We are prone to epidemics of fallacies (scientism, universalism, academism, psychosociologism, stateworshipism), but not epidemics of wisdom, as natu… - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Never take cooking advice from a waiter.

I noticed that very intelligent and informed persons were at no advantage over cabdrivers in their predictions, but there was a crucial difference. Cabdrivers did not believe that they understood as much as learned people - really, they were not the experts and they knew it. Nobody knew anything, but elite thinkers thought that they knew more than the rest because they were elite thinkers, and if you're a member of the elite, you automatically know more than the nonelite.

"My experience is that money and transactions purify relations; ideas and abstract matters like "recognition" and "credit" warp them, creating an atmosphere of perpetual rivalry."