Quote of the Day

The appetite for pleasure, as understood by Hobbes, has two disturbing features. First, it never ends until death. There is no stable condition that counts as being happy; there are only fleeting experiences that must be renewed constantly. We are (though Hobbes doesn’t use the phrase) in an endless pursuit of happiness, and in order to attain happiness, we are in pursuit of the power and wealth that we believe will make it possible. Second, we take an imaginary pleasure now in our future pleasures. And since happiness is subjective, imaginary pleasures are just as authentic as real ones. Thus fantasy and reality become interchangeable.

- How have we come to build a whole culture around a futile, self-defeating enterprise: the pursuit of happiness?

Wisdom Of The Week

Why might former elite performers have such a hard time? No academic research has yet proved this, but I strongly suspect that the memory of remarkable ability, if that is the source of one’s self-worth, might, for some, provide an invidious contrast to a later, less remarkable life. “Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy,” Alex Dias Ribeiro, a former Formula 1 race-car driver, once wrote. “For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line. His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead. In this case, there will not be life after success.”

Call it the Principle of Psychoprofessional Gravitation: the idea that the agony of professional oblivion is directly related to the height of professional prestige previously achieved, and to one’s emotional attachment to that prestige. Problems related to achieving professional success might appear to be a pretty good species of problem to have; even raising this issue risks seeming precious. But if you reach professional heights and are deeply invested in being high up, you can suffer mightily when you inevitably fall. That’s the man on the plane. Maybe that will be you, too. And, without significant intervention, I suspect it will be me.

[---]

What’s the difference between Bach and Darwin? Both were preternaturally gifted and widely known early in life. Both attained permanent fame posthumously. Where they differed was in their approach to the midlife fade. When Darwin fell behind as an innovator, he became despondent and depressed; his life ended in sad inactivity. When Bach fell behind, he reinvented himself as a master instructor. He died beloved, fulfilled, and—though less famous than he once had been—respected.

The lesson for you and me, especially after 50: Be Johann Sebastian Bach, not Charles Darwin.

[---]

How does one do that?

A potential answer lies in the work of the British psychologist Raymond Cattell, who in the early 1940s introduced the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Cattell defined fluid intelligence as the ability to reason, analyze, and solve novel problems—what we commonly think of as raw intellectual horsepower. Innovators typically have an abundance of fluid intelligence. It is highest relatively early in adulthood and diminishes starting in one’s 30s and 40s. This is why tech entrepreneurs, for instance, do so well so early, and why older people have a much harder time innovating.

Crystallized intelligence, in contrast, is the ability to use knowledge gained in the past. Think of it as possessing a vast library and understanding how to use it. It is the essence of wisdom. Because crystallized intelligence relies on an accumulating stock of knowledge, it tends to increase through one’s 40s, and does not diminish until very late in life.

[---]

At some point, writing one more book will not add to my life satisfaction; it will merely stave off the end of my book-writing career. The canvas of my life will have another brushstroke that, if I am being forthright, others will barely notice, and will certainly not appreciate very much. The same will be true for most other markers of my success.

What I need to do, in effect, is stop seeing my life as a canvas to fill, and start seeing it more as a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of. I need a reverse bucket list. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships until I can clearly see my refined self in its best form.

[---]

The biggest mistake professionally successful people make is attempting to sustain peak accomplishment indefinitely, trying to make use of the kind of fluid intelligence that begins fading relatively early in life. This is impossible. The key is to enjoy accomplishments for what they are in the moment, and to walk away perhaps before I am completely ready—but on my own terms.

So: I’ve resigned my job as president of the American Enterprise Institute, effective right about the time this essay is published. While I have not detected deterioration in my performance, it was only a matter of time. Like many executive positions, the job is heavily reliant on fluid intelligence.

- Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think

Quote of the Day

The purpose of life is to discover your gift; the work of life is to develop it; and the meaning of life is to give your gift away.

- David Viscott

Quote of the Day

Human development, as an approach, is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live, which is only a part of it.

- Amartya Sen

Quote of the Day

As if I should say to a wrestler, Show me your muscle; and he should answer me, ” See my dumb-bells.” Your dumb-bells are your own affair; I desire to see the effect of them.

- Epictetus

Quote of the Day

Hiding the truth from yourself to hide it more deeply from others.

- Robert Trivers on Self Deception

The Enduring Wisdom of Montaigne

Philosophically, the “Essays” are Renaissance productions. They channel the wisdom of the ancient schools, borrowing from Epicureanism, skepticism and Stoicism for adages and exemplars. As Montaigne speaks to his readers, antiquity instructs and reproves modernity.

Amid the sanguinary terrors of his time, he advanced a kind of neo-Stoicism: The wise man would retreat to the private realm and insulate his soul from the torments of the surrounding world. On this point, the style of the “Essays” met their substance. Montaigne’s private ruminations exemplified the cloistered mind. “In this confusion that we have been in for thirty years,” he wrote, “every Frenchman, whether individually or as a member of the community, sees himself at every moment on the verge of the total overthrow of his fortune.” Only clear-eyed knowledge, of human inadequacy and of fortune’s volatility, would elevate us above the beasts.

