1. Never explain why something important is important.

2. If you must explain it, don’t.

3. Knowing stuff others don’t know is most effective when others don’t know you know stuff they don’t know.

4. Language is largely made to show off, gossip, confuse people, delude them, charm them, seduce them, scare them, and exploit them. And, as a side effect, convey information. Just a side effect, you know.

5. The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind’s flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality—without exploiting them for fun and profit

6. When you say something, you think you are just saying something, but you are largely communicating why you had to say it.

7. Small injustice dresses up as vice; large injustice dresses up as virtue.

8. The worst damage has been caused by competent people trying to do good; the best improvements have been brought by incompetent ones not trying to do good.

9. An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.

10. The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds.