timelets

the top 40% of the population spends, on average, five times as much money on their children’s education as those in the bottom 60% of the population,

https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/29/covid-19-ray-dalio-economy-capitalism-restructure-equal-opportunity/

“We are discouraged from saying “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.” We regard those expressions as vague, unhelpful, and even evasive. But getting comfortable with “I’m not sure” is a vital step to being a better decision-maker. We have to make peace with not knowing.
Embracing “I’m not sure” is difficult. We are trained in school that saying “I don’t know” is a bad thing. Not knowing in school is considered a failure of learning. Write “I don’t know” as an answer on a test and your answer will be marked wrong.
Admitting that we don’t know has an undeservedly bad reputation.
...
a great quote from physicist James Clerk Maxwell: “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.”

--- Annie Duke. “Thinking in Bets.”

“The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.”

--- Titus Livy. “The Early History of Rome.”

Book- based research is free of risk and hardship—or at least it is if you ensure that you find yourself either a city where there are plenty of historical works available, or a nearby library. Then all you have to do is recline on a couch while carrying out your research and collating the statements† of earlier writers, and there is no hardship involved in that. But although investigative work involves a great deal of discomfort and expense, it has a great deal to offer in return; in fact, it is the most important thing a historian can do.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

The point is that, just as it is impossible for someone who lacks military experience to write well about warfare, it is impossible for someone who has never acted in the political sphere or faced a political crisis to write good political history. Nothing written by authors who rely on mere book-learning has the clarity that comes from personal experience, and so nothing is gained by reading their work. For without its educational element, history is altogether uninspiring and useless. Moreover, when such authors decide, despite their lack of relevant experience, to give detailed accounts of cities and terrains, obviously the same thing happens: they omit a great deal that is worth mentioning, and linger over things that do not deserve it.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

In fact, educationally speaking, this will prove to be the most important aspect of my work, now and in the future. For neither rulers nor those who express opinions about them should think of victory and overall dominion as the goal of military action. It makes as little sense for a man to fight others just to crush them as it does for a man to take to the open sea just to cross it. [3.4].

...

...the considerable difference, between a starting point and a cause or pretext. A cause or pretext always comes first and a starting point comes last. I take it that the starting point of anything consists of the first application in the real world of a course of action that has already been decided upon, while the cause is what first influences one’s judgements and decisions, or, in other words, what first influences one’s ideas, feelings, reasoning about the matter, and all one’s decision-making and deliberative faculties. [3.6]

--- Polybius, The Histories.

I would not want any reader to find my account confusing and obscure just because he is unfamiliar with the region, so I shall describe its natural features and their relative positions—as I intend to throughout my work, by constantly comparing and correlating unknown places with those which are familiar and long known. Since defeat in military engagements on land or at sea is usually due to geographical factors, and since knowing how an event happened is always more interesting to us than just knowing that it happened, topographical descriptions are important whatever kind of event is being talked about, and especially important for military events.

--- Polybius, The Histories.