When you cite some old wisdom-style quote and add “important truth”, “to remember” or “something to live by”, you are not doing so because it is good, only because it is inapplicable. Had it been both good and applicable you would not have had to cite it. Wisdom that is hard to execute isn’t really widom.
A trivial, very trivial, heuristics is to never take an advice from someone who stands to directly benefit from it. Trivial but not too practiced, and evidently hard to practice. A few years ago, a speaker’s agent wrote to tell me why it is good FOR ME to use an agent, and I was tempted to argue with him about it until I remembered the heuristic. The entire of profession of “sales” is based on the corruption of intuitions in social setting.
(HEURISTICS)
The ones who refer to you as “my friend” are most likely to betray you.
[HEURISTICS]
There are three categories of things: Fragile things that break, like the financial system; robust things that don’t break easily but don’t improve, like the Brooklyn Bridge; and my new category, “antifragile” things that gain strength from stressors and get stronger from failure, like evolution. The fundamental problem in foreign policy is that people shoot for stability rather than antifragility.
The most stable country in the history of mankind, and probably the most boring, by the way, is Switzerland. It’s not even a city-state environment; it’s a municipal state. Most decisions are made at the local level, which allows for distributed errors that don’t adversely affect the wider system. Meanwhile, people want a united Europe, more alignment, and look at the problems. The solution is right in the middle of Europe — Switzerland. It’s not united! It doesn’t have a Brussels! It doesn’t need one.
via Epiphanies from Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Foreign Policy.
HatTip to Dave Lull (Thanks Dave!)
Interpreted intelligently, a disparagement will be much more flattering than any compliment.