livestream

Video

Rules

Start Quote

Why Americans flocked to devour this faux memoir of Stein’s own Parisian life, replete with anecdotes about Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway etc., is perhaps self-explanatory. She was lifting the lid on some of the best-known cultural figures of the twentieth century, and – in so doing – managed to enrage them. Hemingway labelled the book ‘pitiable’, Matisse whinged about how his wife was represented, and Stein’s own brother, Leo, called it ‘a farrago of lies’. None of these outbursts were ideal quotes for the book jacket, but Stein burned her bridges with good reason. She desired fame and money, and for years had been carefully cultivating friendships with influential people in American publishing. Now she had the opportunity to call in her favours.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

End Quote

Personally, I much prefer to think in terms not of systems but of a web of interactions. This allows me to see how stresses on one thread affect all others. The image also acknowledges the inherent strength of a web and recognizes the existence of patterns and designs. Anyone who has ever woven or knitted knows that one can change patterns, but only at particular points and only in a particular way so as not to destroy the fabric itself. When women writers speak about reweaving the web of life they mean exactly this kind of pattern change. Not only do they know that such changes can be achieved but, more importantly, they know there are other patterns. The web of technology can indeed be woven differently, but even to discuss such intentional changes of pattern requires an examination of the features of the current pattern and an understanding of the origins and the purpose of the present design.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

Start

Why Americans flocked to devour this faux memoir of Stein’s own Parisian life, replete with anecdotes about Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway etc., is perhaps self-explanatory. She was lifting the lid on some of the best-known cultural figures of the twentieth century, and – in so doing – managed to enrage them. Hemingway labelled the book ‘pitiable’, Matisse whinged about how his wife was represented, and Stein’s own brother, Leo, called it ‘a farrago of lies’. None of these outbursts were ideal quotes for the book jacket, but Stein burned her bridges with good reason. She desired fame and money, and for years had been carefully cultivating friendships with influential people in American publishing. Now she had the opportunity to call in her favours.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.998767100646936

But, while American intellectuals debated if her work had any merit, the general public was quietly being primed to think about Gertrude Stein as a famous person. Her friend Carl Van Vechten wrote to her regularly from America, boosting Stein’s ego with reports of her influence: ‘your name pops up in current journalism with great frequency. You are as famous in America as any historical character – and if you came over I think you might get as great a reception as, say, Jenny Lind [the Swedish opera sensation brought over by P. T. Barnum].’
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.868055505498007

Stein didn’t bounce from obscurity to fame, she redefined her existing reputation by swapping mockery for acclaim. She became something new; Stein was the modernist Miley Cyrus, minus the twerking.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.841024159609273

What Books Were Penned by Female Authors?

Woolf recognised, lay the problem of money. Women enjoyed no freedoms—including freedom of the spirit—because they did not control their own income: “Women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves,” she wrote.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.792585659477756

The husband and wife author team Will and Ariel Durant even applied this tactic to their own body of work. Having spent more than fifty years researching and writing their eleven-volume magnum opus, The Story of Civilization, they distilled it all down into a quick, 100-page problem-solver called The Lessons of History. Despite the latter requiring roughly a fiftieth of the time to write, its sales have outstripped those of all their other books combined. Why? Because it offered readers an outcome instead of just a story. Your book’s promise should appear in (or at least be strongly implied by) its title and/or subtitle. My all-time favorite nonfiction title is How to Stay Alive in the Woods, by Bradford Angier. Can you guess what that book is promising? Are you able to judge its relevance to your needs and goals? Do you know which of your friends might enjoy hearing about it? Absolutely.
-- Write Useful Books: A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction

similarity = 0.791808604764729

I wasn’t fully prepared, though, to feel what I did when I set foot inside the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School and was ushered to an auditorium where about two hundred students had gathered to watch some of their peers perform and then hear me speak. The school was named after a pioneering doctor who also became the first female mayor elected in England. The building itself was nothing special—a boxy brick building on a nondescript street. But as I settled into a folding chair onstage and started watching the performance—which included a Shakespeare scene, a modern dance, and a chorus singing a beautiful rendition of a Whitney Houston song—something inside me began to quake. I almost felt myself falling backward into my own past. You had only to look around at the faces in the room to know that despite their strengths these girls would need to work hard to be seen. There were girls in hijab, girls for whom English was a second language, girls whose skin made up every shade of brown. I knew they’d have to push back against the stereotypes that would get put on them, all the ways they’d be defined before they’d had a chance to define themselves. They’d need to fight the invisibility that comes with being poor, female, and of color. They’d have to work to find their voices and not be diminished, to keep themselves from getting beaten down. They would have to work just to learn.
-- Becoming

similarity = 0.787261824437255

What Did Women Historically Do to Make Income?

Woolf recognised, lay the problem of money. Women enjoyed no freedoms—including freedom of the spirit—because they did not control their own income: “Women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves,” she wrote.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.822187272775031

A long time ago most goods were produced outside the circuit of commercial transactions—in other words, outside the market. They were produced in a manner closer to how we divide labor within our home. This of course does not necessarily mean that the world was a better, more ethical place. For centuries if not millennia, women were given the worst tasks within patriarchal, sexist households, not to mention the serfs and the slaves, who did all the drudgery in real or virtual shackles. The very fact that most work, most production, took place within the confines of the extended household gave rise to the word oikonomia, which comprises two words: oikos (“household”) and nomoi (“laws, rules, constraints”). This is the etymology of “economy,” which literally means something like the “laws of running, or managing, a household.”
-- Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works--and How It Fails

similarity = 0.818158753578414

Women have never been freer, richer, or more powerful. In 1970, just 4 percent of women earned more than their husbands; today, 29 percent earn more than their male spouses. Today, girls match or outperform boys in education in the developed world. Spousal homicides have declined since the 1960s thanks to better policing as well as more protections for victims, such as restraining orders, shelters for victims, and automatic arrests of suspects of domestic violence.
-- San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

similarity = 0.815357813020172

What Are Household Tasks?

In essence, tidying ought to be the act of restoring balance among people, their possessions, and the house they live in.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.806673824658613

If you live with your family, you could ask them, “Is there something you need that you were planning to buy?” before you start tidying, and then if you happen to come across exactly what they need, give it to them as a gift.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.800910655425745

Tidying means taking each item in your hand, asking yourself whether it sparks joy, and deciding on this basis whether or not to keep it. By repeating this process hundreds and thousands of times, we naturally hone our decision-making skills.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.790149903737029

How Do We Decide to Keep an Item or Not?

I recommend you dispose of anything that does not fall into one of three categories: currently in use, needed for a limited period of time, or must be kept indefinitely.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.830745500464123

We should also note that this “one in, one out” rule holds only for items of the same type. For example, if we buy a new jacket, we part with an old jacket. It doesn’t make sense to buy a new microwave oven and throw away an old eraser, right?
-- Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

similarity = 0.830411045781763

Tidying means taking each item in your hand, asking yourself whether it sparks joy, and deciding on this basis whether or not to keep it. By repeating this process hundreds and thousands of times, we naturally hone our decision-making skills.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.829102312601043

When Do I Get Rid of My Jacket?

I am especially set for clothes. I have reached the time of life where all I want is to wear out the clothes I have and never get another thing. I think many men of a certain age will nod in agreement when I say there is a real satisfaction when you wear something out and can finally discard it—a feeling of a job well done. It’s not always easy. I have an L.L.Bean shirt that I have been trying to wear out for nearly twenty years. I wear that shirt up to two dozen times a month. I have washed the car with it. I have used it to clean the grate on the barbecue. I hate that shirt. I didn’t actually particularly like it the day I bought it. But I will wear it out if it kills me.
-- The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

similarity = 0.802324643069196

“Would I want to wear this right away if the temperature suddenly changed?”
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.788289127967708

Discard it if you have it for the sake of appearance.
-- Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

similarity = 0.782615416313076

How Do I Not Wear Out Clothing?

I am especially set for clothes. I have reached the time of life where all I want is to wear out the clothes I have and never get another thing. I think many men of a certain age will nod in agreement when I say there is a real satisfaction when you wear something out and can finally discard it—a feeling of a job well done. It’s not always easy. I have an L.L.Bean shirt that I have been trying to wear out for nearly twenty years. I wear that shirt up to two dozen times a month. I have washed the car with it. I have used it to clean the grate on the barbecue. I hate that shirt. I didn’t actually particularly like it the day I bought it. But I will wear it out if it kills me.
-- The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

similarity = 0.841295646043948

The trick is not to overcategorize. Divide your clothes roughly into “cotton-like” and “wool-like” materials when you put them in the drawer.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.827728933929146

Put out your exercise clothes the night before you exercise so you wear them first thing in the morning and are ready to go (alternatively, sleep in your exercise clothes).
-- Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

similarity = 0.813050121621034

How Do I Create Cotton Like or Wool Like Clothing?

The trick is not to overcategorize. Divide your clothes roughly into “cotton-like” and “wool-like” materials when you put them in the drawer.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.823739392432724

My standard is this: hang any clothes that look like they would be happier hung up, such as those made with soft materials that flutter in the breeze or highly tailored cuts, which protest at being folded. These we should hang willingly.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.777753636302986

The goal is to fold each piece of clothing into a simple, smooth rectangle. First, fold each lengthwise side of the garment toward the center (such as the left-hand, then right-hand, sides of a shirt) and tuck the sleeves in to make a long rectangular shape. It doesn’t matter how you fold the sleeves. Next, pick up one short end of the rectangle and fold it toward the other short end. Then fold again, in the same manner, in halves or in thirds.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.774908822318931

How Do I Repair Wool Like Clothing?

The trick is not to overcategorize. Divide your clothes roughly into “cotton-like” and “wool-like” materials when you put them in the drawer.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.800035747849278

My standard is this: hang any clothes that look like they would be happier hung up, such as those made with soft materials that flutter in the breeze or highly tailored cuts, which protest at being folded. These we should hang willingly.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.767397472855179

The goal is to fold each piece of clothing into a simple, smooth rectangle. First, fold each lengthwise side of the garment toward the center (such as the left-hand, then right-hand, sides of a shirt) and tuck the sleeves in to make a long rectangular shape. It doesn’t matter how you fold the sleeves. Next, pick up one short end of the rectangle and fold it toward the other short end. Then fold again, in the same manner, in halves or in thirds.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.759944426771654

What Does it Mean to Get Clothing Tailored?

When clothes fit well, we hardly notice them. But when anything is out of place, it suddenly makes us uncomfortable. So too when things “fit”—or don’t—with our social and self-images. Any deviation from what’s considered appropriate to our stations and subcultures is liable to raise eyebrows, and without a good reason or backstory, we’re unlikely to feel good about it. If you’re a high-powered executive, imagine wearing your old high school backpack to work. If you’re a bohemian artist, imagine bringing the Financial Times to an open-mic night. If you’re a working-class union member, imagine ordering kale salad with tofu at a restaurant.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

similarity = 0.795190517661315

For Held, fashion was a public performance and she lamented: ‘I live at the dressmaker’s … I am being moulded into clothes, all day long. I get no rest. For three months last summer I have been fitted, and draped, and assassinated by clothes. And then you marvel that they fit!’23 Such a complaint was laced with irony: she knew full well that fashion was one of the sources of her power.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.776362542168428

And the real trick of athleisure is the way it can physically suggest that you were made to do this—that you’re the kind of person who thinks that putting in expensive hard work for a high-functioning, maximally attractive consumer existence is about as good a way to pass your time on earth as there is. There’s a phenomenon, Weigel noted, called “enclothed cognition,” in which clothes that come with cultural scripts can actually alter cognitive function.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

similarity = 0.772146504535188

What Culture Do We Insert into Our Clothing?

