General Saturninus, reflecting on his rebellion against his friend emperor Probus:
You know not,” continued he, “the misery of sovereign power: a sword is perpetually suspended over our head. We dread our very guards, we distrust our companions. The choice of action or of repose is no longer in our disposition, nor is there any age, or character, or conduct, that can protect us from the censure of envy. In thus exalting me to the throne, you have doomed me to a life of cares, and to an untimely fate. The only consolation which remains is the assurance that I shall not fall alone.”
From Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, read in 2017 (Volume 1 of 6)
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that fact does not make moral reasoning impossible. It changes its character.
It means we should be cautious about moral frameworks that depend on precise enumeration of outcomes, and more respectful of constraints that have survived because they may protect society from certain failure modes.
if you don’t inherit friction from the world and are traveling through Extremistan, it may be wise to design your own friction: embrace the beauty of logistics, accept multiple stops along the way, say “no” when in doubt, study the classics.
leverage exists, but is always paired with constraints. Physical limits (think size or speed), cultural friction, or some other factor that prevents scaling out of control and keep the thing going (i.e., alive, not extinct, not permanently ruined)... but in our wonderful world of finance...
the asymmetry of ruin: scalability and lack of friction can turn ordinary mistakes into terminal events
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