Lots of parallels to "know your enemy", if you're willing to broaden "enemy" to include the impersonal. Quotes[1]: > It is said that if you know your enemies

Lots of parallels to "know your enemy", if you're willing to broaden "enemy" to include the impersonal. Quotes[1]: > It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle. and > Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy. The part about both knowing yourself and knowing your enemy is similar to the idea of iterating back and forth between thinking about how to fail and how to succeed. The universe is not actually out to get you, but you can ask what its "strategy" would be if it were. --- [1] see https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sun_Tzu#Chapter_III_%C2%B7_Strategic_Attack https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sun_Tzu#Chapter_III_%C2%B7_Str...