When clothes fit well, we hardly notice them. But when anything is out of place, it suddenly makes us uncomfortable. So too when things “fit”—or don’t—with our social and self-images. Any deviation from what’s considered appropriate to our stations and subcultures is liable to raise eyebrows, and without a good reason or backstory, we’re unlikely to feel good about it. If you’re a high-powered executive, imagine wearing your old high school backpack to work. If you’re a bohemian artist, imagine bringing the Financial Times to an open-mic night. If you’re a working-class union member, imagine ordering kale salad with tofu at a restaurant.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

similarity = 0.834626048727621

And the real trick of athleisure is the way it can physically suggest that you were made to do this—that you’re the kind of person who thinks that putting in expensive hard work for a high-functioning, maximally attractive consumer existence is about as good a way to pass your time on earth as there is. There’s a phenomenon, Weigel noted, called “enclothed cognition,” in which clothes that come with cultural scripts can actually alter cognitive function.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

similarity = 0.812659407849442

Today there’s a stigma to wearing uniforms, in part because it suppresses our individuality. But the very concept of “individuality” is just signaling by another name.20 The main reason we like wearing unique clothes is to differentiate and distinguish ourselves from our peers.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

similarity = 0.801666620349832

How Do Clothing Choices Make the Society?

When clothes fit well, we hardly notice them. But when anything is out of place, it suddenly makes us uncomfortable. So too when things “fit”—or don’t—with our social and self-images. Any deviation from what’s considered appropriate to our stations and subcultures is liable to raise eyebrows, and without a good reason or backstory, we’re unlikely to feel good about it. If you’re a high-powered executive, imagine wearing your old high school backpack to work. If you’re a bohemian artist, imagine bringing the Financial Times to an open-mic night. If you’re a working-class union member, imagine ordering kale salad with tofu at a restaurant.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

similarity = 0.857930230827964

Clothes, like people, can relax more freely when in the company of others who are very similar in type, and therefore organizing them by category helps them feel more comfortable and secure.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.837620620242664

And the real trick of athleisure is the way it can physically suggest that you were made to do this—that you’re the kind of person who thinks that putting in expensive hard work for a high-functioning, maximally attractive consumer existence is about as good a way to pass your time on earth as there is. There’s a phenomenon, Weigel noted, called “enclothed cognition,” in which clothes that come with cultural scripts can actually alter cognitive function.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

similarity = 0.837045371943636

What is the Financial Times?

These stories of financial excess, from the diving company bubble to the dot-com mania, are not just entertaining yarns, they are also a mortal warning to all investors. There will always be speculative markets in which the old rules seem to go out the window. Learn to recognize the signs: technological or financial “displacement,” excessive use of credit, amnesia for the last bubble, and the flood of new investors who swallow plausible stories in place of doing the hard math. When this happens, keep a close hold on your wallet and remember John Templeton’s famous warning: The four most expensive words in the English language are, “This time, it’s different.”
-- The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (Personal Finance & Investment)

similarity = 0.784660810418756

The mid-1960s, when Jensen’s study was published in the Journal of Finance, was about the last time that the average college-educated person could get through an academic finance article without falling asleep. Vast improvements in statistical and computational sophistication in financial research meant that, in most cases, the results were impossible to translate into plain English. In Twain’s words, financial research had become “chloroform in print.”
-- The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (Personal Finance & Investment)

similarity = 0.780314095292895

The incompetence of the British government served to complicate matters; some officials quickly realized the dangers of revealing too much information, while others thought that being open with the newspapers was a good way to maintain morale and show that the government was responsive to public enthusiasm for the war. Inevitably, the government and the Times were soon at loggerheads. The British commander in chief, General Simpson, complained: ‘‘Our spies give us all manner of reports, while the enemy never spends a farthing for information. He gets it all for five pence from a London paper.’’
-- The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers

similarity = 0.778600642798209

What Was Dot Com Mania?

Finally, Pets.com is, by most measures, the epitome of the dot-com boom-and-bust cycle—an example of prioritizing uncontrolled and overfunded growth while doing things like selling products far below cost (which obviously isn’t sustainable). Pets.com spent more than $17 million on advertising involving sock puppets in the second quarter of 2000 alone; meanwhile, their revenue (not profit) at that time was only $8.8 million. Pets.com was spending based on growth it hoped to see, not on where the company was currently at, and it ended up losing an estimated $300 million in investment capital along the way.
-- Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business

similarity = 0.768713923207912

These stories of financial excess, from the diving company bubble to the dot-com mania, are not just entertaining yarns, they are also a mortal warning to all investors. There will always be speculative markets in which the old rules seem to go out the window. Learn to recognize the signs: technological or financial “displacement,” excessive use of credit, amnesia for the last bubble, and the flood of new investors who swallow plausible stories in place of doing the hard math. When this happens, keep a close hold on your wallet and remember John Templeton’s famous warning: The four most expensive words in the English language are, “This time, it’s different.”
-- The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (Personal Finance & Investment)

similarity = 0.767694886484072

Beyond its three chapters on financial manias, Extraordinary Popular Delusions also contained three long chapters on religious manias: one each on biblical prophecy, the Crusades, and the pursuit of witches. While religious and financial manias might seem to have little in common, the underlying forces that give them rise are identical: the desire to improve one’s well-being in this life or the next. And the factors that amplify the contagion of financial and religious mass delusions are also similar: the hardwired human propensity to imitate, to fabricate and consume compelling narratives, and to seek status.
-- The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups

similarity = 0.763657385206292

What is pets.com?

Finally, Pets.com is, by most measures, the epitome of the dot-com boom-and-bust cycle—an example of prioritizing uncontrolled and overfunded growth while doing things like selling products far below cost (which obviously isn’t sustainable). Pets.com spent more than $17 million on advertising involving sock puppets in the second quarter of 2000 alone; meanwhile, their revenue (not profit) at that time was only $8.8 million. Pets.com was spending based on growth it hoped to see, not on where the company was currently at, and it ended up losing an estimated $300 million in investment capital along the way.
-- Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business

similarity = 0.830685261639809

Whatever you’re into, there’s a website for that. We all play “a fractional part in some quite trivial matter,” as Kierkegaard says. And this is soothing.
-- The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

similarity = 0.731429162321025

Now she was out of school and totally lost, barely surviving in a kitchenless apartment on the Lower East Side. Her only source of income was a job she’d found on Craigslist. Jack’s Dawgs, a chain of downtown hot dog stands, had received straight Ds in a recent health inspection. So the owner, Jack Potenzone, was paying Laura to improve the chain’s public image. Each day she went online and posted a hundred positive comments on food sites, using fictitious screen names. “I don’t know how Jack’s Dawgs got such a bad rap,” read a typical review. “Their stores are spotless, welcoming, and there are no rats.” Her boss had instructed her to insert the phrase “there are no rats” in every single one of her posts. “That way,” he explained, “people will think we don’t have rats.”
-- What in God's Name: A Novel

similarity = 0.729191920992635

How Do We All Interact on the Web?

In America, before the internet, the division between our public and private lives was usually tied to our physical location—our work and our home. The context in which we were communicating with our friends and family was clear. At work, we were professionals, and at home we were husbands, wives, sons, or daughters. On the internet, we organize information by its popularity in an attempt to determine its validity. If a website has been referenced by many other websites, then it is generally determined to be more valuable or accurate. Feelings expressed on social media are quantified, validated, and distributed in a similar fashion. Popular expression becomes the most valuable expression. Social media businesses represent an aggressive expansion of capitalism into our personal relationships. We are asked to perform for our friends, to create things they like, to work on a “personal brand”—and brands teach us that authenticity is the result of consistency. We must honor our “true self” and represent the same self to all of our friends or risk being discredited. But humanity cannot be true or false. We are full of contradictions and we change. That is the joy of human life. We are not brands; it is simply not in our nature.
-- How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

similarity = 0.849714890150172

Before perception AI, our interactions with the online world had to squeeze through two very narrow chokepoints: the keyboards on our computers or the screen on our smartphones.
-- AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

similarity = 0.841025554227238

As a medium, the internet is defined by a built-in performance incentive. In real life, you can walk around living life and be visible to other people. But you can’t just walk around and be visible on the internet—for anyone to see you, you have to act.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

similarity = 0.836181013555738

Why Have the Economics of Technologies Changed What it Means to Be Human?

The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.858684585214671

Most technologies do not fundamentally change us. Consider the contemporary smartphone. It’s a flashlight, a music player, a camera, a game console, a fare card, a remote control, a library, a television, a cookbook, a computer—all in one. It hasn’t enabled us to do much that’s fundamentally new, but it has combined more than a dozen preexisting devices into one, increasing efficiency and access. Important? Ridiculously. But such improvement-based techs do not fundamentally change who we are. Transport technologies, on the other hand, profoundly alter our relationship with our geography. Today you can jump continents in a few hours. It wasn’t always this way. In fact, it was almost never this way. Until a couple hundred years ago, it was rare for any of us to venture more than a few miles from home. The six millennia of human history has quite literally been a slow, agonizing crawl along a long, long road.
-- The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

similarity = 0.853567456281093

The partnership of technology and people makes us smarter, stronger, and better able to live in the modern world. We have become reliant on the technology and we can no longer function without it. The dependence is even stronger today than ever before, including mechanical, physical things such as housing, clothing, heating, food preparation and storage, and transportation. Now this range of dependencies is extended to information services as well: communication, news, entertainment, education, and social interaction. When things work, we are informed, comfortable, and effective. When things break, we may no longer be able to function. This dependence upon technology is very old, but every decade, the impact covers more and more activities.
-- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

similarity = 0.849041096825031

Why Do We Feel the Need to Make New Technology without Understanding the Complex Systems They Are Part Of?

The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.852304409312803

The reason that technological progress exacerbates our feelings of impatience is that each new advance seems to bring us closer to the point of transcending our limits; it seems to promise that this time, finally, we might be able to make things go fast enough for us to feel completely in control of our unfolding time.
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

similarity = 0.850714747405008

There is a complex feedback loop between technology and the people who use it. A changing consciousness calls for a changing technology, and a changing technology changes consciousness.
-- Does Writing Have a Future? (Electronic Mediations Book 33)

similarity = 0.847665494309196

What is the Feedback Loop Between Technology and Humans?

There is a complex feedback loop between technology and the people who use it. A changing consciousness calls for a changing technology, and a changing technology changes consciousness.
-- Does Writing Have a Future? (Electronic Mediations Book 33)

similarity = 0.906465810766004

The partnership of technology and people makes us smarter, stronger, and better able to live in the modern world. We have become reliant on the technology and we can no longer function without it. The dependence is even stronger today than ever before, including mechanical, physical things such as housing, clothing, heating, food preparation and storage, and transportation. Now this range of dependencies is extended to information services as well: communication, news, entertainment, education, and social interaction. When things work, we are informed, comfortable, and effective. When things break, we may no longer be able to function. This dependence upon technology is very old, but every decade, the impact covers more and more activities.
-- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

similarity = 0.85530171606131

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.851811107861467

How Do We View Humans in Relation to Technology?

