Stephen Dubner

Anyway, the other thing he said, though, is that people should worry more about their character than your reputation.

Because reputation is simply what other people think of you.

Whereas character is who you really are.

That, to me, is the essence of it.

And maybe that is the same as his other quote about characters, what you do when no one is watching.

And the more you worry about the reputation side, the harder it is to stoke your character.

That's the way I see it.

One of the advantages of getting older is not just actual history, but personal history and understanding how people are, how people change, what you need to accept about other people and about yourself.

I believe in all the cliches.

Good character is really important.

Being really, truly loving and kind to other people is really, really, really important.

All the other things that we do for reputation or money, they're necessary.

They're understandable.

They're fantastic in moderation.

Ambition is great.

The most dangerous part about the worst parts of our attention economy, I think, is that they incentivize people to be unkind.

Simple as that.

We know that.

The science is pretty proven, but we got to stop that.

By the way, the odds are very, very, very, very, very good.