The Making of an Historian - Garry Will's

Between the slave power and states rights there was no necessary connection. The slave power, when in control, was a centralizing influence, and all the most considerable encroachment on states' rights were its acts. The acquisition and admission of Louisiana; The embargo; the War of 1812; the annexation of Texas by "joint resolution" [rather than treaty]; the war with Mexico, declared by the mere announcement of President Polk; the Fugitive Slave Law; the Dred Scott decision - all triumphs of the slave power - did far more than either tariffs or internal improvements, which in their origin were also southern measures, to destroy the very memory of states' rights as they existed in 1789. Whenever a question arose of extending or protecting slavery, the slaveholders became friends of centralized power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy. Slavery in fact required centralization in order to maintain and protect itself, but it required to control the centralized machine; it needed despotic principles of government, but it needed them exclusively for its own use.

This eighteenth-century document is still the law of the land, and it must be construed as such. How can it give us infallible guidance when it is fallible? The answer is obvious, though unacceptable to some. It must be treated as what it is, as a fallible thing. It is a great human achievement, but it reflects a society that was deeply flawed (as all societies must be). The idea of human dignity in that society was very far from ours. It denied basic human rights not only to slaves, but to women, to Native Americans, to recent and propertyless immigrants. Yet some would reimpose the norms of that society on our time - for instance, in the constitutional definition of "cruel and unusual punishment." The eighteenth century routinely practiced things we now consider barbaric - public lashing, for instance, judicial mutilation, punitive treatment of the insane, public execution, capital punishment for minor felonies. Thomas Jefferson proposed the lex talionis for the state of Virginia. Here is his prescription for sexual offenses:

  "Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half diameter at the least."

Since he proposed these punishments, he obviously did not think them cruel or unusual. To say that we are bound by the view of his society is to deny all possibility for moral progress.

The idea that Americans can be neatly sorted into Jeffersonians or Hamiltonians brings to mind the W.S. Gilbert lyric in Iolanthe:

I often think it's comical
How Nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
or else a little Conservative. 

Yet Americans continue to think we must get right with the Founders.

What is it to have that new-old thing, a "revolutionary tradition"? If it is a tradition, it should preclude or evade the need for revolution. If it is still revolutionary, it should be fundamentally remaking itself on a continuing basis...
Some think this problem is solved by the fact that America's basic values are capitalistic, and capitalism is itself a blend of revolutionary mobility and traditional stability. As Joseph Schumpeter demonstrated, there is nothing less rooted in the past - more ready for gambles on the future and risk in the present - than capitalism. It professes to remake anything and everything at the whim of the market. Yet those with the biggest stake in the profits of the system are determined to hold on to the power they wield, resisting at least one kind of change, that which would replace them. There, then, you have a revolutionary tradition.
Yet where is this to be found in the Constitution? The capitalist system is no more present there than is the political party system. Protection of property and trade is there. But that is not the same thing as the capitalist system....

The Jeffersonians helped bring about a country different from the one they had to deal with in 1800. The very terms used to describe it had changed radically  in meaning. "Nation" no longer referred to a collection of states. The new country envisaged things the old one had not - projection of American power abroad, and energetic adoption of the means of western expansion, greater hesitancy to punish "heresy," a governmental patronage of science. These could not be crammed back into the old straitjackets of prior ideology. Attempting to do that is what has made people misread the History, thinking Jefferson, if he stopped acting like a Republican in the John Randolph mode, had to become a Federalist in the Hamilton mode, as if there were no alternatives to the one or the other. This or that. Either-or. Adams says both-neither. History is far more complex than the interplay of two (or many) ideologies. Chance, mistakes, opportunism, progress, reassessments, forgetfulness - all of them and more concatenate something less neat than anyone envisaged.
There was no going back to Jefferson's or Hamilton's "original intent."

"Only the destitute are innocent ...

"Only the destitute are innocent ... Only those without bread are without fault." Jesus of Nazareth, as translated/interpreted by John Dominic Crossan

Embedded within imperfection is perfection.
Before something is everything.

i am a butterfly or a tree. perhaps a mountain stream, or a beam of sunlight early in the morning. i am buddhist, and christian, and muslim and jew and hindu too. my creed is silence. there are no capitals in my name nor capitols where i come from. my flag is weaved from cotton still dotting fields like snow and its pole stands uncut amongst the ponderosa forest. i am brown and red and white and black. i am man and woman, mother and father, son and daughter, sister and brother. i am stranger and friend, never enemy. now you see me and then you don't but i am here with you just the same as you are with me. we are as inseperable as one photon of light is from another. i am on the no way to a land infinitely near and forever present.

