Sebastian David Lees
@sebs_tweets
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Technologist & software engineer. I create, talk, and write about technology. I also host @FatTonysPodcast .
🏴 ⊆ 🇬🇧
Joined July 2018
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• 13654 Tweets
The greatest opening to a textbook I have ever seen...
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@LeeAndersonMP_
Nonsense. If you want to see change in a democratic country, you campaign, raise awareness and protest for it. the fact that you, as an elected official don’t recognise this is shocking.
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@LeeAndersonMP_
... It's also worth noting the irony that you literally owe your job to people in the past campaigning to reduce the powers of the monarchy.
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Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.
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@NotTheTimCurry
The really cunty thing about this.. of all the amazing movies Tim has been in… of all of the amazing roles… they pick fucking Home Alone?!
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@nickw84
Lots of clever Easter eggs in this advert, I.e The women right at the start is wearing classic McDonalds colours…
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'To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week's newspapers.'
-
@nntaleb
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No matter what the outcome of the Ukraine invasion, A mythology has now been created in the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian people will now NEVER return back toward authoritarianism.
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@nntaleb
GPS data from Yellowstone shows how wolves self organise territory according to pack. Imagine drawing arbitrary borders through this. Yet we do so with people.
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Europe has Olive Oil vs. Butter. India has Wheat vs. Rice...
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“The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.”
…
@nntaleb
predicting the rise and fall of Bitcoin before it even existed.
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Why AI is massively overhyped
#124
:
A couple got fined £60 after a woman with a Knitter tshirt walked in a bus lane, triggering the anpr camera and sending a fine to the couples door.
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At an Italian restaurant in Cirencester and BOOM… Unexpected Taleb 😃
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There is a man at my local pub who only ever comes in on Wednesdays, at 1pm. His weekly routine is identical; he orders a bottle of champagne (on ice), and drinks it slowly, in silence, whilst reading an old book.
This man is winning at life.
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Just found my first real world use case for Chat GPT. This will save me a lot of time…
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TIL: The gender neutral term for sugar daddy is glucose guardian.
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People need to stop idolising the Classical Mediterranean. Ancient Greece & Rome would have been truly awful places to live; equivalent to a third world country by modern standards.
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@spectatorindex
Nothing quite like a bit of good old fashioned but of bribery to sway the masses.
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One of the hardest things about coming out of a 9-5 is the guilt you feel for being 'lazy'. Years of office environments program you to think that work is linear, rather than a power law / distribution.
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@nntaleb
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
- Michel de Montaigne
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Sold all my Crypto today after holding for 15+ years. Main reason I sold - psychologically the investment was now owning me, more than I was owning the investment. When it gets to that stage, it’s time to cash out.
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If you want to understand why the CCP is so tolerated in China, you only need to look at this…
China's GDP:
2000: $1.2 trillion
2022: $19.9 trillion
Ironically, they will become a victim of their own success. Creating a middle class will be an existential threat to the CCP.
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@nntaleb
On a more serious not, I was thinking recently about GPS has destroyed my ability to remember directions whilst driving. I used to drive all over the country without it. Now I can barely get to the supermarket.
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Thirteen years later, this still remains my favourite quote of all time...
"Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur."
- Nassim Taleb
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“Thank you money”, a more wholesome cousin of “Fuck you money”: The ability to give a friend in need money without it being a loan. Added bonus is that it’s much more attainable the fuck you money.
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It’s arrived - and just in time for my holiday. Not only is it topical - anything written by the GOAT is mandatory reading…
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“Administrators everywhere on the planet, in all businesses and pursuits, and at all times in history, have been the plague.” -
@nntaleb
Re-reading SITG - This quote is fucking awesome, and rings very very true.
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@ST0NEHENGE
Funded by Aileen Getty, heiress and descendant of oil magnate JP Getty. Of course she hasn’t let her environmental views stop her spending her incredible oil wealth, including buy Brad Pitt’s Los Feliz estate for ~$30m last year.
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@nntaleb
@PTetlock
I remember many years ago you were doing a Tawk at Oxford uni for the release of Antifragile. I was young and a little intimidated. You showed extraordinary kindness to all questioned asked from people like me, yet were tougher on the overly pompous / academic ones. Taught me a
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If virtue signalling had an epicentre, it would be LinkedIn.
