We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, we feel all their actions, all their sufferings.

Herman Melville — Moby-Dick

@underscored

interdependenceempathyhuman-nature

The eye is not merely a physical organ, but the supreme instrument of touch, and we see only with our eyes open to the world; blindness is not the absence of sight but the refusal to look.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception

@underscored

perceptionphenomenologyembodied-cognition

It's all too easy to slip into doing a softball puff piece — fawning all over your guests and treating them like gurus dispensing wisdom from a mountain. This is an even easier trap for someone like Dwarkesh, who is very young and who is primarily known for interviewing people instead of for dispensing his own thoughts. So it's extremely impressive that he consistently avoids this trap — he always manages to challenge and provoke his subjects, rather than just letting them spout their usual talking points.

Noah Smith

@underscored

interviewingintellectual-honestycritical-thinking