THE DEMISE OF HABEAS CORPUS AND THE RISE OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY:

THE DEMISE OF HABEAS CORPUS AND THE RISE OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY:

What can possibly be wrong with the elementary concept that if a defendant has been convicted or sentenced by a state court in violation of the United States Constitution, that person should not be executed or imprisoned for a term of the rest of his natural life, or indeed for any term at all?)35

 As a condition for obtaining habeas corpus from a federal court, a state prisoner must show that the state court’s ruling . . . was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement. 37

Although there are many reasons why state courts are unable or unwilling to afford the same dedication to federal constitutional rights as are federal courts, the most obvious is that federal judges have life tenure and salary protection, while many state judges do their job under the threat of an election challenge if they issue or join in unpopular decisions, especially in death penalty cases.54 While state judges who decide criminal appeals face the possibility that they will be labeled “soft on crime,” federal judges are free to decide such issues secure in the knowledge that the unpopularity of their decisions can pose no threat to their job security. Federal judges also have the advantage of more experience enforcing individual constitutional rights, as well as a special obligation to the Constitution.55 Indeed, the protection of the federal Constitution is the fundamental reason we have federal courts: that is simply the most important function federal judges perform.

 In Andrade, the defendant was convicted of two counts of petty theft for stealing approximately $150 in videotapes from two Kmarts.67 Under California’s Three Strikes law, a state court sentenced the defendant to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life, and a state appellate court (in an unpublished opinion) rejected his argument that his sentence violated the Eighth Amendment.6

 Once again, the Court’s concern for protecting government officials in general and state and local law enforcement officers in particular has prevailed over the constitutional rights of individuals. In recent years, the Court has used the qualified immunity doctrine, which shields officials from civil liability as long as their actions do not violate “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known,”128 to severely restrict the ability of individuals to recover for constitutional violations that they suffer at the hands of law enforcement.

The Court has often remarked that “to perform its high function in the best way[,] ‘justice must satisfy the appearance of justice.’ ”165 In a country in which a disproportionate number of individuals who are behind bars or have been treated unlawfully by law enforcement are minorities—indeed, a country in which black juveniles are more than four times as likely as white juveniles to be incarcerated, even though evidence shows that they commit many offenses at similar rates166—satisfying the appearance of justice means ensuring that individuals do not remain in prison in violation of the Constitution or face excessive force at the hands of law enforcement without a proper remedy. On this score, the Court has simply failed in its mission

 After all, a Court that was attentive to the unequal treatment of minorities would fulfill its obligation to enforce the law regarding discrimination, rather than facilely asserting that “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”172 Surely, the Court would not abdicate its role with respect to the criminal law on the ground that “the way to stop murder is to stop murdering,” or that “the way to stop crime is to stop committing it.” More basically, a Court that understood the injustices faced by minorities every day in this country would not assume that the time of the postracial society has arrived and that the effects of our deeply rooted history of racial discrimination have been eradicated.173

“that the law is not an abstract concept removed from the society it serves, and that judges, as safeguarders of the Constitution, must constantly strive to narrow the gap between the ideal of equal justice and the reality of social inequality.”175

To be clear, while I disagree with what the Supreme Court has done to federal habeas review and to the doctrine of qualified immunity, the problem is that my colleagues and I are, in fact, bound to follow its rulings—not because these rulings are consistent with the text or purpose of AEDPA, and not because the Court’s approach to qualified immunity is necessary to the welfare of law enforcement officers; rather, we follow the Court’s rulings because the system of law that we so admire and respect contains a hierarchy in which the Supreme Court rests at the top. Nevertheless, I must express my regret that the Court’s jurisprudence in the two areas discussed in this Essay risks turning federal judges from protectors of the Constitution into unreasoning deniers of worthy claims of constitutional rights. It is unfortunate that even reasonable, moderate rulings of federal courts meant to preserve fundamental values against state abuses are now denounced as extreme. The result is an unnecessary and unjust process that values other concerns of far less importance over the constitutional rights of individuals—rights that lie at the heart of our judicial system.

