Valuable advice from great people, 1: On the importance of living in a Boring Place, decrease external dimensionality.

Descartes could not live in Paris because he had too many interesting friends. He moved to Belgium and Sweden then very very poor and rural so he could reduce noise of ideas. And he also did turn down a university position as too distracting.

One can enumerate accounts: Jules Vernes also left Paris for Nantes, partly for family reasons, mainly because it was boring enough… but his argument was “good for a day trip to Paris”

via Valuable advice from great people, 1: On the… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

An observation that people who live permanently in an adoptive country tend to progressively generalize the bad and particularize the good, that is, attribute the bad traits in people they encounter to the national trait of the natives, and the good things to the individual.
This holds equally well for French people living in the U.S. as it does for Americans living in France.

An observation that people who live permanently… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.