You can recognize most people at the sound of their voices but very, very few at their vocabulary and sentences.
– We are biologically so idiosyncratic and differentiated: out of 7 billion it is rare to find two persons who are exactly alike. But when you listen to conversation, opinions, and speeches people become almost identical to some group or a consensus, as if they didn’t want to be themselves any more.
– This is even more striking when you read articles and books. It is so hard to find something *not* generic, something that is not a linear combination of other things. It is even worse with academic papers (most academic papers are even worse… commoditized… I stop here).
– So when you look at yourself in the mirror remember that what’s inside your cranium should be a step closer in differentiation to what’s outside of it.

You can recognize most people at the sound of… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.