Sources of Enlightenment

Self-sufficiency

“The Gods Help Them That Help Themselves” - Greek meme.

“Put your faith in Allah, but tie your camel.” - Hadith about Muhammad.

“Reality to be conquered must be obeyed.” -- Francis Bacon

“If the mountain does not come to Muhammad, Muhammad will go to the mountain.” -- Francis Bacon

“If I am not to myself, who will be? And if I am only to myself, who am I? And if not now - when?” -- Hillel

Joke: The Believer Rabbi - “God helps them that help God helps them.”

Action Heroes / Hackers

David and Goliath

The Israelites and the Philistines schedule a large battle. The philistines have far superior equipment with armours made out of cast iron, which the Israelites don't have. Eventually, Goliath, a tall Philistine giant, steps forward and asks for an Israelite man worthy enough to fight him and determine the fate of the battle (something quite common in the Near East). The Israelites seem like they will lose the battle.

Out of nowhere, a young Israelite boy whom hardly anyone knew about steps forward with a sling and a few pebbles. Goliath thinks this is ridiculous and ridicules him. However, the boy quickly puts a pebble in his sling, and after rotating the sling to achieve a very large velocity (not unusual with slings) hurls it with great accuracy (also not unusual, because shepherds in the Near East effectively used slings to kill lions and other predators to their flock) into Goliath's face, which was uncovered to allow him to see. Even if Goliath's shield bearer wanted, he could not have lifted the huge shield in time, and Goliath was completely not agile in his suit and armour. The sling's rock smashes Goliath brain, and he falls to the ground dead. The Israelites have won the battle.

The Boy's name was David.

Why do I think it's important here? Because David was a hacker (see Paul Graham’s “The Word ‘Hacker’”) - he knew the rules, and played by them, but knew how to bend them, in order to earn his victory. There were many other hackers since, and there are a lot of them today even if some of them think that “hackers” only mean no good-nick and malevolent computer intruders. Hackers come in all shapes and sizes - and, while a lot of them are male, many of them (including Ayn Rand and Jennifer Lawrence) were or are female.

Was David Jewish and Goliath a Philistine? Did the battle actually happen in its form? What really happened to David next? That is hard to know, because in a true open source fashion, the peoples of the Near East gladly borrowed legends and memes from other people and improved them, or adapted them to their whims. This is similar to how we now create fan fiction by the droves. (Only now it's in much greater speed and capacity.) Moreover, in a way, the tale of David and Goliath is obscured by the mentality of the times, and its context within the larger epic of the Bible.

Seize opportunities

• The importance of seizing opportunities.

Be content with yourself

• The Man, the boy and his donkey
  • Colour of the Bike shed arguments
  • “If” by Rudyard Kipling
• Take criticism to your advantage:
  • Sam the Eagle vs. Alice Cooper - from the Muppets Show.

Uses:

• Jennifer Lawrence being criticised for looking too normal.
• Protecting BethOfficial against criticisms on this video

The Boy who cried wolf

• The Boy who cried wolf

How not to waste your time

Momo (novel) by Michael Ende.

Star Trek: “We, the Living Dead”:

Q2: In any case, I’ll leave you kids for now.

Dax: Are you too busy?

Q2: No. Busy people are unproductive. We are very productive and so we’re never busy. But I need some rest, and think I’m no longer needed here. Q can always find me.

“She must be a fine cat.” from the Human Hacking Field Guide:

       <rindolf>  erisa: awesome. I understand you are jennray’s
                  classmate?
         <erisa>  rindolf: yes, we’re also good friends. And I will
                  continue to torment her during our (and our boyfriends’)
                  Bachelor’s in university.
       <rindolf>  erisa: sounds like a plan.
       <jennray>  erisa was initially reluctant to join IRC because she
                  thought it was a place for chronic time wasters and
                  “script-kiddies”.
       <blarned>  Perl cats like to waste time, but we are at a constant
                  war with those pesky script-kiddie critters.
         <erisa>  I’ll join that Perl Cats’ herd (“clowder”?). Meow!

Katie Lucas’ Removing Developer’s Net Access

"There would be no Internet connection to private workstations in offices... The real advantage is the removal of the Big Distraction from programmers."

You should probably put timelocks on the doors as well. You don't want employees wandering outside the building looking at trees or anything while they take a break.

I mean, seriously. I've noticed there's a strong correlation between environments which make these sorts of dumb decisions and suffer from crushing lack of imagination in what they do and environments that trust their staff to get on with the job.

I have running all day what is basically a MUD. A MUD!! Oh my god, a MUD!! Better firewall THAT off.

It just happens to be occupied by other similarly smart software people. It's fairly often that one of them has better knowledge of something and saves me a days work by me just running the idea past them and them suggesting the best solution. In addition, offsite people can monitor it and we save on random phonecalls... and it's all just so EVIL and non-"work" that it should be banned in favour of just mindless typing.

Encourage Criticism and People who Offend You

See: Encourage criticism and try to get offended

• Paul Graham's "What You can't say"?
• «Every great truth once started as a blasphemy.»
• Lawrence Lessig about Rewarding the critics
• We tend to take offence to things we know are true and a wikipedia:Elephant in the Room than we do to things that are false.
• https://twitter.com/shlomif/status/500668198887231489 - «Whenever someone has a criticism of me, I'm going to say: "Don't go easy on me. #BringItOn!" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_It_On_%28film%29 … - #GoodDayToDie»
• “Play to Lose”
• Quora: “How can I Encourage People to Criticise Me”
• - Being Convinced of Being Wrong: « I love being convinced that I was wrong before. That way I knew I improved and am now wiser. Like the Klingon warriors say when it happens: “What a great day it was for me to die!”. »

Note about "Getting Killed" in this day and age

• Note: in this day and age, the Internet provides a shield for most "things you can't say" and most people who are blasephemous will usually only get banned from a certain sub-forum (e.g: a subreddit, or an IRC chat room), rather than getting killed like Socrates did, or getting yourself house-confined like Galileo did.
  • It was also said that tact is the way of "making a point without making an enemy". Plato, Aristotle and Newton learned from the mistakes of Socrates and Galileo and as a result all died as highly reverred and respected, regardless of their vices.
    • Saladin was able to defeat the Knights Templar and by the time he was finished, they were all happy, almost perfectly sane, highly respectful him, and unwilling to fight him.