mitchelldeacon9

For a contrarian argument, it is worth considering the advice of Michael Porter in his seminal study "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors" (published in 1980):

> Some argue that firms should not choose competitive positions at all but concentrate on staying flexible, incorporating new ideas, or building up critical resources or core competencies that are portrayed as independent of competitive position. I respectfully disagree. Staying flexible in strategic terms renders competitive advantage almost unobtainable. Jumping from strategy to strategy makes it impossible to be good at implementing any of them. Continuous incorporation of new ideas is important to maintaining operational effectiveness, but this surely is not inconsistent with having a firm strategic position (xv-xvi)... A strategic position is a path, not a fixed location (xiv).

In other words, there is no such animal as a "fully diversified" entrepreneurial business (unless your business is simply investing money in a diversified stock portfolio). The very concept of a (non-financial) capitalist enterprise implies some degree of specialization. Even YC, to some extent, specializes and focuses their investments in certain high-tech industries.

Here are some classics in cognitive psychology with direct quotes that illustrate some of the main themes:

Richard Rhodes (1986) Making of the Atomic Bomb

"In scientific work, creative thinking demands seeing things not seen previously, or in ways not previously imagined; and this necessitates jumping off from 'normal' positions, and taking risks by departing from reality. The difference between the thinking of the paranoid patient and the scientist comes from the latter's ability and willingness to test out his fantasies or grandiose conceptualizations through the systems of checks and balances science has established – and to give up those schemes that are shown not to be valid on the basis of these scientific checks. It is specifically because science provides such a framework of rules and regulations to control and set bounds to paranoid thinking that a scientist can feel comfortable about taking the paranoid leaps. Without this structuring, the threat of such unrealistic, illogical, and even bizarre thinking to overall thought and personality organization in general would be too great to permit the scientist the freedom of such fantasying." (p. 151)

Daniel Kahneman (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow

"In the current view of how associative memory works, a great deal happens at once. An idea that has been activated does not merely evoke one other idea. It activates many ideas, which in turn activate others. Furthermore, only a few of the activated ideas will register in consciousness; most of the work of associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious selves. The notion that we have limited access to the workings of our minds is difficult to accept because, naturally, it is alien to our experience, but it is true: you know far less about yourself than you feel you do." (p. 52)

Thomas Kuhn (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions

"One suspects that something like a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself. What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see. In the absence of such training there can only be... a 'bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion'" (p. 113)

7. Primary use-value of crypto is to facilitate payments for ramsomware and other illegal activity.

When I studied economics in college, statistics was taught as a math course with virtually no straightforward explanation of the main concepts. Later as a graduate student in sociology, I helped teach statistics to undergraduates using an introductory textbook that featured an intuitive and conceptual presentation of statistics, and for the first time I really grasped the main ideas. By then it was no longer necessary to manually perform the advanced mathematical operations for statistical analysis, because the students were encouraged to use SPSS and other software tools. If you are looking for an outstanding introduction to statistics, I highly recommend the following textbook:

Healey, Joseph (2014) Statistics: A Tool for Social Research, 10th Edition

For those seeking a good conceptual knowledge of statistics based on real-world examples, including criticism of the limitations of statistical analysis, I would suggest these excellent studies:

Lewis, Michael (2010) The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Paulos, John Allen (1988) Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

Silver, Nate (2012) The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail, but Some Don't

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2005/10) Fooled by Randomness, 2E; Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2E

> Christofi, also a novelist, describes "Dostoevsky in Love" as less a biography than a “reconstructed memoir”. His method, he explains, has been to “cheerfully commit the academic fallacy” of eliding Dostoevsky’s “autobiographical fiction with his fantastical life.”

Although I have not read Christofi's book, I am willing to admit that this could be a potentially fruitful method of interpreting the writer and his work. But for those interested in authentic history, I would recommend Joseph Frank's magnificent study "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time" (2010), a fascinating yet critical biography that examines Dostoevsky's life, letters and philosophy.