[---]

Montaigne will not consistently appeal to our modern temper. Like many neo-Stoics, he counseled a politics of outward obedience to established hierarchies. Fear of religious zeal perhaps made him too much the servile conformist to settled dogmas. His deference to fate could cultivate an indifference to the suffering of others.

And yet the “Essays” retain an enduring capacity to instruct and a timelessness that even erudite historicizing—including Mr. Desan’s full-bore effort—cannot fully subvert. Montaigne’s intellectual modesty; his interiority; his humane engagement with the foreign; his love of the inner soul; his scorn for vainglory and ambition: These traits of the “Essays” have the capacity to edify. They rebuke societies enraptured by superficialities or torn apart by political idols. Montaigne’s was such a society, and so perhaps is ours.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

The laws of conscience, which we say are born of nature, are born of custom. Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-satisfaction.

- Michel de Montaigne

Quote of the Day

Death destroys a man; the idea of death saves him.

- E.M. Forster

Quote of the Day

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!

- Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Wisdom Of The Week

An analysis of book value doesn’t capture things like intellectual property and brand, intangible assets that corporations have accumulated or are currently accumulating.

And when the cost of money is lower (or, effectively zero) as it is today, these things become more highly valued by investors than physical assets are because they are weapons that corporations can use to nullify the moats and assets of the incumbent corporations that they are competing with for customers, revenue and market share.

This is why a AirBnB is currently more highly valued than all of the publicly traded hotel chains on the NYSE.

This is why Uber is worth more than all of the auto makers and taxi companies that own their own fleets of cars.

It’s why WeWork, which leases floors from building owners, is worth more than those building owners’ corporations.

This is how it’s possible that Beyond Meat, with its sizzling hot brand, could be worth exponentially more than the other publicly-traded food processing companies, with their century-old supply chains and manufacturing operations and union relationships and supermarket shelf space privileges and trucking contracts.

- When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted

Quote of the Day

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.

- Blaise Pascal

Our Narcissism Is So Complete...

We humans are very self-focused. We tend to think that being human is somehow very special and important, so we ask about that, instead of asking what it means to be an elephant, or a pig, or a bird. This failure of curiosity is part of a large ethical problem.

The question, “What is it to be human?” is not just narcissistic, it involves a culpable obtuseness. It is rather like asking, “What is it to be white?” It connotes unearned privileges that have been used to dominate and exploit. But we usually don’t recognize this because our narcissism is so complete.

We share a planet with billions of other sentient beings, and they all have their own complex ways of being whatever they are. All of our fellow animal creatures, as Aristotle observed long ago, try to stay alive and reproduce more of their kind. All of them perceive. All of them desire. And most move from place to place to get what they want and need. Aristotle proposed that we should strive for a common explanation of how animals, including human animals, perceive, desire and move.

[---]

I’m now writing a book that will use my prior work on the “capabilities approach” to develop a new ethical framework to guide law and policy in this area. But mine is just one approach, and it will and should be contested by others developing their own models. Lawyers working for the good of animals under both domestic and international laws need sound theoretical approaches, and philosophers should be assisting them in their work. And there is so much work to do.

So let’s put aside the narcissism involved in asking only about ourselves. Let’s strive for an era in which being human means being concerned with the other species that try to inhabit this world.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

- Epictetus

Quote of the Day

Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most wretched and frail of all creatures is man, and withal the proudest. He feels and sees himself lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and rivetted to the worst and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest story of the house, the most remote from the heavenly arch, with animals of the worst condition of the three; and yet in his imagination will be placing himself above the circle of the moon, and bringing the heavens under his feet. ‘Tis by the same vanity of imagination that he equals himself to God, attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and separates himself from the crowd of other creatures, cuts out the shares of the animals, his fellows and companions, and distributes to them portions of faculties and force, as himself thinks fit. How does he know, by the strength of his understanding, the secret and internal motions of animals?—from what comparison betwixt them and us does he conclude the stupidity he attributes to them?

When I play with my cat who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

- Michel de Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond

Nassim Taleb – Just Because An Investor Makes Money Doesn’t Mean They’re Good

Absence of critical thinking expressed in absence of revision of their stance with “stop losses”. Middlebrow traders do not like selling when it is “even better value”. They did not consider that perhaps their method of determining value is wrong, rather than the market failing to accommodate their measure of value. They may be right, but, perhaps, some allowance for the possibility of their methods being flawed was not made. For all his flaws, we will see that Soros seems rarely to examine an unfavorable outcome without testing his own framework of analysis.

Denial. When the losses occurred there was no clear acceptance of what had happened. The price on the screen lost its reality in favor of some abstract “value”. In classic denial mode, the usual “this is only the result of liquidation, distress sales” was proffered. They continuously ignored the message from reality.

How could traders who made every single mistake in the book become so successful? Because of a simple principle concerning randomness.

