Matthew Green: “Legacy industry and regulators have smothered two generations of technological improvement, largely (I suspect) by building a (mostly) closed and permissioned financial system. And this is a big deal: payments are too important to our economy to entrust them to 1970s-era technology and an extractive industry. We don’t even know what novel applications — Googles, Facebooks, Wikipedias, Instagrams — we’re missing out on because the industry simply won’t allow them to exist. I don’t know if blockchains are the solution to this problem. I see indications that the technology is finally starting to grow up in ways that seem like a harbinger of major positive changes on the horizon. Progress here is slow, though in some cases because the regulatory apparatus is throwing sand in the gears of cooperative products, and/or utterly failing to move expeditiously to uncover possible fraud. And maybe the result won’t even be a success for blockchain solutions: perhaps we’ll simply get more and better offerings from “traditional finance” industry as they start to wake up to the fact that more open systems can compete with their closed offerings. So while I don’t know if cryptocurrency will be the answer, I’m just hopeful that something will be.”
Shane Parish: “There is a constant battle in all of us between our today-self and our tomorrow-self. Today-self is like our inner child. Today-self cares only about today. It wants to focus on things that offer an immediate payoff. Whether that’s kicking back with a few too many glasses of wine, spending money on status symbols, or avoiding doing things that can be done tomorrow. Tomorrow-self is like our inner adult. Tomorrow-self cares about things that take time to get results — like working on your relationship, saving money, or consistently moving the project forward one inch at a time.,,The wisdom of tomorrow-self is this: Focus on one thing you can do today to make tomorrow easier. Repeat.”
David Perell: “Philosophers are the most rigorous thinkers I know. Like intellectual boxers; they come to understand ideas by making them fight with each other. Their style of analysis is effective because it’s so bloody. One friend calls his style “violent thinking.” He talks about thinking like a soldier talks about interrogation. He subjects ideas to ruthless torture, shaking them and grabbing them by the throat until they can no longer breathe and, eventually, reveal their true nature…Good philosophers are like my friend from middle school. But instead of playing with computers, they play with ideas. Writing takes them a long time not because they’re finger-happy keyboard warriors, but because they rip ideas apart until they’re left with only the atomic elements. Once the idea has been sufficiently deconstructed, they put it back together. Usually, in new ways.”
