Все любопытственнее и любопытственнее

Пол Грэм пишет статьи на все более и более общие темы. Начал с программирования, потом перешел на менеджмент стартапов. Последняя его статья называется How to Do What You Love и посвящена, можно сказать общим философским вопросам бытия человека в современном мире. Несколько цитат

It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.

if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what's admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

А вот что он говорит про гуманитариев

Most good mathematicians would work on math even if there were no jobs as math professors, whereas in the departments at the other end of the spectrum, the availability of teaching jobs is the driver: people would rather be English professors than work in ad agencies, and publishing papers is the way you compete for such jobs. Math would happen without math departments, but it is the existence of English majors, and therefore jobs teaching them, that calls into being all those thousands of dreary papers about gender and identity in the novels of Conrad. No one does that kind of thing for fun.

Наличие фидошных эх вроде SU.BOOKS свидетельствует о том, что тут он не совсем прав. Люди занимаются филологическими изысканиями, когда им за это не платят. А вот эта мысль совсем интересна и неожиданна

All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves, simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won't get a share in the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant, you'll have to deal with the consequences.

И это тоже сильно:

And if you're ambitious ... you have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible.

Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most people have no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money.

А самый перл - в примечаниях:

you should prevent your beliefs about how things are from being contaminated by how you wish they were. Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. The continuing popularity of religion is the most visible index of that.

Запретить пылесосы!

Герой грэмгриновского романа "Наш человек в Гаване" Уормолд продавал пылесосы.
И одновременно работал на британскую разведку.
Соответственно, если следовать той логике, которая нынче продвигается во многих средствах массовой информации,
после разоблачения Уормодла кубинскому правительству следовало запретить пылесосы.

Навеяно постом andronic.