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.877851024243231

Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while technology is seen as a source of solutions.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.857255379825745

The partnership of technology and people makes us smarter, stronger, and better able to live in the modern world. We have become reliant on the technology and we can no longer function without it. The dependence is even stronger today than ever before, including mechanical, physical things such as housing, clothing, heating, food preparation and storage, and transportation. Now this range of dependencies is extended to information services as well: communication, news, entertainment, education, and social interaction. When things work, we are informed, comfortable, and effective. When things break, we may no longer be able to function. This dependence upon technology is very old, but every decade, the impact covers more and more activities.
-- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

similarity = 0.855879536870311

What is the Context in Which Technology is Made for Groups of People?

When I talked earlier about the need to look at technology in context, I meant the context of nature and people. When predictions turn out to be as wrong as many of those in The World in 1984, it is because context is not a passive medium but a dynamic counterpart. The responses of people, individually and collectively, and the responses of nature are often underrated in the formulation of plans and predictions. Electrical engineers speak about inductive coupling: A changing field induces a current, which may induce a counter-current. Change produces changes, often in different dimensions and magnitudes. Maybe what the real world of technology needs more than anything else are citizens with a sense of humility — the humility of Kepler or Newton, who studied the universe but knew that they were not asked to run it.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.843372246676831

Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while technology is seen as a source of solutions.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.841004285336324

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.834633945186502

What Are the Risks of Technology Induced Change on People?

There is a complex feedback loop between technology and the people who use it. A changing consciousness calls for a changing technology, and a changing technology changes consciousness.
-- Does Writing Have a Future? (Electronic Mediations Book 33)

similarity = 0.846392099531913

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.844216368039636

The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.840999483992594

How Should We Visualize the Systems of Technology We Create to Not Cause Problems?

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.842107501167143

real systems engineering problems are almost impossible to exhibit in proper realistic detail; instead, toy situations and stories must be used, which, while eliminating much detail, do not distort things too much.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.831677040240927

Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while technology is seen as a source of solutions.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.829212690007623

The Real World of Technology?

The real world of technology is a very complex system. And nothing in my survey or its highlights should be interpreted as technological determinism or as a belief in the autonomy of technology per se. What needs to be emphasized is that technologies are developed and used within a particular social, economic, and political context.1 They arise out of a social structure, they are grafted on to it, and they may reinforce it or destroy it, often in ways that are neither foreseen nor foreseeable. In this complex world neither the option that “everything is possible” nor the option that “everything is preordained” exists.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.881404517576951

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.879330640535132

Today’s real world of technology is characterized by the dominance of prescriptive technologies. Prescriptive technologies are not restricted to materials production. They are used in administrative and economic activities and in many aspects of governance, and on them rests the real world of technology in which we live. While we should not forget that these prescriptive technologies are often exceedingly effective and efficient, they come with an enormous social mortgage. The mortgage means that we live in a culture of compliance, that we are ever more conditioned to accept orthodoxy as normal, and to accept that there is only one way of doing “it.“
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.866961124216113

How Do Technologies Affect the Context of the Network?

When I talked earlier about the need to look at technology in context, I meant the context of nature and people. When predictions turn out to be as wrong as many of those in The World in 1984, it is because context is not a passive medium but a dynamic counterpart. The responses of people, individually and collectively, and the responses of nature are often underrated in the formulation of plans and predictions. Electrical engineers speak about inductive coupling: A changing field induces a current, which may induce a counter-current. Change produces changes, often in different dimensions and magnitudes. Maybe what the real world of technology needs more than anything else are citizens with a sense of humility — the humility of Kepler or Newton, who studied the universe but knew that they were not asked to run it.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.845925452538962

The real world of technology is a very complex system. And nothing in my survey or its highlights should be interpreted as technological determinism or as a belief in the autonomy of technology per se. What needs to be emphasized is that technologies are developed and used within a particular social, economic, and political context.1 They arise out of a social structure, they are grafted on to it, and they may reinforce it or destroy it, often in ways that are neither foreseen nor foreseeable. In this complex world neither the option that “everything is possible” nor the option that “everything is preordained” exists.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.84486450594026

A second factor is the reconsideration of the meaning of technology. Modern data networks serve as an example. Newspapers, magazines, and books were once thought of as part of the publishing industry, very different from radio and television broadcasting. All of these were different from movies and music. But once the Internet took hold, along with enhanced and inexpensive computer power and displays, it became clear that all of these disparate industries were really just different forms of information providers, so that all could be conveyed to customers by a single medium.
-- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

similarity = 0.837045158977821

What is the Web of Social Structures That Are Affected by Technology?

Personally, I much prefer to think in terms not of systems but of a web of interactions. This allows me to see how stresses on one thread affect all others. The image also acknowledges the inherent strength of a web and recognizes the existence of patterns and designs. Anyone who has ever woven or knitted knows that one can change patterns, but only at particular points and only in a particular way so as not to destroy the fabric itself. When women writers speak about reweaving the web of life,5 they mean exactly this kind of pattern change. Not only do they know that such changes can be achieved but, more importantly, they know there are other patterns. The web of technology can indeed be woven differently, but even to discuss such intentional changes of pattern requires an examination of the features of the current pattern and an understanding of the origins and the purpose of the present design.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.850831501860522

The real world of technology is a very complex system. And nothing in my survey or its highlights should be interpreted as technological determinism or as a belief in the autonomy of technology per se. What needs to be emphasized is that technologies are developed and used within a particular social, economic, and political context.1 They arise out of a social structure, they are grafted on to it, and they may reinforce it or destroy it, often in ways that are neither foreseen nor foreseeable. In this complex world neither the option that “everything is possible” nor the option that “everything is preordained” exists.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.836434689690511

The so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions in the Arab world started in hopeful online communities, but once they emerged into the messy offline world, they were commandeered by religious fanatics and military juntas. If Facebook now aims to instigate a global revolution, it will have to do a much better job in bridging the gap between online and offline. It and the other online giants tend to view humans as audiovisual animals—a pair of eyes and a pair of ears connected to ten fingers, a screen, and a credit card. A crucial step toward uniting humankind is to appreciate that humans have bodies.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.831338754358519

bramadams.dev is a reader-supported published Zettelkasten. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.

Video

Rules

Start Quote

I realised just how productive celebrity culture is: how much it shapes us; how we chart celebrity careers against our own ambitions; how we devour the gossip with a mix of ironic detachment and zealous emotional investment; and how useful it is as a social glue that binds us together in voyeuristic fascination.
-- Dead Famous

End Quote

In some parts of Christendom, beginning in the sixteenth century, a new and very specific artistic genre emerged that would capture the imagination of the art-buying classes for the next two hundred years. Examples of “vanitas art,” so named in tribute to Ecclesiastes, were hung in domestic environments, most often studies and bedrooms. Each still-life featured a table or sideboard on which was arranged a contrasting muddle of objects. There might be flowers, coins, a guitar or a mandolin, chess pieces, a book of verse, a laurel wreath or a wine bottle: symbols of frivolity and temporal glory. And somewhere among these would be set the two great symbols of death and the brevity of life: a skull and an hourglass.
-- Status Anxiety

I Realised Just How Productive Celebrity Culture Is: How Much it Shapes Us; How We Chart Celebrity Careers Against Our Own Ambitions; How We Devour the Gossip with a Mix of Ironic Detachment and Zealous Emotional Investment; and How Useful it is as a Social Glue That Binds Us Together in Voyeuristic Fascination.?

I realised just how productive celebrity culture is: how much it shapes us; how we chart celebrity careers against our own ambitions; how we devour the gossip with a mix of ironic detachment and zealous emotional investment; and how useful it is as a social glue that binds us together in voyeuristic fascination.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.999999172925681

But I don’t believe we’re all destined for fifteen minutes of fame, or a world filled by 8 billion influencers. And I’m pretty relieved about that. My attitude to celebrity used to be ambivalent, but, the more I read, the more I think celebrity sounds like a lucrative, but existentially grim, purgatory that I’d hate to endure.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.874206022367745

Celebrities rising to reputation wasn’t due to their being glitter-sprayed automatons in some Orwellian power game; the public weren’t brainwashed sheep bleating in excitable acceptance towards whoever the media decided should be famous. No, the truth is, celebrity is a three-way equation, much like the chemical reaction needed for fire: one can’t spark a flame without the triangular relationship of heat, fuel, and oxygen; and one can’t produce celebrity without the interaction between a subject, an audience, and a media industry.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.873090640720804

Existentially Grim, Purgatory That I’d Hate to Endure?

My own personal conception of existential dread is idiosyncratic. Many people, I think, are troubled by their own insignificance, preferring not to think about being a tiny part of a vanishing species in what couldn’t even be called a corner of the galaxy. Not me—I’m fine with that. Moreover, I’m not perturbed by the fact that I’ll be remembered by very few of the 108 billion people who have ever lived. Yes: I’m a standard-model dude in an endless something or other. It’s mostly fine.
-- All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir About Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything

similarity = 0.82231712715908

But I don’t believe we’re all destined for fifteen minutes of fame, or a world filled by 8 billion influencers. And I’m pretty relieved about that. My attitude to celebrity used to be ambivalent, but, the more I read, the more I think celebrity sounds like a lucrative, but existentially grim, purgatory that I’d hate to endure.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.81605781243243

As he sat waiting on the edge of the bed he thought again of the cellars of the Ministry of Love. It was curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one’s consciousness. There it lay, fixed in future times, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it; and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, willful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.
-- 1984

similarity = 0.814094820886662

People Are Troubled by Their Own Insignificance, Preferring Not to Think About Being a Tiny Part of a Vanishing Species?

My own personal conception of existential dread is idiosyncratic. Many people, I think, are troubled by their own insignificance, preferring not to think about being a tiny part of a vanishing species in what couldn’t even be called a corner of the galaxy. Not me—I’m fine with that. Moreover, I’m not perturbed by the fact that I’ll be remembered by very few of the 108 billion people who have ever lived. Yes: I’m a standard-model dude in an endless something or other. It’s mostly fine.
-- All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir About Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything

similarity = 0.892175987087735

I was wrong to be impressed by the mere scale of what I was looking at. Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource. The bigger the better.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.858655613595488

We are like ants preoccupied with our jobs of carrying crumbs in our very brief lifetimes instead of having a broader perspective of the big-picture patterns and cycles, the important interrelated things driving them, where we are within the cycles, and what’s likely to transpire.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.844647209232261

How Are We Like Ants Preoccupied with Our Jobs of Carrying Crumbs in Our Very Brief Lifetimes?

We are like ants preoccupied with our jobs of carrying crumbs in our very brief lifetimes instead of having a broader perspective of the big-picture patterns and cycles, the important interrelated things driving them, where we are within the cycles, and what’s likely to transpire.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.940639106266342

Expressing the matter in such startling terms makes it easy to see why philosophers from ancient Greece to the present day have taken the brevity of life to be the defining problem of human existence: we’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action.
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

similarity = 0.833117238862302

And yet busyness is really only the beginning. Many other complaints, when you stop to think about them, are essentially complaints about our limited time. Take the daily battle against online distraction, and the alarming sense that our attention spans have shriveled to such a degree that even those of us who were bookworms as children now struggle to make it through a paragraph without experiencing the urge to reach for our phones.
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

similarity = 0.832085905667313

What is the Brevity of Life?

