the story of mammalian evolution hasn’t been a directional “march of progress”, but rather has many characteristics of a random and diffusive walk

The very universality of maths encourages them to range with dangerous confidence outside their domain.

The chances that someone born in 1992 has insights that eluded the 100 billion-plus people who have lived until now are, if not zero, then small, such are the Bayesian priors.

“The point I want to make again and again and again is that, relative to the last time CBO was projecting stable debt/GDP, spending is down, not up,” Kogan said in a tweet Friday night. “It’s lower revenue that’s 100% responsible for the change in debt projections. If you take away nothing else, leave with this point.”