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Nassim Taleb on success:
There's a single definition of success. If you look at yourself in the evening, and wonder if you disappoint the person you were at eighteen, right before people get corrupted by life. Let him or her be your only judge.
- Not your reputation
- Not your
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I’ve traveled to over 30 countries, and visited 100’s of towns, cities, and villages. Miami is the worst place I have ever been. A true hellscape.
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Imagine losing war to a comedian and then the country to a restaurateur.
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Wittgenstein's ruler: Shakespeare is one of the greatest writers of all time, yet has an average score of 3.6/5 on Goodreads.
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@nntaleb
Environment matters. My heart rate is higher talking to a girl at a bar Vs. Using a dating app, but the perceived effort is far higher on the dating app.
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Want to make a passive income? Target naive young men who want to make a passive income.
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Just finished
#RWRI
19 - A phenomenal experience. Yuggeee thanks to Nassim, Raphael, Robert and all the wonderful guest lecturers. Time to celebrate...
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Know your Razors, Guillotines & Hammers... 🧵
1/ Occam's Razor
When confronted with competing explanations, often the explanation with the fewest assumptions is the correct explanation.
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I would literally pay money to
@Twitter
for an option to remove / hide this garbage side panel.
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@nntaleb
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
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Microhubs are the future. WFH sucks for a lot of people, and so does commuting to an office. A decentralised network of microhubs would allow people to work locally, inject localism / accountability into communities and help regenerate UK high streets.
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Thinking of writing a book - “Navigating modernity”. Idea is 20-ish concepts you need to navigate the modern world. E.g Chesterton’s Fence, Ergodicity, Decentralisation etc… All presented at a high level with real examples of policy failure when ignored. What do people think?
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@Jac5Connor
@chsrbrts
Cost to fix a bug caused by ChatGOT that nobody checked for - millions.
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I was in the pub last night. There were two older gentlemen, probably late 50's. They were sat at a table together, each reading a book, having a pint and very occasionally talking to each other.
I've never seen two people so utterly comfortable in each others company.
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Anti-gluttony door in the Alcobaça Monastery, Portugal. Every monk had to fetch his own food from the kitchen, going through this 32 cm (1 ft) large door.
One for
@GuruAnaerobic
!
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- Fax machines were invented in 1843
- Samurai era ended in 1868
It’s therefore possible that a Samurai used a fax machine. The reason this seems so jarring is because we compartmentalise world history. Historical ages bleed into one another. History’s borders are fuzzy.
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Model vs. Reality. We view the world as the map we’ve learnt since childhood. Consider approaching the Earth from this vantage point. It looks alien, like a world from a Sci-Fi movie…
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A quiet conversation being held in many board rooms this morning will be "How do we get our business off the cloud".
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On non-ergodicity:
"All fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once."
- Terry Pratchett
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@nntaleb
His Cars too - his companies are registered in the UK, therefore his accounts are public record. Took me all of two minutes too pull up this… Balance Sheet for his luxury car rental business (he rents out his fancy cars). All purchased on finance, and 200k in debt.
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In extremistan, you only have to be right once. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learnt from
@nntaleb
.
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Elon has crossed the line from harmless fucking idiot to dangerous fucking idiot.
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There's a lot of modernity bashing on here. I'm gonna come out and say it; I LOVE modernity. Living 100 years ago (never mind 1000), would have sucked in ways I cannot comprehend.
Many of the problems of 'modernity' actually stem from our lack of self control amidst abundance.
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I would take a 9-5 job over earning a living via Twitter hustle any day of the week.
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@Jac5Connor
@nntaleb
100% agree, and I’ve been saying a similar thing for years. If you look at our TV, culture, even what baby names are currently popular here, it’s all a collective throwback to the “glory days”, it’s like we’re collectively masturbating over nostalgia…
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The 'Mystery Bus' - a free bus in Brussels, Belgium. Its route takes you to a mystery location if you're feeling a bit down or you just don't have anything to do that day.
One for
@rorysutherland
and
@pete_dyson
.
