Sunday, October 7, 2018

What I've Been Reading

Another way of putting this is: the risk we should most fear is not the risk we easily imagine. It is the risk that we don't.

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There is another way to think of John MacWilliams's fifth risk: the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long term risks with short-term solutions. "Program management" is not just program management. "Program management is the existential threat that you never really even imagine as a risk. 

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis.

Please read this book ! That would a good starting point to understand and fix the "strange" relationship between US government and it's citizens. And that would also be initial step to kill that ideologue in you.

  • Here is the where the Trump administrations willful ignorance plays a role. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand the problems. There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview. 
  • At any given time in America, there are lots of seriously smart people with bold ideas that might change life as we know it - it may be the most delightful distinguishing feature of our society. The idea behind ARPA-E was to find the best of these ideas that the free market had declined to finance and make sure they were given a chance. 
We don't just have markets. We have values. 

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