Expressing the matter in such startling terms makes it easy to see why philosophers from ancient Greece to the present day have taken the brevity of life to be the defining problem of human existence: we’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action.
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

similarity = 0.859621770206302

Brevity, as we’ve heard, is the soul of wit. Brevity is also the soul of accessibility, which is arguably just as important as wit.
-- How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing

similarity = 0.845850163599373

"The part of life we really live is small." For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.
-- On the Shortness of Life

similarity = 0.835627764874901

Philosophers From Ancient Greece?

The philosophers associated with these schools were unapologetic about their interest in philosophies of life. According to Epicurus, for example, “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”
-- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

similarity = 0.85688284501467

After his death, Socrates’ many followers not only continued to do philosophy but attracted followers of their own. Plato, the best-known of his students, founded the school of philosophy known as the Academy, Aristippus founded the Cyrenaic school, Euclides founded the Megarian school, Phaedo founded the Elian school, and Antisthenes founded the Cynic school. What had been a trickle of philosophical activity before Socrates became, after his death, a veritable torrent. Why did this explosion of interest in philosophy take place? In part because Socrates changed the focus of philosophical inquiry. Before Socrates, philosophers were primarily interested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of that world—in doing what we would now call science. Although Socrates studied science as a young man, he abandoned it to focus his attention on the human condition. As the Roman orator, politician, and philosopher Cicero put it, Socrates was “the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men and bring her also into their homes and compel her to ask questions about life and morality and things good and evil.”
-- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

similarity = 0.853370096351219

AS WE HAVE SEEN, the two questions “What can I know?” and “How should I live?” are for philosophers inseparable. This recognition also helps to explain the lasting impact and fascination of the protagonists of philosophy, their potential iconic status, and their capacity to influence entire eras. The ideal of transposing one’s own thought into a lifeworld—embodied in its purest form by the founding figure of Socrates—further distinguishes philosophy from other paths of knowledge, such as the natural sciences or indeed art. Being a philosopher is a way of leading one’s own life consciously, giving it pull, form, and direction through constant, probing questioning.
-- Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

similarity = 0.847371147330017

Aristippus, Phaedo, Antisthenes,…?

After his death, Socrates’ many followers not only continued to do philosophy but attracted followers of their own. Plato, the best-known of his students, founded the school of philosophy known as the Academy, Aristippus founded the Cyrenaic school, Euclides founded the Megarian school, Phaedo founded the Elian school, and Antisthenes founded the Cynic school. What had been a trickle of philosophical activity before Socrates became, after his death, a veritable torrent. Why did this explosion of interest in philosophy take place? In part because Socrates changed the focus of philosophical inquiry. Before Socrates, philosophers were primarily interested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of that world—in doing what we would now call science. Although Socrates studied science as a young man, he abandoned it to focus his attention on the human condition. As the Roman orator, politician, and philosopher Cicero put it, Socrates was “the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men and bring her also into their homes and compel her to ask questions about life and morality and things good and evil.”
-- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

similarity = 0.828950608006751

The pre-Socratic thinker Periander of Corinth wrote, more than twenty-five hundred years ago: Use laws that are old but food that is fresh.
-- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

similarity = 0.824610275580756

CHAEREPHON: Socrates, I think I know plenty of Athenians who do not seek improvement! We have many politicians who think they’re perfect. And many sophists who think they know everything. SOCRATES: But what, specifically, do those politicians believe to be perfect? Their own grandiose plans for how to improve the city. Similarly, each sophist believes that everyone should adopt his ideas, which he sees as an improvement over everything that has been believed before. The laws and customs of Athens are set up to accommodate all these many rival ideas of perfection (as well as more modest proposals for improvement), to subject them to criticism, to winnow out from them what may be the few tiny seeds of truth, and to test out those that seem the most promising. Thus those myriad individuals who can conceive of no improvement of themselves nevertheless add up to a city that relentlessly seeks nothing else for itself, day and night.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.823026398613465

The Heavens?

“Then let them know that we are here,” the man said, and from his staff and hands leapt forth a white radiance that broke as a sea-wave breaks in sunlight, against the thousand diamonds of the roof and walls: a glory of light, through which the two fled, straight across the great cavern, their shadows racing from them into the white traceries and the glittering crevices and the empty, open grave.
-- The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle Series Book 2)

similarity = 0.829368962722272

When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. MENG TZU (MENCIUS), fourth century BCE1
-- The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

similarity = 0.828791316968676

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

similarity = 0.828363795124138

Nothing Earthly Succeeds by Ignoring Heaven, Nothing Heavenly by Ignoring the Earth?

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

similarity = 0.869790765175223

There were a lot of fun things to do in heaven. But none were as thrilling as what you could do on Earth.
-- What in God's Name: A Novel

similarity = 0.834426718344663

People are significant in the cosmic scheme of things; and The Earth’s biosphere is incapable of supporting human life.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.823651994287311

God's Name?

God says, bestowing upon Jesus the same sobriquet (ho Agapitos, “the Beloved”) that God had given to King David.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.839448918665173

When the faithful are asked whether God really exists, they often begin by talking about the enigmatic mysteries of the universe and the limits of human understanding. “Science cannot explain the Big Bang,” they exclaim, “so that must be God’s doing.” Yet like a magician fooling an audience by imperceptibly replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace the cosmic mystery with the worldly lawgiver. After giving the name of “God” to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorce. “We do not understand the Big Bang—therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage.”
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.820591778530622

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows – then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.” And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, – then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.” And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.
-- The Prophet

similarity = 0.813800924483228

God Says, Bestowing Upon Jesus the Same Sobriquet?

God says, bestowing upon Jesus the same sobriquet (ho Agapitos, “the Beloved”) that God had given to King David.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.929932375672681

Although “Christ” is technically the Greek word for “messiah,” that is not how Paul employs the term. He does not endow Christ with any of the connotations attached to the term “messiah” in the Hebrew Scriptures. He never speaks of Jesus as “the anointed of Israel.”
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.823258027625347

After all, in the entire first gospel there exists not a single definitive messianic statement from Jesus himself, not even at the very end when he stands before the high priest Caiaphas and somewhat passively accepts the title that others keep foisting upon him (Mark 14:62). The same is true for the early Q source material, which also contains not a single messianic statement by Jesus.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.819926743837941

Christ?

The big breakthrough came with Christianity. This faith began as an esoteric Jewish sect that sought to convince Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited messiah. However, one of the sect’s first leaders, Paul of Tarsus, reasoned that if the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, and if He had bothered to incarnate Himself in the flesh and to die on the cross for the salvation of humankind, then this is something everyone should hear about, not just Jews. It was thus necessary to spread the good word – the gospel – about Jesus throughout the world.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.818494857865076

Although “Christ” is technically the Greek word for “messiah,” that is not how Paul employs the term. He does not endow Christ with any of the connotations attached to the term “messiah” in the Hebrew Scriptures. He never speaks of Jesus as “the anointed of Israel.”
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.812872700272079

The Orthodox Church goes further, making the human side flow upward rather than downward. The fourth-century bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote: “Jesus Christ was incarnate so we could be made God” (emphasis mine). It is the very human character of Jesus that can allow us mortals to access God and merge with him, become part of him, in order to partake of the divine. That fusion is called theosis.
-- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

similarity = 0.810756290281736

Christianity?

The big breakthrough came with Christianity. This faith began as an esoteric Jewish sect that sought to convince Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited messiah. However, one of the sect’s first leaders, Paul of Tarsus, reasoned that if the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, and if He had bothered to incarnate Himself in the flesh and to die on the cross for the salvation of humankind, then this is something everyone should hear about, not just Jews. It was thus necessary to spread the good word – the gospel – about Jesus throughout the world.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.85403843451669

Christianity had been illegal since the early second century when a query from Pliny the Younger (then governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor) prompted the emperor Trajan to establish a formal policy: While Christians were not to be sought out, those who confessed to the faith were to be executed.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

similarity = 0.84481955128077

It was precisely the fervor with which the followers of Jesus believed in his resurrection that transformed this tiny Jewish sect into the largest religion in the world.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.844277461598109

What Parts of the World Was Christianity Illegal?

Christianity had been illegal since the early second century when a query from Pliny the Younger (then governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor) prompted the emperor Trajan to establish a formal policy: While Christians were not to be sought out, those who confessed to the faith were to be executed.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

similarity = 0.879366637598667

In the 300 years from the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violence of their own. Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.801058156471456

From the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, Europe experienced multiple waves of witch hunts, driven primarily by religious wars and conflicts in the wake of the Reformation, and also by fears brought on by recurring plague outbreaks.2 Tens of thousands of innocent people—and possibly hundreds of thousands—were put to death, often after being “put to the question” (that is, tortured) with the aid of boiling oil, red-hot iron bars, or thumbscrews.
-- The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

similarity = 0.787408123773075

Fifteenth Through the Seventeenth Century?

From the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, Europe experienced multiple waves of witch hunts, driven primarily by religious wars and conflicts in the wake of the Reformation, and also by fears brought on by recurring plague outbreaks.2 Tens of thousands of innocent people—and possibly hundreds of thousands—were put to death, often after being “put to the question” (that is, tortured) with the aid of boiling oil, red-hot iron bars, or thumbscrews.
-- The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

similarity = 0.833087583528326

until the late eighteenth century, Asia was the world’s economic powerhouse,
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.830317764355195

“The thought of every age is reflected in its technique,” Wiener asserted shortly after the war. During the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, when figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were laying the foundations of modern science, the most advanced and evocative technology had been that of the clock, whose gears seemed to move with the timeless, pristine perfection of a planet orbiting the sun. It was no coincidence that seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes had described even plants and animals as organic clockwork mechanisms. Then, during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the defining technology had been that of the steam engine, which was capable of converting vast amounts of energy and heat into work. And again it was no coincidence that scientists of that era had conceived of living organisms as biological heat engines, mechanisms that burned food to do useful physiological work.
-- The Dream Machine

similarity = 0.828176793854837

…,seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century?

until the late eighteenth century, Asia was the world’s economic powerhouse,
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.846699160769043

“The thought of every age is reflected in its technique,” Wiener asserted shortly after the war. During the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, when figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were laying the foundations of modern science, the most advanced and evocative technology had been that of the clock, whose gears seemed to move with the timeless, pristine perfection of a planet orbiting the sun. It was no coincidence that seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes had described even plants and animals as organic clockwork mechanisms. Then, during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the defining technology had been that of the steam engine, which was capable of converting vast amounts of energy and heat into work. And again it was no coincidence that scientists of that era had conceived of living organisms as biological heat engines, mechanisms that burned food to do useful physiological work.
-- The Dream Machine

similarity = 0.83240690387657

On the eve of the late-eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution, Asia—especially China and India—accounted for nearly 60 percent of the world economy.
-- Move: The Forces Uprooting Us

similarity = 0.820375769068562

Seventeenth Century?

“The thought of every age is reflected in its technique,” Wiener asserted shortly after the war. During the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, when figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were laying the foundations of modern science, the most advanced and evocative technology had been that of the clock, whose gears seemed to move with the timeless, pristine perfection of a planet orbiting the sun. It was no coincidence that seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes had described even plants and animals as organic clockwork mechanisms. Then, during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the defining technology had been that of the steam engine, which was capable of converting vast amounts of energy and heat into work. And again it was no coincidence that scientists of that era had conceived of living organisms as biological heat engines, mechanisms that burned food to do useful physiological work.
-- The Dream Machine

similarity = 0.837582639257896

until the late eighteenth century, Asia was the world’s economic powerhouse,
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.831355069008068

After a series of attempted revolts in the mid-1500s, the Dutch, who were under the control of Habsburg Spain, finally became powerful enough to gain de facto independence in 1581.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.818328027526589

When Were the mid-1500s?

After a series of attempted revolts in the mid-1500s, the Dutch, who were under the control of Habsburg Spain, finally became powerful enough to gain de facto independence in 1581.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.809740245870617

Prior to 1500, science and technology were totally separate fields.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.803483829185957

The world was very different in 1500 yet it operated the same way it does now. That’s because while things have evolved a lot since 1500, they’ve done so in the same ways they always have, with evolutionary uptrends producing advancements and big cycles creating swings and bumps around the uptrends.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.799528190492555

1500s Century is What?

The Commercial Revolution (1100s–1500s) The Commercial Revolution was the move away from a solely agriculture-based economy to one that included trade in a variety of goods. This evolution began in the 12th century, and by 1500, it was centered in the Italian city-states
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.817729653714205

The biggest in the year 1500 was the Songhai Empire in West Africa, which had a reputation as a center of trade and Islamic scholarship.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.812833570510574

Prior to 1500, science and technology were totally separate fields.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.808837317142839

Nth Century?

“The thought of every age is reflected in its technique,” Wiener asserted shortly after the war. During the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, when figures such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were laying the foundations of modern science, the most advanced and evocative technology had been that of the clock, whose gears seemed to move with the timeless, pristine perfection of a planet orbiting the sun. It was no coincidence that seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes had described even plants and animals as organic clockwork mechanisms. Then, during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the defining technology had been that of the steam engine, which was capable of converting vast amounts of energy and heat into work. And again it was no coincidence that scientists of that era had conceived of living organisms as biological heat engines, mechanisms that burned food to do useful physiological work.
-- The Dream Machine

similarity = 0.814082712847171

The technology that in 1845 ‘‘had been a scarecrow and chimera, began to be treated as a confidential servant,’’ noted a report compiled by the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company in 1849.
-- The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers

similarity = 0.812203200981908

here are people today who think life was better in the past. They argue that there was not only a simplicity, tranquillity, sociability and spirituality about life in the distant past that has been lost, but a virtue too. This rose-tinted nostalgia, please note, is generally confined to the wealthy. It is easier to wax elegiac for the life of a peasant when you do not have to use a long-drop toilet. Imagine that it is 1800, somewhere in Western Europe or eastern North America. The family is gathering around the hearth in the simple timber-framed house. Father reads aloud from the Bible while mother prepares to dish out a stew of beef and onions. The baby boy is being comforted by one of his sisters and the eldest lad is pouring water from a pitcher into the earthenware mugs on the table. His elder sister is feeding the horse in the stable. Outside there is no noise of traffic, there are no drug dealers and neither dioxins nor radioactive fall-out have been found in the cow’s milk. All is tranquil; a bird sings outside the window.
Oh please! Though this is one of the better-off families in the village, father’s Scripture reading is interrupted by a bronchitic cough that presages the pneumonia that will kill him at 53 – not helped by the wood smoke of the fire. (He is lucky: life expectancy even in England was less than 40 in 1800.) The baby will die of the smallpox that is now causing him to cry; his sister will soon be the chattel of a drunken husband. The water the son is pouring tastes of the cows that drink from the brook. Toothache tortures the mother. The neighbour’s lodger is getting the other girl pregnant in the hayshed even now and her child will be sent to an orphanage. The stew is grey and gristly yet meat is a rare change from gruel; there is no fruit or salad at this season. It is eaten with a wooden spoon from a wooden bowl. Candles cost too much, so firelight is all there is to see by. Nobody in the family has ever seen a play, painted a picture or heard a piano. School is a few years of dull Latin taught by a bigoted martinet at the vicarage. Father visited the city once, but the travel cost him a week’s wages and the others have never travelled more than fifteen miles from home. Each daughter owns two wool dresses, two linen shirts and one pair of shoes. Father’s jacket cost him a month’s wages but is now infested with lice. The children sleep two to a bed on straw mattresses on the floor. As for the bird outside the window, tomorrow it will be trapped and eaten by the boy.
-- The Rational Optimist

similarity = 0.811834407387217

Painted a Picture?

She undertook the exercise herself, too, with a painting called Boy with a Squirrel, by the American artist John Singleton Copley. (It shows a boy with a squirrel.)
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

similarity = 0.829394161338044

Art can be used for many purposes.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.820821171493908

Choose paintings that show traces of the movement of the hand. A drawing with sweeping strokes or an oil painting you’ve done yourself can offer an exciting contrast to perfect prints.
-- The Interior Design Handbook: Furnish, Decorate, and Style Your Space

similarity = 0.814558805278278

Art Can Be Used for Many Purposes?

Art can be used for many purposes.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.990085046081225

Art is high-quality endeavor. That is all that really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

similarity = 0.844607528057111

Art is worth appreciating, and it has a place in the world. But art should not be conflated with anything productive in a commercial sense. It’s not even related. It’s not a sign that you want this person helping you write line-of-business apps. It’s not a sign that this person would make a great addition to a team. While it may be a sign that this person is a skilled programmer, it’s not a sign that he is a profitable programmer. It’s definitely not a sign that this person is an efficiencer. What our naked Mario artist actually represents is an ongoing reinforcement of a dynamic: we, as programmers, can be distracted from our own fates and autonomy by asinine gamification.
-- Developer Hegemony: The Future of Labor

similarity = 0.837550174134105

Art is the Godhead as Revealed in the Works of Man?

Art is high-quality endeavor. That is all that really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

similarity = 0.922073018034105

Art can be used for many purposes.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.844908333816881

The mere act of creation is the strongest, most powerful force of revelation there is.
-- The Comic Toolbox: How to be Funny Even if You're Not

similarity = 0.844534094866838

Godhead?

Art is high-quality endeavor. That is all that really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

similarity = 0.851173599311598

Godself Kink Let's return to a point mentioned in the Introduction: if the ancient wisdom of Vedas are correct and the whole universe is just God playing elaborate rounds of hide'n'seek with Godself, then God is a super-freak. We need only look around our planet to see that God's idea of a fun time includes some seriously edgy, ultra-taboo, hard-core stuff—including war and poverty and pain and ravaging and abuse and atrocities of all variety.
-- Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power (A method for getting what you want by getting off on what you don't)

similarity = 0.850184293866689

“Om,” he pronounced inwardly, and he was conscious of Brahman, of the indestructibleness of life; he remembered all that he had forgotten, all that was divine.
-- Siddhartha

similarity = 0.82983826239548

God's Idea of a Fun Time?

Godself Kink Let's return to a point mentioned in the Introduction: if the ancient wisdom of Vedas are correct and the whole universe is just God playing elaborate rounds of hide'n'seek with Godself, then God is a super-freak. We need only look around our planet to see that God's idea of a fun time includes some seriously edgy, ultra-taboo, hard-core stuff—including war and poverty and pain and ravaging and abuse and atrocities of all variety.
-- Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power (A method for getting what you want by getting off on what you don't)

similarity = 0.847820029848714

There were a lot of fun things to do in heaven. But none were as thrilling as what you could do on Earth.
-- What in God's Name: A Novel

similarity = 0.838690724919208

Gambling may be the second-most enjoyable human activity.
-- The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (Personal Finance & Investment)

similarity = 0.823941980250551

There Were a Lot of Fun Things to Do in Heaven?

There were a lot of fun things to do in heaven. But none were as thrilling as what you could do on Earth.
-- What in God's Name: A Novel

similarity = 0.941730355012728

It was a better day for walking than bathing—cool and overcast. Still, there were a fair number of people on the beach. Some were pretending to enjoy themselves. A few were doggedly sunbathing in defiance of the fact that the sky was a duvet of clouds. A small number were actually swimming, or at least bouncing in the waves.
-- The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

similarity = 0.803928025187247

By comparison to the ghostly condition of the shades in Hades, a full-bodied existence in Elysium is enviable, to be sure, if only because happiness outside of the body is very difficult for human beings to imagine and impossible for them to desire. (One can desire deliverance from the body, and desire it ardently, but that is another matter.) Even the beatified souls in Dante's Paradise anticipate with surplus of joy the resurrection of their flesh at the end of time. Their bliss is in fact imperfect until they recover in time what time has robbed them of. the bodily matter with which their personal identity and appearance were bound up. Until…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.801487696727705

Elysium?

There is no doubt that Meneleus would opt for Elysium over Hades-any of us would-but would he gladly give up his worldly life prematurely for that garden existence? It seems not. Why? Because earthly paradises like Dilmun and Elysium offer ease and perpetual spring at the cost of an absolute isolation from the world of mortals-isolation from friends, family, city, and the ongoing story of human action and endeavor. Exile from both the private and public spheres of human interaction is a sorry condition, especially for a polis-loving people like the Greeks. It deprives one of both the cares and the consolations of mortal life, to which most of us are more attached than we may ever suspect. To go on living in such isolated gardens, human beings must either denature themselves like Utnapishtim, who is no longer fully human after so many centuries with no human…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.853919647642733

Immortal life with Kalypso or in Elysium or in the garden of the sun has its distinct appeal, to be sure, yet human beings hold nothing more dear than what they bring into being, or maintain in being, through their own cultivating efforts. This despite the fact that many among us…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.851894811667014

By comparison to the ghostly condition of the shades in Hades, a full-bodied existence in Elysium is enviable, to be sure, if only because happiness outside of the body is very difficult for human beings to imagine and impossible for them to desire. (One can desire deliverance from the body, and desire it ardently, but that is another matter.) Even the beatified souls in Dante's Paradise anticipate with surplus of joy the resurrection of their flesh at the end of time. Their bliss is in fact imperfect until they recover in time what time has robbed them of. the bodily matter with which their personal identity and appearance were bound up. Until…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.836719325406491

Worldly Life?

let us remember that “goal fulfillment” is not confined to “worldly” goals. A life of study or meditation has its own kind of purposefulness—or it can have. But a life without purpose can hardly be said to be human.
-- The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

similarity = 0.845961358934204

Lastly, in a sense this is a religious course: I am preaching the message that, with apparently only one life to live on this earth, you ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity rather than just get along through life comfortably—that the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is in itself a worthy goal for your life. It has often been observed the true gain is in the struggle and not in the achievement—a life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living. This, it must be observed, is an opinion and not a fact, but it is based on observing many people’s lives and speculating on their total happiness rather than the moment-to-moment pleasures they enjoyed.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.842845265507461

A deep life is a good life.
-- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

similarity = 0.840704911565852

In a Sense This is a Religious Course: I Am Preaching the Message That, with Apparently Only One Life to Live on This Earth, You Ought to Try to Make Significant Contributions to Humanity Rather Than Just Get Along Through Life Comfortably?

Lastly, in a sense this is a religious course: I am preaching the message that, with apparently only one life to live on this earth, you ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity rather than just get along through life comfortably—that the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is in itself a worthy goal for your life. It has often been observed the true gain is in the struggle and not in the achievement—a life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living. This, it must be observed, is an opinion and not a fact, but it is based on observing many people’s lives and speculating on their total happiness rather than the moment-to-moment pleasures they enjoyed.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.954405953136881

Why do I believe this talk is important? It is important because as far as I know each of you has but one life to lead, and it seems to me it is better to do significant things than to just get along through life to its end. Certainly near the end it is nice to look back at a life of accomplishments rather than a life where you have merely survived and amused yourself. Thus in a real sense I am preaching the messages that (1) it is worth trying to accomplish the goals you set yourself and (2) it is worth setting yourself high goals.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.903532518981345

let us remember that “goal fulfillment” is not confined to “worldly” goals. A life of study or meditation has its own kind of purposefulness—or it can have. But a life without purpose can hardly be said to be human.
-- The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

similarity = 0.848774420634714

Certainly Near the End it is Nice to Look Back at a Life of Accomplishments Rather Than a Life Where You Have Merely Survived and Amused Yourself?

