
Take the birth of the auto industry. At one stage, there were more than 2,000 separate auto manufacturers in the US. Even if you had bought shares in all of them, you would have lost money. It was virtually impossible to know which would fail and which would succeed. However, it was very easy to see who would definitely lose out – horses. The best investment strategy would therefore have been to go short of horses. There were 20 million horses in the US in 1900. Today, there are just 4 million.
Diminishing The Maker
The system that regards esthetics as irrelevant, which separates the artist from his product, which fragments the work of the individual, which creates by committee, and which makes mincemeat of the creative process will, in the long run, diminish not only the product but the maker as well.
Falsifiability
As Karl Popper pointed out, the problem with the Marxist theory of historical materialism was that you couldn’t disprove it. Any scientific theory is susceptible to disproof: something could happen that would show it to be untrue. But there isn’t anything that would disprove Marxism – the Marxist can always say ‘the conditions for revolution weren’t right, but just wait, it will come next century’.
Innovators, Imitators, Idiots
First come the innovators, who see opportunities that others don’t. Then come the imitators, who copy what the innovators have done. And then come the idiots, whose avarice undoes the very innovations they are trying to use to get rich.