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Quote by Brett Stevens

“When we are underconfident, we desire to be accepted unconditionally. That way no matter how much goes wrong and how little we accomplish, we are still guaranteed a place in society. Those who are so damaged in confidence and self-esteem that they assume they will never get anything right, and never accomplish anything of note, demand not only a place in society, but one equal to those who get things right and accomplish things. Although a defensive outlook, this viewpoint is projected forward as a pre-emptive strike on feelings of inadequacy, regret and doubt. When enough people gather who have this viewpoint, we create a society where social factors - being nice, novelty of approach, possessions owned, ironic or unusual lifestyles - become more important than ability. If you want to know how the path to Idiocracy is paved, this is it. Natural selection now favors the social, not the competent, and so society breeds future generations of incompetent (but very sociable) people.”

Quote by Brett Stevens

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Brett Stevens

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“Models of leader attributes that dominated in the early part of the 20th century emphasized leader traits. Several surveys and reviews of this literature identified a number of dispositional qualities that distinguished leaders from nonleaders, including intelligence, originality, dependability, initiative, desire to excel, sociability, adaptability, extroversion, and dominance. However, no single personal quality was strongly and consistently correlated with leadership.”

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“[Networking] feels fake because we know it involves the deflection of our natural human sociability to an ulterior end. Normally we meet strangers in the expectation that they may truly be strange, and are drawn to the multilayered mystery that each human presents. But in networking, as in prostitution, there is no time for fascination. The networker is always, so to speak, looking over the shoulder of the person she engages in conversation, toward whatever concrete advantage can be gleaned from the interaction—a tip or a precious contact.”

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“Long live transfinite mountains, the hollow earth, time machines, fractal writing, aliens, dada, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, teleportation, artificial reality, robots, pod people, hylozoism, endless shrinking, intelligent goo, antigravity, surrealism, software highs, two-dimensional time, gnarly computation, the art of photo composition, pleasure zappers, nanomachines, mind viruses, hyperspace, monsters from the deep and, of course, always and forever, the attack of the giant ants!”

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