Why do I believe this talk is important? It is important because as far as I know each of you has but one life to lead, and it seems to me it is better to do significant things than to just get along through life to its end. Certainly near the end it is nice to look back at a life of accomplishments rather than a life where you have merely survived and amused yourself. Thus in a real sense I am preaching the messages that (1) it is worth trying to accomplish the goals you set yourself and (2) it is worth setting yourself high goals.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.872664314565264

Lastly, in a sense this is a religious course: I am preaching the message that, with apparently only one life to live on this earth, you ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity rather than just get along through life comfortably—that the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is in itself a worthy goal for your life. It has often been observed the true gain is in the struggle and not in the achievement—a life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living. This, it must be observed, is an opinion and not a fact, but it is based on observing many people’s lives and speculating on their total happiness rather than the moment-to-moment pleasures they enjoyed.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.852037821093876

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

similarity = 0.837866513580846

Death is but the Next Great Adventure?

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

similarity = 0.938026841267115

Typically, the thought of death may be expected, first, to usher us towards whatever happens to matter most to us (be it drinking beside the banks of the Nile, writing a book or making a fortune), and second, to encourage us to pay less attention to the verdicts of others—who will not, after all, be doing the dying for us. The prospect of our own extinction may draw us towards that way of life on which our hearts place the greatest value. This theme animates “To His Coy Mistress” (1681), Andrew Marvell’s famous poetic attempt to lure a hesitant young woman into bed, through lines that stress not only her beauty and his fidelity but also the less obviously romantic notion that both she and he will soon enough be stone dead.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.858212435978984

it is wrong to speak of death as the price of life's vitality. Death is rather its matrix. Stevens puts it even more peremptorily: "Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, / Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams / And our desires." Death neither negates nor terminates life but gives birth to its intrinsic potentialities, especially its potentiality for appearance. Without death there is no fulfillment of potentiality nor any ever-changing moods of the phenomenal world. Death may "strew the leaves / Of sure obliteration on our paths," yet "she makes the willows shiver in the sun / For maidens who were wont…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.849198904204753

Death May "strew the Leaves?

it is wrong to speak of death as the price of life's vitality. Death is rather its matrix. Stevens puts it even more peremptorily: "Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, / Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams / And our desires." Death neither negates nor terminates life but gives birth to its intrinsic potentialities, especially its potentiality for appearance. Without death there is no fulfillment of potentiality nor any ever-changing moods of the phenomenal world. Death may "strew the leaves / Of sure obliteration on our paths," yet "she makes the willows shiver in the sun / For maidens who were wont…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.856476471744048

the human life, with its natural progression from springlike growth to summerlike maturation to autumnlike entropy to winterlike death.
-- The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

similarity = 0.845739697272109

Typically, the thought of death may be expected, first, to usher us towards whatever happens to matter most to us (be it drinking beside the banks of the Nile, writing a book or making a fortune), and second, to encourage us to pay less attention to the verdicts of others—who will not, after all, be doing the dying for us. The prospect of our own extinction may draw us towards that way of life on which our hearts place the greatest value. This theme animates “To His Coy Mistress” (1681), Andrew Marvell’s famous poetic attempt to lure a hesitant young woman into bed, through lines that stress not only her beauty and his fidelity but also the less obviously romantic notion that both she and he will soon enough be stone dead.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.842722471478029

The Human Life, with Its Natural Progression From Springlike Growth to Summerlike Maturation to Autumnlike Entropy to Winterlike Death.?

the human life, with its natural progression from springlike growth to summerlike maturation to autumnlike entropy to winterlike death.
-- The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

similarity = 0.999997600914338

Systematic knowledge of the current range of human lifespans has made that range seem natural. Today our society is permeated by the twin ideas that death is both inevitable and random.
-- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

similarity = 0.863053673144697

As I studied history, I saw that it typically transpires via relatively well-defined life cycles, like those of organisms, that evolve as each generation transitions to the next.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.860625739227586

How Do We Deal with the Shortness of Lifes Seasons?

There are many ways, some of them seemingly small, in which the real world of technology denies the existence and the reality of nature. For instance, there is little sense of season as one walks through a North American or western European supermarket. As a child in Berlin, I still experienced a sense of special occasion when participating in small festive events around the family table to celebrate the first asparagus of the season, the first strawberries, the rare and special gift of an orange in winter. Today such occasions for marking the seasons are rare. Just as there is little sense of season, there is little sense of climate. Everything possible is done to equalize the ambience — to construct an environment that is warm in the winter, cool in the summer — equilibrating temperature and humidity to create an environment that does not reflect nature. Nature is then the outside for “us” who are in an internal cocoon. Indeed, technology does allow us to design nature out of much of our lives. This, however, may be quite stupid. People are part of nature whether they like it or not. Machines and instruments will thrive and work well in even temperatures and constant humidity. People, in fact, may not. For the sake of our own mental and physical health, we may need the rhythm of the seasons and the experience of different climates that can link us to nature and to life.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.846466296609675

the human life, with its natural progression from springlike growth to summerlike maturation to autumnlike entropy to winterlike death.
-- The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

similarity = 0.839266274624912

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.  But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.
-- On the Shortness of Life

similarity = 0.829267024457066

First Asparagus of the Season, the First Strawberries, the Rare and Special Gift of an Orange in Winter?

I was not a gardener and never had been in my life, but thanks to Sam Kass and our family’s efforts to eat better at home, I now knew that strawberries were at their most succulent in June, that darker-leaf lettuces had the most nutrients, and that it wasn’t so hard to make kale chips in the oven. I saw my daughters eating things like spring pea salad and cauliflower mac and cheese and understood that until recently most of what we knew about food had come through food-industry advertising of everything boxed, frozen, or otherwise processed for convenience, whether it was in snap-crackle TV jingles or clever packaging aimed at the harried parent dashing through the grocery store. Nobody, really, was out there advertising the fresh, healthy stuff—the gratifying crunch of a fresh carrot or the unparalleled sweetness of a tomato plucked right off the vine.
-- Becoming

similarity = 0.824218428545574

She brought home bread, dried fish, but above all, “the gifts of the forest,” as she explained with a smile: pine kernels, young fir shoots, which she boiled up with semolina. To his surprise, he felt himself growing increasingly separate from the wind, the earth, the cold, into which he had almost merged.
-- Music of a Life: A Novel

similarity = 0.81492297706767

I lived in a mile-long village in the middle of a western province in Kyrgyzstan: there were larch trees on the snowy mountains, flocks of sheep crossing dusty roads, but there was no running water, no grocery store. The resourceful villagers preserved peppers and tomatoes, stockpiled apples and onions, but it was so difficult to get fresh produce otherwise that I regularly fantasized about spinach and oranges, and would spend entire weekends trying to obtain them.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

similarity = 0.81052637562372

The Gratifying Crunch of a Fresh Carrot or the Unparalleled Sweetness of a Tomato Plucked Right Off the Vine?

I was not a gardener and never had been in my life, but thanks to Sam Kass and our family’s efforts to eat better at home, I now knew that strawberries were at their most succulent in June, that darker-leaf lettuces had the most nutrients, and that it wasn’t so hard to make kale chips in the oven. I saw my daughters eating things like spring pea salad and cauliflower mac and cheese and understood that until recently most of what we knew about food had come through food-industry advertising of everything boxed, frozen, or otherwise processed for convenience, whether it was in snap-crackle TV jingles or clever packaging aimed at the harried parent dashing through the grocery store. Nobody, really, was out there advertising the fresh, healthy stuff—the gratifying crunch of a fresh carrot or the unparalleled sweetness of a tomato plucked right off the vine.
-- Becoming

similarity = 0.860856939104945

Like Eve's eating of the pomegranate, gardening brings about a transformation of perception, a fundamental change in one's way of seeing the world, call it a phenomenological conversion. No longer does the eye stop at the surface of nature's living forms; it looks to the depths in which they stake their…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.823644978984712

When she ate the pomegranate, it was as if every seed with its wet red shining coat of sweet flesh clinging to the dark core was one of nature's eyes. Afterward, it was nature that was blind, and she who was wild with…
-- Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

similarity = 0.82163996126504

Nature's Living Forms?

the human life, with its natural progression from springlike growth to summerlike maturation to autumnlike entropy to winterlike death.
-- The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

similarity = 0.847511594546203

if we can see living organisms as (enormously complex) feedback systems actively interacting with their environments, then we can begin to comprehend how the ineffable qualities of mind are not separate from the body but rather inextricably bound up in it.
-- The Dream Machine

similarity = 0.83985025443617

EVERY LIVING THING possesses the drive to survive and pass on its genes to future generations. We consider plants our friends because they feed us, but plants regard all plant predators, including us, as enemies.
-- The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

similarity = 0.832549341812275

Plants Our Friends Because They Feed Us?

EVERY LIVING THING possesses the drive to survive and pass on its genes to future generations. We consider plants our friends because they feed us, but plants regard all plant predators, including us, as enemies.
-- The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

similarity = 0.88771910683886

Plants are great chemists—and alchemists, for that matter: they can turn sunbeams into matter! They have evolved to use biological warfare to repel predators—poisoning, paralyzing, or disorienting them—or to reduce their own digestibility to stay alive and protect their seeds, enhancing the chances that their species will endure.
-- The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

similarity = 0.830201260951106

The only power source an unaided human has are muscles, first our own and later that of the handful of animals that we could tame. Starvation, disease, and injury were common and had the unfortunately high likelihood of proving lethal. And any provided-by-nature root or rabbit that you ate was one that someone else would not be eating. So, sure, we lived in “harmony with nature” . . . which is another way of saying we tended to beat the crap out of our neighbors whenever we saw them. Odds are, whoever won the fight ate the loser. Pretty exciting, eh?
-- The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

similarity = 0.816158666279083

Odds Are, Whoever Won the Fight Ate the Loser?

The only power source an unaided human has are muscles, first our own and later that of the handful of animals that we could tame. Starvation, disease, and injury were common and had the unfortunately high likelihood of proving lethal. And any provided-by-nature root or rabbit that you ate was one that someone else would not be eating. So, sure, we lived in “harmony with nature” . . . which is another way of saying we tended to beat the crap out of our neighbors whenever we saw them. Odds are, whoever won the fight ate the loser. Pretty exciting, eh?
-- The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

similarity = 0.808871599250096

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
-- How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

similarity = 0.802470944683249

History shows us that after the fight for power in which the common enemy is defeated, those who united against the common enemy typically fight among themselves for power and those in the losing party do the same as they plan their next attack. I call this the “purge” state of the balance of power dynamic. It has happened in all cases, with the Reign of Terror in France and the Red Terror in the Soviet Union being the most well-known. This same sort of fighting has happened between countries, as with the US and the Soviet Union, who were allies in World War II. Similarly, the united front of Chinese communists and nationalists that fought the Japanese in the war immediately battled each other for power when the war was over. Understanding this typical dynamic, one should look out for internal fighting among the winners right after the big war is over.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.799552091901373

Victorious Warriors?

