Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.
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- epistemic humility, uncertainty, knowledge,

Everyone has a firmly held belief that an equally smart and informed person disagrees with.
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- rationality, beliefs, epistemic humility, favorite,

(highlight:: Good questions to ask to combat this reality are:
What haven’t I experienced firsthand that leaves me naive to how something works?
Which of my current views would I disagree with if I were born in a different country or generation?
What do I desperately want to be true, so much that I think it’s true when it’s clearly not?
Which of my current views would change if my incentives were different?)
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- knowledge, perspective, epistemic humility, certainty, understanding,
- [note::Great questions for reflection. I'm sure my answers to some of these would be illuminating.]

You don’t have to agree with others’ delusions or put up with their collateral damage. Just accepting that everyone wants easy and comforting answers in a complex and painful world is a rare skill
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(highlight:: The temptation to exploit every drop of opportunity leads many people to push relentlessly for more, more, more. They only discover the limits of what’s possible when they’ve gone too far, when the momentum of decline is often unstoppable.
Businesses that don’t want to hold inventory push so hard for efficient supply chains and just-in-time manufacturing, stripped of all shock absorbers and room for error. Then a pandemic hits, and supply chains crumble.
Young workers eager for promotion push themselves until they’ve hit burnout, when they physically can’t continue in their positions and quit, which often marks the end of compounding their skills and work relationships.
People on social media push relentlessly for more likes and retweets until their audience is sick of them.
In each case there’s value in saying, “I could have more and do more, but this is good enough.”
But it’s such a rare skill. People don’t like leaving opportunities on the table, and it’s counterintuitive to realize that you’ll likely end up with more than those whose appetite for more is insatiable.)
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- optimization, opportunity cost, opportunity, letting go,
- [note::Similarly, there's a risk of exploring opportunities to the point where you never adequately exploit any of them. I struggle with this a lot (especially when it comes to even deciding what to read and highlight), but I have to remember that there is no "perfectly optimal" way to do anything. And exploiting opportunities serendipitously as opposed to systematically can often yield surprising benefits.]

Mark Twain said kids provide the most interesting information, “for they tell all they know and then they stop.” Adults lose this skill and falsely associate the number of words with the amount of insight.
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- [note::Number of words (and complexity of words) is not proportional to amount of insight communicated. Though, I feel like there's not an insignificant number of people that might not recognize this]

After writing every sentence it helps to ask “Would the reader still get my point if I deleted that line?”
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- writing,

A writer once recommended imagining someone pays you $100 for every word you remove from your draft.
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- writing,

Poor communicators ramble. Good communicators leave out unnecessary details. Great communicators treat words as the scarcest commodity.
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- [note::Reminds me of the life coach from Bali I talked to a few months back who spoke extremely succinctly. I couldn't help but feel a sense of inadequacy for the difference in "things communicated per word" between us. I tend to ramble a lot and need to focus on slowing down my speech and being more selective about the words I use. Am I leaving out unnecessary details? What is the most basic element of the idea I'm trying to communicate? Is this story effective in getting the point across? Do I actually need the story to communicate the idea? These are the kinds of questions I should ask myself regularly.]