“Science may not offer eternal salvation, but it offers the possibility of a life free from the spiritual slavery caused by an irrational fear of the unknown. It offers people the choice of self-empowerment, which may contribute to their spiritual freedom. In transforming mystery into challenge, science adds a new dimension to life. And a new dimension opens more paths towards self-fulfillment.”

Lấy ở đây.

“When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realised that God doesn’t work in that way – so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness.”

- Emo Phillips

Extrapolate ra chút nữa. Hồi còn đi học phổ thông và cả đại học, tôi chưa bao giờ thật sự “read” cái gì cả ngoại trừ  những thứ trong chương trình, viết trong sách giáo khoa. Chưa bao giờ có một bài tập về nhà với nội dung: “hãy vào thư viện đi tìm hiểu đề tài X, liệt kê các lập luận và phản luận, kết luận bằng tư duy chính mình”. Các bài làm văn được kết thúc bằng câu “hôm nay, mài đũng quần dưới mái trường XHCN, em cảm thấy rất may mắn blah blah blah, em xin hứa sẽ cố gắng blah blah blah.”

Mark Twain nói thật đúng: “đừng để trường lớp cản trở con đường giáo dục của bạn”.

1. The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly: I’d rather use them to mimic something better.
…
2. Do the universities provide for society the intellectual leadership it needs or only the training it asks for?
…
3. The subculture of compulsive programmers, whose ethics prescribe that one silly idea and a month of frantic coding would suffice to make him a lifelong millionaire
…
4. We could, for instance, begin with cleaning up our language by no longer calling a bug a bug but by calling it an error. It is much more honest because it squarely put the blame where it belongs, viz. with the programmer who made the error.

Đừng hỏi tổ quốc đã làm gì cho bạn, mà hỏi bạn đã làm gì cho tổ quốc

Trong quyển Tư bản và tự do Milton Friedman viết:

In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, “what you can do for your country” implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshiped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of-good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

“Tư bản và tự do” là một quyển sách nhỏ và xuất sắc. Tôi đã đọc nó 3, 4 lần.

• A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
• All movements go too far.
• I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
• Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
• So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
• The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

Khi một chú học trò hỏi Euclid: “chúng ta học hình học thì được cái gì?”, Euclid gọi một anh nô lệ vào bảo: “cho nó một đồng xu, vì nó muốn kiếm lời từ cái nó học”.

Đáng lẽ tôi phải kể câu chuyện này để kết thúc bài học bao nhiêu là đủ.

• Economists claim to study production, distribution, and consumption. But production requires actual skills and so can’t be taught by economics professors, because they’d have to know how to do something. And consumption is a very private matter. Consider the consumption of toilet paper, condoms, frozen pizza-for-one eaten straight out of the microwave in the middle of the night, and cigarettes in the carport when your spouse thinks you’ve stopped smoking. Therefore, economics tends to concentrate on distribution.
• One thing that economists do know is that the study of economics is divided into two fields, “microeconomics” and “macroeconomics”. Micro is the study of individual economic behavior, and macro is the study of how economies behave as a whole. That is, microeconomics concerns things that economists are specifically wrong about, while macroeconomics concerns things economists are wrong about generally.
• Democrats are … the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.
• Giving money to government is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys.

O’Rourke quả thật là ông vua của các one-liners. Hắn mới ra sách mới, tôi vội vàng đặt mua.

Thêm vài danh ngôn của O’Rourke.

• Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
• Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.
• Never fight an inanimate object.
• Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.
• The weirder you are going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.
• When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

“Tội lỗi là nguồn gốc của tiền bạc” mới đúng. Kiyotaki và Moore giải thích tại sao trong bài giảng Evil is the root of all money (40 trang, PDF).

Trong một thế giới không có tội lỗi, tôi đi uống cà phê quán chị Ba không phải trả tiền. Con chị Ba là thằng Tí vào đại học học ngành KHMT. Khi vào học nó bảo tôi: “chú đã uống 3165 ly cà phê sữa đá của mẹ cháu 10 năm qua”. Tôi sẽ dạy nó môn lập trình mạng và thuật toán.

Dĩ nhiên có các lý do kinh tế sâu xa khác cho sự tồn tại của tiền bạc (hay muối, vàng, bạc, kim cương) để trao đổi các giá trị lao động, nhưng niềm tin đóng vai trò rất quan trọng.