I am an optimist. I still believe that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”178 As we look back on our constitutional history, I see a trend toward progress and social justice, sometimes after painful battles and sometimes after painful lapses or even painful defeats. Yet this is a nation that in most respects continues to improve its democracy, sometimes dragging the Supreme Court with it and sometimes being dragged in that direction by its judiciary. I would hope that some of the recent errors the Court has made will be corrected as the arc of history unfolds and that the Court will in the long run recognize that we are a single nation, with a Constitution dedicated to promoting the general welfare, ensuring the equality of all individuals, and guaranteeing liberty and justice to all—a Constitution that lives and breathes as our great nation evolves in light of the moral, economic, and scientific forces that shape our destiny

Why Buddhism is True - Robert Wright

is the struggle for enduring peace also the struggle for truth?

It would be nice to know that when people pursue the path to liberation - ...- they are helping humanity broadly, that the quest for individual salvation advances the quest for social salvation.

feelings are said to be true of false depending on whether they align with their evolutionary purpose. If the feelings promote well-being they are considered good or true; if they lead to things that are ultimately bad for a person, then we could say they are false.

environmental mismatch = a feeling designed by natural selection that is true in one natural environment, but false in another.

natural selection didn't design your mind to see the world clearly; it designed your mind to have perceptions and beliefs that would help take care of your genes.

false positive - you take remedial action even when its not called for

1. Our feelings weren't designed to depict reality accurately even in our natural environment.
2. The fact that we're not living in a "natural' environment makes our feeling even less reliable guides to reality.
3. Underlying it all is the happiness delusion. The longing for happiness itself is a delusion that leaves us with a desire for more of what we think makes up happy.

'The cost of survival might be a lifetime of discomfort'   Aaron Beck - Cognitive Therapy and The Emotional Disorders.

One thing all feelings have in common is that they were originally "designed" to convince you to follow them. They feel right and true almost by definition. They actively discourage you from viewing them objectively.

default mode network - a network in the brain that remains active when you're doing nothing. It is the network our mind wanders when it is wandering. What you're not doing in the default mode is focusing on the present moment. It is easy to overcome the default mode by participating in a task that requires active concentration.

concentration meditation = focus one's concentration on breath, a mantra, a visual image, a bodily sensation, a physical sound.

mindfulness meditation = experiencing whatever you are experiencing.

enlightenment - ridding yourself of the illusion of what is going on inside yourself, and outside of yourself.
asymptote  - something you can get closer to but never quite reach.

insight = apprehending the 3 marks of existence: impermanence, suffering or unsatisfactoriness, and non-self.

deeply realizing that you are selfless - ...- can make you selfless in the more familiar sense of the term.

self - control, persists through time

in the deepest sense the self doesn't exist, human language isn't very good at describing reality at the deepest level. So as a practical matter - as a linguistic convention - we have to talk about there being an I and a you and a he and a she. In other words, the self doesn't exist in an "untimate" sense, but it exists in a "conventional" sense.

The Buddha believed that the less you judge things - including the contents of your mind - the more clearly you'll see them, and the less deluded you'll be.

We think we're better than average at not being biased in thinking that we're better than average.

So, all told, we're under at least two kinds of illusions. One is about the nature of the conscious self, which we see as more in control of things than it actually is. The other illusion is about exactly what kind of people we are - namely, capable and upstanding. You might call these two misconceptions the illusion about our selves and the illusion about ourselves.

benneffectance - the tendency to take credit for success, while denying responsibility for failure.

modular mind - the mind is composed of lots of specialized modules... and it's the interplay among these modules that shapes your behavior. And much of this interplay happens without conscious awareness.

three ways you shouldn't conceive of modules:

1. the modules aren't like a bunch of physical compartments.
2. The different modules aren't like the blades on a Swiss Army knife or the apps on a smartphone.
3. The modules aren't like departments in a company's organization chart.

Feelings aren't just little parts of the thing you had thought of as the self; they are closer to its core; they are doing  what you had thought "you" were doing: calling the shots.

Theory of Mind = thinking about what other people are thinking.

Psychologists who adhere to the modular model of the mind tend toward the idea that the conscious you isn't choosing the different modules so much as being commandeered by the modules that have prevailed....
Thoughts are directed toward what we think is the conscious mind... the conscious mind doesn't create thoughts, it receives them.

modules = attracting mates, keeping mates, enhancing your status, taking care of kin, tending to friendships, etc.

feelings are the things that give a particular module greater influence... "Every thought has a propellant, and that propellant is emotional." Akincano Marc Weber. Feelings are judgments about how various things relate to an animal's Darwinian interests.... feelings are the glue that makes thoughts stick to your consciousness.

