“He was above all men of a lofty and arrogant spirit, as is plain from his writings, in which he says, ‘Abundant learning does not form the mind; for if it did, it would have instructed Hesiod, and Pythagoras, and likewise Xenophanes, and Hecatæus. For the only piece of real wisdom is to know that idea, which by itself will govern everything on every occasion.’ ... And he deposited this book in the temple of Diana, as some authors report, having written it intentionally in an obscure style, in order that only those who were able men might comprehend it, and that it might not be exposed to ridicule at the hands of the common people.” — Diogenes Laertius, *Lives of Eminent Philosophers*, Book IX, *Life of Heraclitus*, II, V (trans. C. D. Yonge, 1853) **Surface Gloss:** Heraclitus attacks famous polymaths for mistaking massive information-gathering for intelligence, defining true wisdom as grasping the single governing principle of the cosmos, and locks his deliberately obscure treatise inside Artemis' temple to filter out casual readers. The **Anti-Encyclopedia Filter**: Data accumulation actively degrades judgment when you lack the generative rule that produces the data. Don't build a bigger archive; find the single steering constraint that governs how the system behaves under all conditions. When publishing high-leverage structural knowledge, build deliberate friction into the form so only practitioners willing to do the cognitive work can extract the tool.
— In our words · Source: Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Diogenes Laertius)