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
-- How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

similarity = 0.901160097651649

I remembered the words of Sancho Panza: An adventuring knight is someone who’s beaten and then finds himself emperor.
-- Educated: A Memoir

similarity = 0.826196680436072

In the great age of conquerors warfare was a low-damage, high-profit affair. At the Battle of Hastings in 1066 William the Conqueror gained the whole of England in a single day for the cost of a few thousand dead. Nuclear weapons and cyberwarfare, by contrast, are high-damage, low-profit technologies. You can use such tools to destroy entire countries but not to build profitable empires.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.820220320790154

What is the Feeling a Victorious Warrior Has?

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
-- How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

similarity = 0.839466338372876

And sometimes I would give in to that inevitable human resistance against doing what’s best for us, and waste an evening distracting myself. I knew quite well, however, that when I did overcome my lethargy, I would be rewarded with a little miracle: I knew that, no matter how I felt on climbing the dojo stairs, two hours later—after hundreds of throws and falls—I would walk out tingling and fully alive, feeling so good, in fact, that the night itself would seem to sparkle and gleam.
-- Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

similarity = 0.79671964731496

English we do not have a perfect word to describe the positive feeling we get from experiencing success. I’ve read piles of scientific literature on related topics, and I’ve done my own research in this area, and I am convinced that we are lacking a good word. (The closest label is “authentic pride,” but that’s not an exact match.)
-- Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

similarity = 0.793655048545702

What is Another Term for Authentic Pride?

English we do not have a perfect word to describe the positive feeling we get from experiencing success. I’ve read piles of scientific literature on related topics, and I’ve done my own research in this area, and I am convinced that we are lacking a good word. (The closest label is “authentic pride,” but that’s not an exact match.)
-- Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

similarity = 0.839439502420239

Like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love—something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure and a little cloudy liquid. Perceptions like that—latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are. That’s what we need to do all the time—all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them. Pride is a master of deception: when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell. (Compare Crates on Xenocrates.)
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

similarity = 0.782357487904118

(Many people learn to redirect their drive for prestige into various sublimations that have no obvious connection to a visible peer group, such as “honor”, “ethical integrity”, “piety” etc.; this does not change the underlying mechanism.)
-- The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

similarity = 0.780654818918732

Piety?

He instructed his followers to avoid killing, promiscuous sex and theft, since such acts necessarily stoke the fire of craving (for power, for sensual pleasure, or for wealth).
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.820136582170685

Nothing is more pathetic than people who run around in circles, “delving into the things that lie beneath” and conducting investigations into the souls of the people around them, never realizing that all you have to do is to be attentive to the power inside you and worship it sincerely. To worship it is to keep it from being muddied with turmoil and becoming aimless and dissatisfied with nature—divine and human. What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad—as terrible a blindness as the kind that can’t tell white from black.
-- Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

similarity = 0.819415307752621

A cultural idea – such as belief in Christian heaven above the clouds or Communist paradise here on earth – can compel a human to dedicate his or her life to spreading that idea, even at the price of death.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.81897584100659

What is the Term for a Group of Christians on Earth?

The big breakthrough came with Christianity. This faith began as an esoteric Jewish sect that sought to convince Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited messiah. However, one of the sect’s first leaders, Paul of Tarsus, reasoned that if the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, and if He had bothered to incarnate Himself in the flesh and to die on the cross for the salvation of humankind, then this is something everyone should hear about, not just Jews. It was thus necessary to spread the good word – the gospel – about Jesus throughout the world.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.803247146167336

It was precisely the fervor with which the followers of Jesus believed in his resurrection that transformed this tiny Jewish sect into the largest religion in the world.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.802634214806068

The task of defining Jesus’s message fell instead to a new crop of educated, urbanized, Greek-speaking Diaspora Jews who would become the primary vehicles for the expansion of the new faith.
-- Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

similarity = 0.795903653864655

What Does Christiantiy Deal with Death?

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is, in the best tradition of the Christian memento mori, a study in how the idea of death may reorient our priorities away from the worldly and towards the spiritual, away from whist and dinner parties and towards truth and love.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.821141389409431

It is the rich, the beautiful, the famous and the powerful for whom death has in store the cruellest lessons—the very categories of people, that is, whose worldly goods take them, in the Christian understanding, furthest from God.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.817843331629802

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

similarity = 0.810544532024006

Christian Memento Mori Items?

In some parts of Christendom, beginning in the sixteenth century, a new and very specific artistic genre emerged that would capture the imagination of the art-buying classes for the next two hundred years. Examples of “vanitas art,” so named in tribute to Ecclesiastes, were hung in domestic environments, most often studies and bedrooms. Each still-life featured a table or sideboard on which was arranged a contrasting muddle of objects. There might be flowers, coins, a guitar or a mandolin, chess pieces, a book of verse, a laurel wreath or a wine bottle: symbols of frivolity and temporal glory. And somewhere among these would be set the two great symbols of death and the brevity of life: a skull and an hourglass.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.840501785400754

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is, in the best tradition of the Christian memento mori, a study in how the idea of death may reorient our priorities away from the worldly and towards the spiritual, away from whist and dinner parties and towards truth and love.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

similarity = 0.834051105039556

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.
-- Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

similarity = 0.813489831866293

bramadams.dev is a reader-supported published Zettelkasten. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.

Video

What is Common Sense?

Criticizing common sense, it must be said, is a tricky business, if only because it’s almost universally regarded as a good thing—when was the last time you were told not to use it? Well, I’m going to tell you that a lot. As we’ll see, common sense is indeed exquisitely adapted to handling the kind of complexity that arises in everyday situations. And for those situations, it’s every bit as good as advertised. But “situations” involving corporations, cultures, markets, nation-states, and global institutions exhibit a very different kind of complexity from everyday situations. And under these circumstances, common sense turns out to suffer from a number of errors that systematically mislead us.
-- Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer

similarity = 0.867170969328176

Taylor’s definition highlights two defining features of common sense that seem to differentiate it from other kinds of human knowledge, like science or mathematics. The first of these features is that unlike formal systems of knowledge, which are fundamentally theoretical, common sense is overwhelmingly practical, meaning that it is more concerned with providing answers to questions than in worrying about how it came by the answers. From the perspective of common sense, it is good enough to know that something is true, or that it is the way of things. One does not need to know why in order to benefit from the knowledge, and arguably one is better off not worrying about it too much. In contrast with theoretical knowledge, in other words, common sense does not reflect on the world, but instead attempts to deal with it simply “as it is.”
-- Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer

similarity = 0.860661703453914

The second feature that differentiates common sense from formal knowledge is that while the power of formal systems resides in their ability to organize their specific findings into logical categories described by general principles, the power of common sense lies in its ability to deal with every concrete situation on its own terms. For example, it is a matter of common sense that what we wear or do or say in front of our boss will be different from how we behave in front of our friends, our parents, our parents’ friends, or our friends’ parents. But whereas a formal system of knowledge would try to derive the appropriate behavior in all these situations from a single, more general “law,” common sense just “knows” what the appropriate thing to do is in any particular situation, without knowing how it knows it It is largely for this reason, in fact, that commonsense knowledge has proven so hard to replicate in computers—because, in contrast with theoretical knowledge, it requires a relatively large number of rules to deal with even a small number of special cases. Let’s say, for example, that you wanted to program a robot to navigate the subway. It seems like a relatively simple task. But as you would quickly discover, even a single component of this task such as the “rule” against asking for another person’s subway seat turns out to depend on a complex variety of other rules—about seating arrangements on subways in particular, about polite behavior in public in general, about life in crowded cities, and about general-purpose norms of courteousness, sharing, fairness, and ownership—that at first glance seem to have little to do with the rule in question.
-- Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer

similarity = 0.856078737756213

What is Thinking with Heuristics?

The unique power of heuristic reasoning lies in its ability to cope with the complex and the unexpected, to make acceptable choices when there isn’t time enough to make the ideal choice, to hunker down and keep on going when a precisely defined algorithm would be overwhelmed by the combinatoric explosion. In effect, heuristic reasoning is what allows us to go through life in a chronic state of controlled panic.
-- The Dream Machine

similarity = 0.845813891763187

This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.
-- Thinking, Fast and Slow

similarity = 0.838367719842823

To avoid mental traps, you must think more objectively. Try arguing from first principles, getting to root causes, and seeking out the third story. Realize that your intuitive interpretations of the world can often be wrong due to availability bias, fundamental attribution error, optimistic probability bias, and other related mental models that explain common errors in thinking. Use Ockham’s razor and Hanlon’s razor to begin investigating the simplest objective explanations. Then test your theories by de-risking your assumptions, avoiding premature optimization. Attempt to think gray in an effort to consistently avoid confirmation bias. Actively seek out other perspectives by including the Devil’s advocate position and bypassing the filter bubble. Consider the adage “You are what you eat.” You need to take in a variety of foods to be a healthy person. Likewise, taking in a variety of perspectives will help you become a super thinker.
-- Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

similarity = 0.814922118756365

What is a Cognitive Bias and Why is it Bad?

“listening to yourself” sounds, frankly, dangerous after reading the latest issue of Psychological Review or Wikipedia’s wonderful article, “List of cognitive biases.”
-- Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe

similarity = 0.834568060300791

Table 3–1. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions 1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water. 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
-- Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

similarity = 0.826603767540361

To avoid mental traps, you must think more objectively. Try arguing from first principles, getting to root causes, and seeking out the third story. Realize that your intuitive interpretations of the world can often be wrong due to availability bias, fundamental attribution error, optimistic probability bias, and other related mental models that explain common errors in thinking. Use Ockham’s razor and Hanlon’s razor to begin investigating the simplest objective explanations. Then test your theories by de-risking your assumptions, avoiding premature optimization. Attempt to think gray in an effort to consistently avoid confirmation bias. Actively seek out other perspectives by including the Devil’s advocate position and bypassing the filter bubble. Consider the adage “You are what you eat.” You need to take in a variety of foods to be a healthy person. Likewise, taking in a variety of perspectives will help you become a super thinker.
-- Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

similarity = 0.814978449084254

How Do We Use the Scientific Method Day to Day?

But as frustrating as it can be for physics students, the consistency with which our commonsense physics fails us has one great advantage for human civilization: It forces us to do science. In science, we accept that if we want to learn how the world works, we need to test our theories with careful observations and experiments, and then trust the data no matter what our intuition says.
-- Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer

similarity = 0.849901643962777

The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you don’t actually know. There’s not a mechanic or scientist or technician alive who hasn’t suffered from that one so much that he’s not instinctively on guard. That’s the main reason why so much scientific and mechanical information sounds so dull and so cautious. If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete fool out of you.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

similarity = 0.829409898185019

The scientific method works best in circumstances in which the system studied can be truly isolated from its general context. This is why its first triumphs came in the study of astronomy.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.824745276062919

How Does Science Move Forward in a Complex Messy World?

It is easy to depict a discovery, once made, as resulting from a logical, and linear process, but that does not mean that science should progress according to neat, linear and sequential rules.
-- Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

similarity = 0.848730067042281

But as frustrating as it can be for physics students, the consistency with which our commonsense physics fails us has one great advantage for human civilization: It forces us to do science. In science, we accept that if we want to learn how the world works, we need to test our theories with careful observations and experiments, and then trust the data no matter what our intuition says.
-- Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer

similarity = 0.844405724135218

Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple, indeterminate, relative ones.
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

similarity = 0.842365816116787

Is There One Overarching Theory in Science to Rule Them All?

