Reasoning

[P]eople who rely heavily on sequence thinking often seem to have inferior understanding of subjects they aren’t familiar with, and to ask naive questions, but as their familiarity increases they eventually reach greater depth of understanding; by contrast, cluster-thinking-reliant people often have reasonable beliefs even when knowing little about a topic, but don’t improve nearly as much with more study.

Holden Karnofsky, Sequence thinking vs. cluster thinking, The GiveWell Blog, June 10, 2014

The fact that we exist is a proof that [massive energetic release] did not occur; that it has not occurred is the best possible assurance that it never will.

Frederick Soddy, Atomic Transmutation: The Greatest Discovery Ever Made, London, 1953, p. 95