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Would there be interest in a ‘novelty’ twitter account called Wittgenstein’s ruler, that posts daily real world examples of the phenomenon?
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The Dutch call these ‘Elephant Paths’. They are also known as ‘Desire Paths’ They are a manifestation of a design’s failure to understand the needs of its user. Avoid Elephant Paths in your design.
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@JamesJWYork
@rorysutherland
Michigan State University built the campus first, then waited a year before adding paths, following the 'desire paths' that has been trodden in the grass...
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@nntaleb
Felix Dennis' book "How to get Rich" is fantastic for this. He spends the first half of the book warning you not to, and the second half warning you that victory in the pursuit of wealth is largely hollow.
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If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
- Cicero
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@nntaleb
For those wondering...
"The best are those who are wise but do not know they are. The most dangerous are those who are intelligent and think they are intelligent. I'm not worried about fools who think they're smart."
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Been self employed for 10 years, but that wasn't enough. Just signed off with my last client. No more client work - I'm now a full time tinkerer and exploiter of convexity.
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Can we please crowdsource who invented this, and where we can all purchase one?
CC:
@rorysutherland
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The clarity of
@nntaleb
's thought is piercing. It punched a hole in me 20 years ago that I've never been able to close.
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@livinglondonhis
There are also fences in London that are made from recycled WW2 medic stretchers...
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This will probably get me blocked by half my followers, but I think that American suburbs offer an enviable quality of life, and that having a 9-5 job can be really enjoyable and rewarding.
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Compare Ukraine, whose politicians include a former actor, boxer and entrepreneur, with the careerist politicians of Afghanistan.
There should be a requirement of ten years experience in a career (any non political role), before people are allowed to enter politics.
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Freinds: does anyone know why the population of Greece is so low? ~10m shocked me.. I would have imagined it to be far higher?
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The biggest problem with AirBnB is the dramatic range in quality - it can be a game of roulette and uncertainty is injected when you want it least (i.e on holiday). As
@rorysutherland
says, people don’t go to McDonalds because it’s the best, but because it’s the most consistent.
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On Wittgenstein’s ruler:
“The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it." - Jeff Bezos
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@fireduptxlawyer
Shut down X in the EU, not Europe. We need to stop confusing the two. Europe will still be here in 50 years. The EU will not.
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Seriously,
@elonmusk
- I would pay good money for the ability to remove the 'What's happening / trending' boxes.
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“Contra the prevailing belief, "success" isn't being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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15 years of zero interest rates have produced some of the weirdest start ups. It’s like an entrepreneurial version of inbred 18th century European royalty.
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BAD JOKE FRIDAY:
If you see a crime at an Apple Store, does that make you an iWitness?
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RE: Tech layoffs. You're often not getting the whole picture from the scaremongering headlines...
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Day one of
#RWRI
complete. Was a little shy* today but I’m sure I’ll warm up tomorrow.
Favourite insight of the day:
Path dependance matters more for ruin than non ruin. You can't first die, then get rich.
*hungover
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"Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse." -
@nntaleb
When your charming doctor calls you fat…
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Just encountered a BS hack in the wild I’ve never experienced before…
Waiter asked us if we “wanted to look at the dessert menu now, or wanted a little break first”. No option to decline - Brilliant!
One for
@rorysutherland
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Roman temple in Armenia. There is something spectacular about seeing a Roman temple against snow capped mountains...
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Four months into my sabbatical, I can feel my old self returning. The years of struggle and spit and toil are falling away, like a slowly melting glacier retreating across a forgotten landscape. I feel younger; as if youth were simply a lack of accumulated stressors.
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Mentally re-framing
@nntaleb
's concept of Via Negativa... I think of it as Won't Power vs. Will Power. It is an order of magnitude easier to NOT do something.
I.e. I will go on a fast vs. I won't eat today.
Subtle, but I've found it helps.
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EVERYTHING I hate about Twitter distilled into one Tweet…
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THE COFFEESHOP FALLACY
We’re good at recognising when we receive pleasure from consuming a certain good or service. But then we extrapolate incorrectly to the conclusion that owning said business will deliver even more pleasure.
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