Great article man! Love all the philosophy of mind references. During my freshman seminar I had to read Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett, ended up switching me from going to the business school to being a philosophy major and 'Learning how to learn.'

Now that I've started learning how to program and working building a product I can't thank that professor. Whether learning what customers want, learning how to sell, or learning a new programming language / framework - it's essential to be able to pick up stuff quickly.

I hadn't thought about philosophy in awhile so thanks for reminding me the benefits of being able to clearly articulate complex ideas and make meaning out of uncertainty.

"Any time you catch yourself saying, “Well look at how X big company does it.” or “Well X big company tried that and it didn’t work for them,” please smack yourself in the face."

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

Great post. Good practical exposition of Taleb's ideas. A lot of people mistakenly think he's theoretical.

Just chiming in to say that cargo cults were very real:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult