They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring t… - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.

The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither.

I have respect for mother nature's methods of robustness (billions of years allow most of what is fragile to break); classical thought is more robust (in its respect for the unknown, the epistemic humility) than the modern post-Enlightenment naïve pseudoscientific autism. Thus my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity’s phoniness, nerdiness and philistinism.

The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.