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> People, like matter, reveal their nature under extreme conditions.

An excellent nugget of wisdom from Paul Graham. That was worth the read by itself.

It's trite nonsense. It doesn't even make sense.

What wisdom, exactly? This is neither an original thought nor a particularly good phrasing.

Seems a good insight to me, it's a generalisation of "if you want to know your real relationship with a person, wait until your interests are opposed and see how they act"

Why opposed and not simply stressed? Anyway if you need to wait until the end of the world to determine a man's character then you need to take a couple of psychology courses.

Seems like "laminar flow" would be a possible explanation here...

Fluid flow near surfaces becomes a near zero vector.

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