Science, however, presumes no ontology. Ontologies are theories, and science—a method for evolving and testing theories—grants to no theory a special dispensation. Each theory, like each species, must compete to endure. A theory that today boasts a long reign may tomorrow, like so many erstwhile species, suffer a sudden extinction.
-- The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes

similarity = 0.843078905655538

The ideal that explanatory science strives for is nicely described by the quotation from Wheeler with which I began this chapter: ‘Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it – in a decade, a century, or a millennium – we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? [my italics].’ Now we shall see how this explanation-based conception of science answers the question that I asked above: how do we know so much about unfamiliar aspects of reality? Put yourself in the place of an ancient astronomer thinking about the axis-tilt explanation of seasons. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that you have also adopted the heliocentric theory. So you might be, say, Aristarchus of Samos, who gave the earliest known arguments for the heliocentric theory in the third century BCE
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.834313729717656

Whenever a wide range of variant theories can account equally well for the phenomenon they are trying to explain, there is no reason to prefer one of them over the others, so advocating a particular one in preference to the others is irrational.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.827060231335298

What is Optimization of a Scientific Theory?

One way to choose among several competing models is the Occam’s razor principle, which suggests that, all things being equal, the simplest possible hypothesis is probably the correct one. Of course, things are rarely completely equal, so it’s not immediately obvious how to apply something like Occam’s razor in a mathematical context. Grappling with this challenge in the 1960s, Russian mathematician Andrey Tikhonov proposed one answer: introduce an additional term to your calculations that penalizes more complex solutions. If we introduce a complexity penalty, then more complex models need to do not merely a better job but a significantly better job of explaining the data to justify their greater complexity. Computer scientists refer to this principle—using constraints that penalize models for their complexity—as Regularization.
-- Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

similarity = 0.811555240426935

It may seem strange that scientific instruments bring us closer to reality when in purely physical terms they only ever separate us further from it. But we observe nothing directly anyway. All observation is theory-laden. Likewise, whenever we make an error, it is an error in the explanation of something. That is why appearances can be deceptive, and it is also why we, and our instruments, can correct for that deceptiveness. The growth of knowledge consists of correcting misconceptions in our theories. Edison said that research is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration – but that is misleading, because people can apply creativity even to tasks that computers and other machines do uncreatively. So science is not mindless toil for which rare moments of discovery are the compensation: the toil can be creative, and fun, just as the discovery of new explanations is. Now, can this creativity – and this fun – continue indefinitely?
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.810235969716884

Science, however, presumes no ontology. Ontologies are theories, and science—a method for evolving and testing theories—grants to no theory a special dispensation. Each theory, like each species, must compete to endure. A theory that today boasts a long reign may tomorrow, like so many erstwhile species, suffer a sudden extinction.
-- The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes

similarity = 0.809941979667297

bramadams.dev is a reader-supported published Zettelkasten. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.

Video

What is the Present (time)?

Life is divided into three periods — that which has been, that which is, that which will be.  Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain.
-- On the Shortness of Life

similarity = 0.844252258211633

All our life is lived in today. Right now. This second. And this second. And this second.
-- Hear Yourself: How to Find Peace in a Noisy World

similarity = 0.839689504046193

It simply makes no sense to ask which moment in the life of your sister on Proxima b corresponds to now. It is like asking which football team has won a basketball championship, how much money a swallow has earned, or how much a musical note weighs. They are nonsensical questions because football teams play football, not basketball; swallows do not busy themselves earning money; sounds cannot be weighed. “Basketball champions” refers to a team of basketball players, not to footballers. Monetary profit refers to human society, not to swallows. The notion of “the present” refers to things that are close to us, not to anything that is far away. Our “present” does not extend throughout the universe. It is like a bubble around us.
-- The Order of Time

similarity = 0.83235512784951

What is the Future (time)?

Life is divided into three periods — that which has been, that which is, that which will be.  Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain.
-- On the Shortness of Life

similarity = 0.849227095046649

Most people, deep down, believe that the future is a blank. Yet the truth is that we can assign probabilities to some of the changes that lie in store for us, especially certain large structural changes, and there are ways to use this knowledge in designing personal stability zones. We can, for example, predict with certainty that unless death intervenes, we shall grow older; that our children, our relatives and friends will also grow older; and that after a certain point our health will begin to deteriorate. Obvious as this may seem, we can, as a result of this simple statement, infer a great deal about our lives one, five or ten years hence, and about the amount of change we will have to absorb in the interim.
-- Future Shock

similarity = 0.842395489201116

The future of civilization is unknowable, because the knowledge that is going to affect it has yet to be created.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.839542315863983

Is Knowledge Creation Increasing?

Francis Bacon told us that "Knowledge … is power." This can now be translated into contemporary terms. In our social setting, "Knowledge is change"—and accelerating knowledge-acquisition, fueling the great engine of technology, means accelerating change.
-- Future Shock

similarity = 0.833455955771969

in modern knowledge work, nothing is ever static.
-- Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

similarity = 0.831262291903682

Throughout human history, progress has been loosely correlated to how easy it is for the average person to create—and access—knowledge.
-- The Only Skill that Matters: The Proven Methodology to Read Faster, Remember More, and Become a SuperLearner

similarity = 0.831252604396405

What is the Information Rate of the Present?

Society is steadily moving from a material goods society to an information service society. At the time of the American Revolution, say 1780 or so, over 90% of the people were essentially farmers—now farmers are a very small percentage of workers. Similarly, before wwii most workers were in factories—now less than half are there. In 1993, there were more people in government (excluding the military) than there were in manufacturing! What will the situation be in 2020? As a guess I would say less than 25% of the people in the civilian workforce will be handling things; the rest will be handling information in some form or other. In making a movie or a tv program you are making not so much a thing, though of course it does have a material form, as you are organizing information. Information is, of course, stored in a material form, say a book (the essence of a book is information), but information is not a material good to be consumed like food, a house, clothes, an automobile, or an airplane ride for transportation.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.798393844198024

Information was a substance as old as the first living cell and as new as the latest technology.
-- The Dream Machine

similarity = 0.794657208782802

Herbert Simon, an American economist and cognitive psychologist, wrote, “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention…”
-- Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

similarity = 0.789171365554755

Does Knowledge Degrade or Mutate Over Time?

INFORMATION DECAYS or, as Professor Whitehead has so aptly put it: KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT KEEP ANY BETTER THAN FISH
-- SYSTEMANTICS. THE SYSTEMS BIBLE

similarity = 0.842053506213114

in modern knowledge work, nothing is ever static.
-- Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

similarity = 0.832730457854834

knowledge held immune from criticism never can be improved!
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.814618839912809

How Does Evolution Work Against Selection?

In his book The Mating Mind, the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller gives a promising answer. Miller argues that while ecological selection (the pressure to survive) abhors waste, sexual selection often favors it.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

similarity = 0.830198097990306

Bizarre as this may sound, in evolutionary terms it is quite normal. Most species do not change their habits during their few million years on earth or alter their lifestyle much in different parts of their range. Natural selection is a conservative force. It spends more of its time keeping species the same than changing them. Only towards the edge of its range, on an isolated island, or in a remote valley or on a lonely hill top, does natural selection occasionally cause part of a species to morph into something different.
-- The Rational Optimist

similarity = 0.827179992160038

biological evolution often reaches ‘local maxima of fitness’.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.81833011227834

What is the Difference Between Life and Space Objects?

Almost all the atoms in intergalactic space are hydrogen or helium, so there is no chemistry. No life could have evolved there, nor any intelligence. Nothing changes there. Nothing happens. The same is true of the next cube and the next, and if you were to examine a million consecutive cubes in any direction the story would be the same.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.810503432089882

He looked at the stars again, and he realized that it’s not the stars that create light, but rather light that creates the stars. “Everything is made of light,” he said, “and the space in-between isn’t empty.” And he knew that everything that exists is one living being, and that light is the messenger of life, because it is alive and contains all information.
-- The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)

similarity = 0.804098995659638

Time and space are real phenomena. But they are in no way absolute; they are not at all independent from what happens; they are not as different from the other substances of the world, as Newton had imagined them to be.
-- The Order of Time

similarity = 0.802169029625823

Is the Future Probability and How Do Living Things Fight it and Death?

Most people, deep down, believe that the future is a blank. Yet the truth is that we can assign probabilities to some of the changes that lie in store for us, especially certain large structural changes, and there are ways to use this knowledge in designing personal stability zones. We can, for example, predict with certainty that unless death intervenes, we shall grow older; that our children, our relatives and friends will also grow older; and that after a certain point our health will begin to deteriorate. Obvious as this may seem, we can, as a result of this simple statement, infer a great deal about our lives one, five or ten years hence, and about the amount of change we will have to absorb in the interim.
-- Future Shock

similarity = 0.847018959922583

Systematic knowledge of the current range of human lifespans has made that range seem natural. Today our society is permeated by the twin ideas that death is both inevitable and random.
-- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

similarity = 0.838486878509766

Dealing with the future is all about 1) perceiving and adapting to what is happening, even if it can’t be anticipated; 2) coming up with probabilities for what might happen; and 3) knowing enough about what might happen to protect oneself against the unacceptable, even if one can’t do that perfectly.
-- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

similarity = 0.826944084910054

How Do We Prevent Extinction?

one day the genes of a rare species could survive its extinction by causing themselves to be stored on a computer and then implanted into a cell of a different species.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.82127374161198

Even life on Earth will eventually be extinguished, unless people decide otherwise. Only people can rely on themselves into the unbounded future.
-- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

similarity = 0.813120434618855

Secondly, when climate change causes mass extinctions, sea creatures are usually hit as hard as land dwellers. Yet there is no evidence of any significant disappearance of oceanic fauna 45,000 years ago. Human involvement can easily explain why the wave of extinction obliterated the terrestrial megafauna of Australia while sparing that of the nearby oceans. Despite its burgeoning navigational abilities, Homo sapiens was still overwhelmingly a terrestrial menace.
-- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

similarity = 0.812011160343256

Tragedy of the Commons Evolution of Science and Capital?

The tragedy of the commons actually stems from two linked problems, one of overuse and another of underprovision. On the demand side, the commons situation encourages a race to the bottom by overuse—what economists call a congested-public-good problem. On the supply side, the commons rewards free-rider behavior—removing or diminishing incentives for individual actors to invest in developing more pasturage.
-- The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

similarity = 0.871265160035131

The tragedy of the commons predicts only three possible outcomes. One is the sea of mud. Another is for some actor with coercive power to enforce an allocation policy on behalf of the village (the communist solution). The third is for the commons to break up as village members fence off bits they can defend and manage sustainably (the property-rights solution).
-- The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

similarity = 0.870863170071187

The “tragedy of the commons,” as exposed by economists, is as follows—the commons being a collective property, say, a forest or fishing waters or your local public park. Collectively, farmers as a community prefer to avoid overgrazing, and fishermen overfishing—the entire resource becomes thus degraded. But every single individual farmer would personally gain from his own overgrazing or overfishing under, of course, the condition that others don’t. And that is what plagues socialism: people’s individual interests do not quite work well under collectivism. But it is a critical mistake to think that people can function only under a private property system.
-- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

similarity = 0.869701321370456

bramadams.dev is a reader-supported published Zettelkasten. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.