This is one manifestation of the survivorship bias. We tend to think that traders make money because they are good. Perhaps we have turned the causality on its head; we consider them good just because they make money. One can make money in the financial markets totally out of randomness.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

Suppose that he has a retinue of comely slaves and a beautiful house, that his farm is large and large his income; none of these things is in the man himself; they are all on the outside. Praise the quality in him which cannot be given or snatched away, that which is the peculiar property of the man. Do you ask what this is? It is soul, and reason brought to perfection in the soul. For man is a reasoning animal. Therefore, man's highest good is attained, if he has fulfilled the good for which nature designed him at birth. And what is it which this reason demands of him? The easiest thing in the world, – to live in accordance with his own nature.

- Seneca, Letters to Lucilius

Quote of the Day

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony.

- Aristotle

Quote of the Day

I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Quote of the Day

It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from another man's badness, which is impossible.

- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Wisdom Of The Week

• GPT2 is not uniquely dangerous, but is rather the latest step in an inevitable trend. It may or may not lower the cost to generate believable text, but powerful organizations can already produce massive amounts of much better content with humans and other algorithms already and GPT2 is not out of their reaches anyway.
• Fighting low quality babble, AI generated or not, is and will remain critical, but I think moving trust into demonstrably flawed “anti babble” algorithms is the wrong way to go. Someday, systems worthy of our trust will exist. Today is not that day.
• Instead of training people to rely on flawed algorithms, we should help them find the correct places to place their trust, first and foremost by training their own critical thinking skills. The human brain is currently still by far the most powerful truth generating machine we know.
• To catalyze that adaption of humans, I think these methods should be spread as wide as possible, so no one can hide behind a false sense of security. To further this (and put my money where my mouth is), I am planning to release 1.5B to the public.

- GPT2, Counting Consciousness and the Curious Hacker

Quote of the Day

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

- Pericles

Quote of the Day

Men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Quote of the Day

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

- Frank Herbert, Dune

Quote of the Day

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

- C.G. Jung

Quote of the Day

An old paleontological in joke proclaims that mammalian evolution is a tale told by teeth mating to produce slightly altered descendant teeth.

- Stephen Jay Gould

Quote of the Day

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make to them; a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

- Michel de Montaigne

Quote of the Day

So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only.

- Immanuel Kant

Wisdom Of The Week

• Lesson #1: People suffering from sudden, unexpected hardship are likely to adopt views they previously thought unthinkable.
• Lesson #2: Reversion to the mean occurs because people persuasive enough to make something grow don’t have the kind of personalities that allow them to stop before pushing too far.
• Lesson #3: Unsustainable things can last longer than you anticipate.
• Lesson #4: Progress happens too slowly for people to notice; setbacks happen too fast for people to ignore.
• Lesson #5: Wounds heal, scars last.

- Five Lessons From History

Quote of the Day

Get rid of things, or you'll spend your whole life tidying up.

- Marguerite Duras

Quote of the Day

The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.

- Richard P. Feynman

Quote of the Day

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.

- Alan Wilson Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

Quote of the Day

All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.

- Peter Singer

Quote of the Day

A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

- Jeremy Bentham

Quote of the Day

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.

- Epictetus

Quote of the Day

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

- Henri Poincaré

Wisdom Of The Week

Machiavellianism asserts that it is permissible to lie, to break one’s word, even to kill when it is in the best interests of the State, in order to ensure governmental stability, which is seen as the supreme good. Montaigne never became comfortable with this, denouncing dishonesty and hypocrisy wherever he found them. He invariably presents himself just as he is and says precisely what he thinks, disregarding etiquette. He prefers openness, directness, and loyalty to what he calls “the covered path”. For him, the end does not justify the means, and he is never prepared to sacrifice private morality for reasons of State.

Such foolish behaviour, Montaigne realizes, has done him no harm—has, in fact, brought him success. His conduct is not just more honest; it is more profitable as well. If a public figure lies once he is never believed again; he has chosen an expedient over the long term, and he has made the wrong decision. According to Montaigne, sincerity and fidelity to one’s pledged word constitute a much more profitable way of behaving. If you are not driven to honesty by moral conviction, practical reason should be incitement enough.

[---]

Besides this moral, Montaigne learns a more important, more modern lesson from the incident. It causes him to reflect on identity, on the relationship between the mind and the body. Though unconscious, it seems that he moved, spoke, and even gave orders to look after his wife, who had been notified of the accident and ran out to meet the returning party.

What are we, if our bodies move and we can talk and give directions without our will being involved? Where does the self exist? Thanks to a fall from a horse, Montaigne—before Descartes, before phenomenology, before Freud—anticipates by several centuries the tendency to wonder uneasily about subjectivity and intention, and conceives his own theory of identity; it is precarious, disjointed. Anyone who has fallen off a horse will understand what he means.

- Antoine Compagnon's new book, A Summer with Montaigne: On the Art of Living Well

Quote of the Day

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

- Seneca