Self Control - reason prevailing over feelings. "Reason alone," Hume argued, "can never oppose passion in the direction of the will." Nothing "can oppose or retard the impulse of passion but a contrary impulse."

both the problems we call therapeutic and the problems we call spiritual are a product of not seeing things clearly.

Global Wealth Report 2017

Global Wealth Report 2017

Wealth per adult across countries
Switzerland (USD 537,600), Australia (USD 402,600) and the United States (USD 388,600) continue to occupy the first three positions in the ranking of wealth per adult .... The ranking by median wealth per adult
favors countries with lower levels of wealth inequality and produces a somewhat different ranking.  In contrast, high wealth inequality pushes Denmark (USD 87,200) out of the top ten list, while median wealth of USD 55,900 relegates the United States to 21st place, alongside Austria and Greece

Once debts have been subtracted, a person needed only USD 3,582 to be among the wealthiest half of
world citizens in mid-2017. However, USD 76,754 is required to be a member of the top 10% of global
wealth holders, and USD 770,368 to belong to the top 1%. While the bottom half of adults collectively
own less than 1% of total wealth, the richest decile (top 10% of adults) owns 88% of global assets, and the top percentile alone accounts for half of total household wealth.


Monitoring world wealth
Wealth is a key component of the economic system, valued as a source of finance for future consumption
particularly in retirement, and for reducing vulnerability to shocks such as unemployment, ill health, or natural disasters. Wealth also enhances opportunities for informal sector and entrepreneurial activities, when used either directly or as collateral for loans. These functions are less important in countries that have generous state pensions, adequate social safety nets, good public healthcare, high-quality public education, and well-developed business finance...Valued at current exchange rates, total global wealth increased by USD 16.7 trillion, or 6.4%, in the year to mid-2017. Controlling for exchange rate movements, the rise was a little larger, at USD 18.9 trillion. The United States again led the way with a gain of USD 8.5 trillion, most arising from financial assets. Elsewhere, however, the gains derived primarily from non-financial assets.

Wealth varies greatly across individuals in every part of the world. Our estimates suggest that the lower
half of global adults collectively owns less than 1% of global wealth, while the richest 10% of adults own
88% of all wealth and the top 1% account for half of all global assets.

Waking Up - Sam Harris

paradox of spiritual seeking = the deepest goal of spirituality is freedom from the illusion of the self - and to seek such freedom, as though it were a future state to be attained through effort, is to reinforce the chains of one's apparent bondage in each moment.

the urge to attain self-transcendence or any other mystical experience is a symptom of the very disease we want to cure.

Consciousness is already free of anything that remotely resembles a self - and there is nothing that you can do, as an illusory ego, to realize this.

most effort arises from the very illusion of bondage that one is seeking to overcome.
[If bondage to the self is an illusion, then how can mindfulness of the illusion free one from the bondage, the bondage was never real]

If freedom is possible, there must be some mode of ordinary consciousness in which it can be expressed?

[If "I" am going to die, who or what is the "I" that is going to die?]

"The mind is a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts arise because there is a thinker. The thinker is the ego. The ego, if sought, will automatically vanish." Ramana Maharshi

[ mind = thoughts (caused by) thinker; therefore, if thinker is sought, thinker vanishes, and thoughts vanish. If thoughts are sought, thoughts vanish and thinker vanishes]

Direct method = Reality is simply the loss of the ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself.

[the problem is reality is not simply the loss of the ego. In fact, the ego, the thinker, and the thoughts produced are an intricate part of the fabric of reality]

Consciousness is the prior condition of every experience; the self or ego is an illusory appearance within it; look closely for what you are calling "I," and the feeling of being a separate self will disappear; what remains, as a matter of experience, is a field of consciousness - free, undivided, and intrinsically uncontaminated by its ever-changing contents.

Today, a red-golden leafs falls aimlessly to the ground,
only yesterday, it seems, it was a green bud in spring
that clung tenaciously to its tree for life
deriving its essence and giving back sustenance;
Only, tragically, it seems, to finally release its grip.
Blown, raked, and swept into a pile,
it is, seemingly, no more clinging or falling.
Looking back, it seems, it was only an illusion.
a thing, seemingly, that once never was.
a thing, seemingly, forever no more.
pondering a leaf, it seems the illusion is only an illusion.

thinking about what is beyond thought is still thought... Being able to stand perfectly free of the feeling of self is the start of one's spiritual journey, not its end.
[a glimpse of selflessness is still self-ful. The only way to get a glimpse of selflessness is to be unaware of it.]

mindfulness must be synonymous with dispelling the illusion of the self....one "takes the goal as the path," freedom from self is the very thing one practices.

consciousness is intrinsically free of self... the truth of nonduality, once glimpsed, is obvious and always available. self transcendence is the experience that there is no self to transcend.

the implied center of cognition and emotion simply falls away, and it is obvious that consciousness is never truly confined by what it knows. That which is aware of sadness is not sad. That which is aware of fear is not fearful.

thoughts and emotions arise in consciousness the way that images appear on the surface of a mirror.

