A businessperson cares abt his reputation as it facilitates business, not as an end. For people who aren't free, reputation is the end. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In most debates, people seem to be trying to convince one another; but all they can hope for is new arguments to convince themselves.

Science had shifted, thanks to Bacon, into an emphasis on empirical observation. The problem is that, without a proper method, empirical observations can lead you astray. Hume came to... stress the need for some rigor in the gathering and interpretation of knowledge... epistemology... Hume is the first modern epistemologist... he was an obsessive skeptic and never believed... that a link between two items could be established as being causal.

The principle of intervention, like that of healers, is first do no harm (primum non nocere); even more, we will argue, those who don’t take risks should never be involved in making decisions.