In my email signature I have a quote that rung true to me, and it also strikes a chord with many people. The quote is :
“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people”
– Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
People feel compelled to add to it, and I thought I’d pass on their additions. The best so far?
Burt Rutan added : “Mindless people discuss the weather”
David Rajan added : “The mindless watch TV”
Haven’t heard of him? Taleb is applied statistician and derivatives trader-turned-philosopher. No, it didn’t mean much to me either, until I started reading an article he wrote in Forbes. He’s in Forbes because his book called “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” is selling like hotcakes.
After reading his article his book is now on my reading list. Why? Because it talks about the importance of accidental discovery on the fringes among other things :
The technologies that run the world today (like the Internet, the computer and the laser) are not used in the way intended by those who invented them. Even academics are starting to realize that a considerable component of medical discovery comes from the fringes, where people find what they are not exactly looking for.
[…]
Only a disproportionately minute number of discoveries traditionally came from directed academic research.
There’s also some podcasts around that feature him, here and here.