[consciousness is the mirror, you are consciousness, you are the mirror]

Meditation doesn't entail the suppression of thoughts, but it does require we notice them as they arise and that we recognize their transitory nature

consciousness is free. Meditation is the practice of of finding this freedom, by breaking one's identification with the thoughts and emotions that arise, and to experience them just as they are.

"I" am not even an ingredient, necessary or not, of my own mind, much less of the universe.

selflessness is not a deep feature of consciousness; it is on the surface.

If you are in pain, there is a simple way out. Accept the pain as it arises and do not fight it. It is a transitory experience.

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self”.  Albert Einstein

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”
Albert Einstein

boredom - is simply a lack of attention

many people renounce the world because they cannot find a place in it

there is only consciousness and its contents; there is no inner self who is conscious.

The truth is that, whatever happens after death, it is possible to justify a life of spiritual practice and self-transcendence without pretending to know things we do not know.

Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness... Every waking moment - and even in our dreams - we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness we value.

the brain does exclude an extraordinary amount of information from consciousness.

One thing is certain: The mind is vaster and more fluid that our ordinary, waking consciousness suggests.

Happiness and suffering, however extreme, are mental events. The mind depends on the body, and the body upon the world, but everything good or bad that happens in your life must appear in consciousness to matter.

consciousness has no form because anything that would give it form must arise withing consciousness. Consciousness is simply the light which the contours of mind and body are known... Consciousness can appear to take shape for a time, but over time it is possible to recognize it never does.... Consciousness is itself divisible, as in the split-brain patients, but even in intact brains consciousness is blind and unaware of most of what the mind is doing. Everything we believe ourselves to be.... depends upon distinct processes that we are unaware of and don't fully understand, and are spread our over the whole brain.... The sense therefore that we are unified subjects - the unchanging thinker of our thoughts is an illusion. The self we experience can only be experienced in the present moment for it is a transitory experience. Each of us is identical to same principles that bring value to the universe

We are always and everywhere in the presence of reality. Indeed, the human mind is the most complex and subtle expression of reality that we have thus far experienced.

[There is nothing we think or do in this life or in this world, that can be undone in another life or another world. If there is a reality that is larger and more vast than the one we experience, then we are already a part of it.]

Power Laws and The State of Being Stuck

A power law is often represented by an equation with an exponent:

Y=MX^B

Each letter represents a number. Y is a function (the result); X is the variable (the thing you can change); B is the order of scaling (the exponent); and M is a constant (unchanging).

One of the characteristics of a complex system is that the behavior of the system differs from the simple addition of its parts... “the whole seems to take on a life of its own, almost dissociated from the specific characteristics of its individual building blocks.”  Geoffrey West

emergent behavior = collective outcome, in which a system manifests significantly different characteristics from those resulting from simply adding up all of the contributions of its individual constituent parts,

diminishing returns = the point where more input yields progressively less output

Future Value = (Present Value)(1+i)^n

https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2017/11/power-laws/

being stuck is part of the process.

“Then you have to stop,” Wiles said. “Let your mind relax a bit…. Your subconscious is making connections. And you start again—the next afternoon, the next day, the next week.”Patience, perseverance, acceptance—this is what defines a mathematician. (Andrew Wiles)

automaticity = monotonous productivity, a recipe, Method, the panacea, the answer key

grit = perseverance is a partly a matter of personality, of exhibiting the right characteristics: tenacity, determination, a sort of healthy native stubbornness. 

fixed mindset = one’s intelligence and abilities are unchanging, stable traits. 

growth mindset  = effort fuels progress. The harder you work, the more you’ll learn. To be stuck is a transient state, which you overcome with patience and persistence.

perseverance is neither about personality (as with grit) nor belief (as with mindset). Rather, it’s about emotion.

delicate emotions of discovery = the immense release, the inner fireworks, of solving a problem at last.

Zero to One - Peter Thiel

the more we compete, the less we gain.

Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

it’s competition, not business, that is like war: allegedly necessary, supposedly valiant, but ultimately destructive.

anyone would fight for things that matter; true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter. This twisted logic is part of human nature, but it’s disastrous in business. If you can
recognize competition as a destructive force instead of a sign of value, you’re already more sane than most.

a great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future ... Simply stated, the value of a business today is the sum of all the money it will make in the future. (To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.)...Comparing discounted cash flows shows the difference between low-growth businesses and highgrowth startups at its starkest. Most of the value of low-growth businesses is in the near term

For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, ... will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer; instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.

Every startup is small at the start. Every monopoly dominates a large share of its market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market....The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors.

You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat the
future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if
you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it.

And monopoly businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated competitors

the power law—so named because exponential equations describe severely unequal distributions—is the law of the universe.

we don’t live in a normal world; we live under a power law

If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.

The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined.

since nobody wants to give up on an investment, VCs usually spend even more time on the most problematic companies than they do on the most obviously successful.

The power law is not just important to investors; rather, it’s important to everybody because everybody is an investor.

Religious fundamentalism, for example, allows no middle ground for hard questions: there are easy truths that children are expected to rattle off, and then there are the mysteries of God, which can’t be explained. In between—the zone of hard truths—lies heresy.

Every injustice necessarily involves a moral truth that very few people recognize early on: in a democratic
society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don’t perceive it to be unjust.

“if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” James Madison

anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draw a regular salary from your company is fundamentally misaligned.

A company does better the less it pays the CEO—that’s one of the single clearest patterns I’ve noticed from investing in hundreds of startups ... High pay incentivizes him to defend the status quo along with his salary, not to work with everyone else to surface problems and fix them aggressively. A cash-poor executive, by contrast, will focus on increasing the value of the company as a whole.

If a CEO doesn’t set an example by taking the lowest salary in the company, he can do the same thing
by drawing the highest salary. So long as that figure is still modest, it sets an effective ceiling on cash
compensation....high cash compensation teaches workers to claim value from the company as
it already exists instead of investing their time to create new value in the future. A cash bonus is
slightly better than a cash salary—at least it’s contingent on a job well done. But even so-called
incentive pay encourages short-term thinking and value grabbing. Any kind of cash is more about the
present than the future.... Equity is the one form of compensation that can effectively orient people toward
creating value in the future.

The most valuable kind of company maintains an openness to invention that is most characteristic

of beginnings. This leads to a second, less obvious understanding of the founding: it lasts as long as a

company is creating new things, and it ends when creation stops.

no company has a culture; every company is a culture

job assignments aren’t just about the relationships between workers and tasks; they’re also about relationships between employees.... Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to
build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism....every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an
autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.

The best startups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is
that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are
fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.

advertising matters because it works. It works on nerds, and it works
on you. You may think that you’re an exception; that your preferences are authentic, and advertising
only works on other people. It’s easy to resist the most obvious sales pitches, so we entertain a false
confidence in our own independence of mind. But advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product
right away; it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later. Anyone who can’t
acknowledge its likely effect on himself is doubly deceived.

Sales is..: an orchestrated campaign to change surface appearances without changing the underlying reality.

The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.

Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation.
The converse is not true.

Will a machine replace you?
Futurists can seem like they hope the answer is yes. Luddites are so worried about being replaced
that they would rather we stop building new technology altogether. Neither side questions the premise
that better computers will necessarily replace human workers. But that premise is wrong: computers
are complements for humans, not substitutes. The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be
built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.

people compete for jobs and for resources; computers compete for neither.

computers are far more different from people than any two people are different from each other: men and machines are good at fundamentally different things. People have intentionality—we form plans and make decisions in complicated situations. We’re less good at making sense of enormous amounts of data. Computers are exactly the opposite: they excel at efficient data processing, but they struggle to make basic judgments that would be simple for any human

1. The Engineering Question
Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
2. The Timing Question
Is now the right time to start your particular business?
3. The Monopoly Question
Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
4. The People Question
Do you have the right team?
5. The Distribution Question
Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
6. The Durability Question
Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
7. The Secret Question
Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?

cleantech executives were running around wearing suits and ties. This was a huge red flag, because real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans. So we instituted a blanket rule: pass on any company whose founders dressed up for pitch meetings.never invest in a tech CEO that wears a suit—got us to the truth a lot faster. The best sales is hidden. There’s nothing wrong with a CEO who can sell, but if he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech