An Ultimate Touchstone Of Friendship

The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self. The ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone, and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them, and to have believed in them, and sometimes, just to have accompanied them, for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

- Poet David Whyte cited by Jasmine Wang on Making Sense Podcast

Whale Friendship!

While the majority of the whales spent most of their time alone, some spent at least some of their time in all-male groups or pairs. The scientists’ analysis revealed that nearly 10 percent of the whales studied had one buddy that they spent at least two years in close proximity to. One pair of whale friends, known as NS-PM089 and NS-PM090, were observed together on 10 separate occasions over the course of five years (which is twice as often as I see most of my friends these days).

Although the researchers did not observe any associations that lasted longer than five years, Kobayashi says it’s possible the friendships persisted once the whales left the study area. Long-term relationships between unrelated males “are relatively rare among mammals,” says Kobayashi. The closest thing to the sperm whale’s social structure is that of the African elephant. Like sperm whales, African elephants live in matriarchal groups from which males are expelled upon reaching sexual maturity. Male African elephants usually live alone, but will sometimes form small groups with other males.

No one knows exactly why male sperm whales and African elephants sometimes choose to spend their time with others, but scientists like Kobayashi believe it might improve the animals’ ability to survive. For example, “male sperm whales may hunt more efficiently by sharing information about their prey through echolocation,” he says.

Regardless of whether male sperm whales form friendships to enhance their ability to find food or to stave off loneliness, the fact that they do is yet another example of how similar these animals are to humans says Shane Gero, a behavioral ecologist and cofounder of the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, who was not involved with the study. “Sperm whales spend 80 percent of their time in the dark vastness of the deep ocean—yet their lives are so surprisingly similar to ours.” Just like us, he says, sperm whales have family and friends that support them over the course of their lives.

Kobayashi hopes that his research will help scientists “reveal the evolution of social structures among mammals, including humans.” Although much remains to be learned about how and why humans and whales interact with their own kind, Kobayashi and his colleagues believe that the more we learn about the two species, the more similarities we will find.

- More here

What I've Been Reading

I have a friend who likes to say that when he reads The Theory of Moral Sentiments it often feels like Smith "giveth on one page, and taketh away on another." That rings true, and in the end, I think a lot of the fun of reading Smith lies in patiently trying to figure out how all the moving parts build off of one another and ultimately hang together into one integrated system.

The genesis of "Das Adam Smith Problem" was because people failed (still failing) to look at his insights as an integrated system and started cherry-picking their favorite pet peeves to feed their confirmation bias.

Max's 2015 Card - Adam Smith in memory of his best friend David Hume. According to Smith, Hume was his perfect example of a wise and virtuous human being.  

Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life by Ryan Patrick Hanley.

Adam Smith's insights are like a never-ending Russian Doll sans any dimensionality reduction. It's been close two decades since I started reading him and every time, I learn so much from him.

Pretty much 99.99% of people have encountered in 45 years on this planet miss this key difference.

Smith's belief that living a good life requires bringing together action and reflection not only to his philosophy of living, but also distinguishes his project from other sorts of efforts in this vein.  

 [---]

Smith, to put it bluntly, knew that there is all the difference in the world between learning how to get ahead in life and learning how to live life well. 

Ryan Patrick weaves Smith's philosophy from one chapter to another beautifully based on one quote for each chapter which answers part of the question and remaining unanswered ones weaved into the next chapter and so on in a typical Smithian way.

I consider Smith, Montaigne, Hume, Buddha, and the Stoics as rare breeds - They were the original Data Scientists of Human Nature. John Gray is the only contemporary one that I can think of.

Smith's philosophy of living is shaped by his interest in this ancient question of what it means to have an "excellent and praise-worthy character." Yet his way of answering this ancient question is very modern. A member in good standing of the Enlightenment, Smith is committed to empirical methods: observation and study of real data. His vision, and indeed the vision of wise and virtuous man, of the prefect and the praiseworthy and the noble and the honorable, is grounded in his study of real people in the real world. Both Smith and his wise and virtuous man are always observers-spectators-describing details of what they've seen in different men and moments. This approach is part of what makes Smith's book readable, even today. In so doing, he trains us to become good spectators in our own right, better able to see and recognize good acts, good characters, and good lives when we come across them - in Smith's words, he aims "to make us know the original when we meet with it."

There are so many lessons we can learn from Smith. I tried to condense as much I can to kick start those learnings to become wise and virtuous as perhaps the nature of human fragility will allow.

So, let's try for ourselves, for the sake of society, for the sake of all living beings and as an obligation for having given a chance to dwell this beautiful planet for an infinitesimal time.

On Self-Interest: 
I think this is the most misunderstood (probably on purpose) of all of Smith's insights. The context of self-interest pertains to bodily needs to take care of oneself. Even Bhagavata Gita and Buddhism talk about this - if one cannot take care of oneself then he/she cannot take care of his/her family nor society.

The difference between needs (bodily ones defined by nature) and wants (greed defined by sapiens).

Smith's position on the goodness of self-interest is more nuanced than Mr.Gekko's. Self-interest, he thinks, can be pursued in a moral way. But it can also be (and often is) pursued in an immoral way. A key part of the challenge of living life well consists of understanding the difference between these two ways. 

On Caring for Others: 
Nature not only inclined us towards self-interest but also we are wired to be naturally concerned about the well being of others (to state the oblivious - outside of one's family).

"It's simply not the case that I can be fully happy when I know that you are really miserable. And this he thinks is true of even the most self-centered people in the world. "How selfish soever" they might be, even they are happier when the people they live with are happier.

On Acting for Others:
There is so much of David Hume's influence on Smith's philosophy and in turn, Buddism was a big influence on Hume's philosophy. Action, Action, and Action - that is the core of Buddhist philosophy sans any magic and heaven syndrome.

I lost count of number many people I know who (still) say it's "bad" to treat animals cruelty and kill them for gastro-intestinal pleasures but they gluttonize without any sense of civic sense in less than a day or so of feeling bad.

The difference between feeling for others (benevolence) and acting for others (beneficence). Smith, as it turns out, has little good to say about the kind of people who merely feels for others - the kind who likes to profess (and often very loudly professes) his "good inclinations and kind wishes," and is prone to "fancy himself the friend of mankind, because in his heart he wishes well." For Smith, good wishes don't count for very much unless they're followed by the hard work it takes to realize the object of our wishes. It's too easy for that kind of person to feel good about himself just because he feels bad for others. But Smith thinks there's nothing to admire in that. What really deserve our praise and admiration are not the warm feeling we can feel in private or in a passive state, but the "action" and "exertion" that take effort and energy.  And Smith leaves no doubt that the work will be hard, telling us in the line that follows that someone who wants to live up to this will have to "call forth the whole vigor of his soul" and "strain every nerve." Living this sort of life will not be for the faint of heart.

On Imagination:
Smith covers our "subjective" needs. It has some of the deepest roots for most of our miseries (including religious magics to magics of markets to current silicon valley technological magic).

The body has its limits. The imagination, on the other hand, is essentially limitless. Among its other unique features, imagination can transcend physical limits, and can move about, as it were, without regard to the limits of time and space. This enables it to do certain things that no other part of our selves can do. But its limitlessness also means that there may be no limits to what it wants. 

On Bettering Our Condition: 
Smith lays out that wealth is one of the important elements in society and he believed in markets since it would help poor people who are "out of the sight of mankind". He was aware of wealth correlates to signaling stating that we love wealth since it enables us for our need for "love of distinction.".

But he cautions:

Wealth gets what our imaginations want. But it doesn't get us the "ease" our bodies want. Nor does it bring us the "tranquility" that our minds want. 

On Miseries and Disorders:
I laid out the importance of ordinary life using Smith's story of a poor man's son.

Unhappiness lies in over-valuing what we lack, and under-valuing what we have.

On the Healthy Mind:
Happiness is a thing of mind rather than the body isn't a revolutionary idea. After all; the Stoics argued this thousands of years ago, and mindfulness experts continue to emphasize it today. But what makes Smith's invocation of this idea so noteworthy is his understanding of its implications for our economic life.

On Tranquility and Pleasure: 
Smith by linking these two categories of tranquility and enjoyment together, suggests we can't have one without the other. It isn't the case then that we can renounce enjoyment and still find happiness. 
Instead, if we hope to do justice to the full range of our natures, we have to find a way of living that brings tranquility and enjoyment together - a way of living that strikes a middle path between the ascetic who deprives himself of enjoyment in search of tranquility and the poor man's son who deprives himself of tranquility in search of enjoyment. 

On Worshipping Wealth:
Living our lives well requires that we figure out a productive way to navigate the divide between what the world says is good and what is in fact genuinely good for us. 

On Friendship:
Smith was extremely lucky to have David Hume as his best friend. He has a very direct answer to the question of who makes the best friend:

The attachment which is founded upon the love of virtue, as it is certainly of all attachments, the most virtuous; so it is likewise the happiest, as well as most permanent and secure. 

Wow, that is one beautiful and best way to put it. Montaigne in fact started writing his essays after his best friend La Boetie passed away.

On Pleasure (& his differences with Aristotle): 
And of course, I am aligned with Smith.

Man is an anxious animal and must have care swept off by something that can exhilarate the spirits.

To say that "man is an anxious animal," as Smith does here, is to take a considerable step beyond what Aristotle famously said when he said that "man is a political animal." Almost all the difference between Smith and Aristotle, and between ancient and modern political thought, is encapsulated here. 

Aristotle and Smith had their differences but they agree on one major thing - moderation (of pleasures and other things).

On Hatred and Anger:

"Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind."

I think we all know that now and we don't need Adam Smith to state the obvious. But the genius of Smith lies in his exception to the above rule when he coined the phrase "sympathetic indignation" or "sympathetic resentment."

This is the hatred or anger that good people instinctively feel when they see the innocent and weak hurt by selfish and strong. A young man assaults an old woman to steal her purse: any person of ordinary decent who has the misfortune to see this can't help but feel visceral indignation toward the young, and desire that he pay the price for what he's so unjustly done. This instinctive desire for vengeance is what leads us to support those institutions of justice that bring order to society. So hatred or anger of this sort may be painful for a good person to experience, but it is clearly good for society. 

Carol Travi's book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion is one of my favorite books and it covers a lot of ground on the importance of anger as part of our emotional toolkit.

On Being Loved & On Loving & On Being Lovely: 
I think Max's card above is based on brilliant insight from Smith. Thank you, sir.

Plus How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness by Russ Roberts covers more ground on this topic.

On Flourishing:
Here we see an idealist in Smith but within the limits of human nature (he never proposes any magic nor utopia).

I am not a big fan of predictions on abstract matters, I am going to bet on one now. If and if only things go "well", future generations, future AI algorithms, future genetics and a myriad of other "stuff" will incorporate lots of insights from Adam Smith.

When we imagine an ideal, and fix it in our minds, we have something to aim at. An ideal of this sort gives us a sense of where we want to go, and even gives us a way to measure whether or not the path that we've chosen to take is getting us closer to where we want to go. 

On Seeing Ourselves: 
I cannot stress enough on the importance of this insight. This one phrase, the "impartial spectator" had one of the greatest influences in my life.

Smith knows that we often willfully overlook certain aspects of ourselves that we don't like in order to focus on other things about ourselves that we do like. He calls this, memorably, the "mysterious veil of self-delusion,", and insists that most of us find it hard (even painful) when we're presented with the whole truth about ourselves.

There are tons of writings on the impartial spectator. To put it bluntly, Smith's whole idea was that each and every one of us should have an impartial spectator and that is a rudimentary necessity for "invisible hand" to operate effectively. We all know what happened - humans conveniently killed the impartial spectator and embraced some abstract "invisible hand" with phrases like "greed is good", "quant" and so on.

On Dignity:
If we do our job well and fully inhabit the perspective of an impartial spectator of ourselves, we'll come to realize that we have no claims to thinking ourselves better than others.

When we embrace our "real littleness" we not only allow ourselves to let go of ourselves, but we also open ourselves up to others in a way that allows us to see what matters to them, and indeed, ultimately, why they themselves matter.

On Equality: 
Smith aligns with American exceptionalism of the self-evident truth that all men are created equal by nature and they differ only from habit, custom, and education.

Smith's claim about the natural equality of human beings thus distances him from Plato and Socrates. But it also brings him closer to our world. 

On Choice:
This is one my favorite all times passages from Theory of Moral Sentiments - the two different roads in life that we can choose from:

We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptible and to be contemned. But, upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent. To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness. Two different characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity. the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice. Two different models, two different pictures, are held out to us, according to which we may fashion our own character and behaviour; the one more gaudy and glittering in its colouring; the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline: the one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other, attracting the attention of scarce any body but the most studious and careful observer. They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly, a select, though, I am afraid, but a small party, who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and, what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness.

On Self and Others: 
Smith again raises about Aristotle and other ancient philosophers (who were focused more on life and character skills).

Virtue isn't simply a skill or strength. It's more than that. "Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises above what is vulgar and ordinary." 

On Perfection:
This is a prefect cure for the current self-centered me, me, and more me world.

When we perfect our natures by adopting the virtues that enable us to feel so much for others and so little for ourselves, we also promote the perfection of society. This comes out in the claim that his particular type of individual produces in society a "harmony of sentiments and passions." Moreover, Smith insists not only that perfection of this sort fosters harmony among mankind, but that it "alone" can produce harmony. In any case, the key point here is that it is not just the individual who benefits from the pursuit of self-perfection, but "mankind". 

On Wisdom and Virtue: 
The Smith believes every man in his mind has the capacity to be wise and virtuous - the only difference between wise and virtuous people is the work they put into developing this idea in their life.

Now, this why I love Smith so much - departs from Christianity and other religious 'magic' and focuses on earthly actions.

Christianity has a different idea of perfection to be sure, but it too teaches that if we hope to see perfection we need revelation, a gift of grace bringing sight to the blind and enabling us to bear witness to a perfection transcending the things of this world. But Smith's wise and virtuous man takes a different route. The perfection he sees isn't one that is in some sense "out there", requiring a special revelation to see, but one that is in fact very much a thing of our own world "down here" - and indeed in two senses. 

On Humility and Beneficence: 
So one consequence of a wise and virtuous man's wisdom is that this wisdom serves to teach him "real modesty" and "humility." Wisdom thus leads to virtue by precluding pride and restraining egocentrism. In this sense, the wise and virtuous person's wisdom complements and completes the work of both the impartial spectator and the awful virtues. But the wisdom of such a person also shapes her relationship with others. 

On Praise and Praiseworthiness:
The wise and virtuous person doesn't care much about praise and to take it even further, he is also conscious of the fact that there will never be any praise bestowed upon him (reread the two different roads analogy).

Smith's paradox: by sacrificing our interests we realize a deeper self-interest. Or put it differently: only by forgoing familiar pleasures and doing painful work do we come in time to experience the highest pleasures. 

"Self-approbation" is the answer to why someone would put up with that.

Smith's answer is that such people do what they do because they care more for their approval than for the approval of others. "Self-approbation", that is "if not the only, is at least the principal object" with which a wise and virtuous person is concerned, of indeed "the love of it, is the love of virtue." 

On Socrates:
I often call Smith a master of human nature. He has the unique ability to flush out even hidden "agenda" behind some of the philosophical virtue seeking and pure self-interested bullshit.

So the natural question that arises is how do Socrates and Jesus live up to the Smith's paragon of a wise and virtuous person who transcends the ordinary boundaries of human excellence.

As admirable as Socrates's self-command (for example, lack of fear of death) maybe, something about Socrates' approach to philosophy troubles Smith. Put too simply:  Socrates' philosophy may have liberated him from a fear of death, but it failed to liberate him from other sorts of self-regarding concerns including especially the love of attention that has been such a focus of our inquiry to this point. In this vein, Smith goes so far as to lump Socrates in with Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, invoking all three as cases of "excessive self-admiration."

[---]

Smith thinks nature has made us for action. And thus however wise they may be, philosophers can't be considered both wise and virtuous if their sublime speculations draw them away from those "active duties" with which nature has charged us. 

On Jesus:
Unlike Socrates, who appears more than once in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Jesus isn't mentioned once in the text. That said, the religion founded in Jesus' name is, mentioned three times (and interestingly enough, all three times it was about love).

Smith eschews magic "out there" syndrome (we already know his philosophy is meant for action "out here" on earth). He uses religion only as a guide to morality and nothing else.

I agree with Smith here since of all the different moral tools available to humans, religion is one of them (and not the only one). But we all know that humans stopped practicing morality and follow mindless rituals from religion (Sunday am ritual, treating animals as products made for us, etc.)

On Hume:
At the end, who does Smith considers (if not Socrates and Jesus) the paragon of his vision of a wise and virtuous man?

Max's card above answers that question. It is none other than his best friend David Hume.

Upon the whole, I have always considered him both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit. 

As perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.. - what a beautiful phrase!! It's not that Smith is biased towards his best friend Hume but even Hume's doctor Joseph Black, described his patient in his final days as "quite free from anxiety and in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it."

Max was exactly (maybe even better) mindset during his final weeks and days. I wish, my body and mind would allow me to die the same way.

The key to all this was Hume was an atheist during Christian and religious fanaticism was at its peak and omnipresent. And Smith aligned with Hume at the risk of being a social pariah. This speaks volumes of their characters and their friendship.

I am wasn't gifted to have such a friendship with any human but nature gave something even better by sheer random luck of meeting Max. What a journey it has been and I couldn't have asked for more. I love you, Max, for everything you taught me and you became my impartial spectator with a face.

Hume and Smith's friendship is captured brilliantly in the book The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought by Dennis C. Rasmussen

On God: 
Smith agrees - "that a certain kind of idea of God can in fact promote our moral action." 

To remind everyone again, Smith uses God for love and moral action - and doesn't bring magic nor "out there" heaven syndrome. He wants us to use some good moral laws prescribed by God to act wisely and virtuously here on earth without any dreams of a ticket to heaven.

On Stoicism:
Lots of ink has been spilled on the question of Smith's Stoicism, but I cannot adjudicate the whole dispute here. Instead, I'll end this inquiry into Smith's philosophy of living by noting just one point of agreement with the Stoics. The Stoics, Smith says, taught that wisdom leads to an appreciation of one' s place in our good and providentially ordered world. It also leads us to want to contribute to the order and goodness of the world through our own actions. 


On the surface, a lot of Smith's unique insights about human nature might seem like falling into the "ought" bucket of his friend David Hume's famous "is vs ought" dictum. But in reality, the greatest insight that Smith offers us is that there so much still untapped in the "is" bucket of human nature.

A society driven by signaling traits has subsided (maybe almost eradicated) our better angles of some of the "is" traits so much we have deluded ourselves (including thyself) that this is the "normal" human condition. 

It's about time that we understand that a lot of the so-called utopian dreams are within our reach. Alas, If and only if we make an effort and try.

Wisdom Of The Week

Parfit had a native genius for philosophy. But he also devoted more time and concentrated effort to the development of his ideas than any other philosopher I have known. He once mentioned a passage in a book of economic history that noted that the concept of work had sometimes been understood in such a way that work was necessarily unpleasant. On this understanding, Parfit almost never worked. Yet throughout his adult life he did little other than think about, read, and write philosophy. When I visited Oxford in January and February of 2014, I stayed in his house. During those months, he left the house only a few times. In all but one instance, he left only to walk a few blocks to buy fruits and vegetables for his spartan meals. The other instance was when he walked with me to an appointment I had so that we could continue the philosophical discussion we were having. The one exception to his monomaniacal commitment to his philosophy was his architectural photography, samples of which appear on the covers of his four books. But he gave that up many years ago when he came to fear that he might not live long enough to complete his remaining work in philosophy.

There are many anecdotes about the ways in which Parfit simplified his life to take as little time as possible away from his work. He ate only twice a day, with almost no variation in what he had at each meal. He ate cold food only, mostly fruits and vegetables without any preparation. Even when he could have had freshly ground coffee with only a minute’s additional preparation, he drank instant coffee, often with water straight from the tap. He sometimes kept a book open on the chest-of-drawers so that he could read while putting on his socks. His speed in reading was phenomenal, in part because his power of concentration was prodigious. Wanting to preserve his mental and physical capacities, he took an hour every evening during his last decade to get vigorous exercise on a stationary bicycle, but never without reading philosophy (or occasionally physics) while furiously pedalling.

Parfit’s kindness and generosity, not only to his students and friends but to others as well, are legendary. The comments he gave to people on their manuscripts were sometimes longer than the manuscripts themselves, and the comments were invariably articulated in the gentlest, most tactful, encouraging, and constructive way possible. He frequently wept, not for himself but always from compassion for others.

A couple of years ago, when he was teaching at Rutgers, he experienced a confluence of medical problems that urgently required that he be anesthetized and placed on a ventilator. When he was allowed to emerge from the sedation nearly 24 hours later, he groggily gestured for pen and paper. His first scribbled thoughts were concerns about his teaching commitments and a thesis defence in which he was supposed to participate at Harvard. When the ventilator tube was removed and he could again speak, he immediately began to discuss with me the ideas and arguments on which he had been working when I had to rush him to the emergency room. That he was in the intensive care unit seemed not to interest him, and he was largely incurious about what had happened and about what his diagnosis and prognosis were. Even in those circumstances, it was his ideas that mattered most.

The next day, Johann Frick, the graduate student whose thesis Parfit was scheduled to examine, came for a visit, during which Parfit delightedly insisted on discussing the thesis with him for several hours. A nurse, having noticed how many visitors Parfit had had, exclaimed, “Jesus Christ had only 12 disciples – but look at you! You’re clearly a very important man. What do you do?” “I work,” Parfit replied with a smile, “on what matters.”

- Jeff McMahan says farewell to a friend

Learning From Animal Friendships

It is probably no coincidence that many of the better-known animal pairings involve dogs, which have honed the art of cross-species communication through millenniums of having lived with humans. The dogs at the safari park, each housed with a cheetah, are adept at reading body language and take a dominant role with their feline companions — Donna J. Haraway, a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of “When Species Meet,” suggested that the dogs function almost as “social psychologists.”

And sometimes that means figuring out how to speak the other species’ language.

When one dog, Clifford, had trouble persuading his feline companion, Majani, to play, he adopted a new tactic, Ms. Rose-Hinostroza said. Having learned from a trainer how to fake a limp, Clifford tried it out on the cheetah, looking much like a wounded gazelle. The disability, she said, proved irresistible to the cheetah, who came down off its perch to join the game.

But it is grooming, not playing, that cements a dog-cheetah friendship, Ms. Rose-Hinostroza said. Initially, the young cheetahs are terrified by the puppies’ attempts to play, but gradually the two animals begin to trust one another, and at some point, the cheetah begins to lick and groom the dog.

“When you see that happen, you go, ‘Yes, the cat actually likes the dog now,’ so that’s a good day,” she said.

Communing between species, researchers said, can inspire speculation not just about the animals but about the humans that are so fascinated by them.

Dr. Bekoff, for example, said that videos of interspecies interactions offer a way for people to connect with a natural world from which they feel increasingly detached.

- More Here

What I've Been Reading

Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion by Carol Travis. It's the best book on psychology of anger ever, period (I was suprised to find only 17 reviews on Amazon so far) - A must read !!

The Anatomy of Anger:
To understand anger, the dualist approach beloved for centuries will not do. Anger and its expression are a result of biology and culture, mind and body.

For society's sake, as well as for the thousands of people who are being taught to think of themselves as helpless victims of life or biology, it is time to restore confidence in our abilities of self-control and self-determination. I think that biological research help us to do this, for it shows that while anger is a normal physiological process, it is one that is generated, and can be reduced, by our interpretations of the world and the events that happens to us. It shows that very act of defining an ambiguous emotional state as anger may create anger where none previously existed. It shows that while we may not be able to control the fight-or-flight response that protects and defends us, we can control what we do about it - express it, deny it, defy it, transform it, use it. Most of all, biology teaches that we need not be hostages to our emotions: We are restored a measure of responsibility for how we act on them. We can't the devil (or Henry) made us do it.

Myths of Suppressed Anger:
The connection between anger (expressed or suppressed) and high blood pressure depends on your age, race, sex, social class, and primarily on the reason you feel angry.

Which Type As are not Vulnerable to Heart Disease?
Those who are ambitious and energetic, but who are motivated by challenge and intrinsic instead of by external pressure and anger. They tend to feel in control of their work instead of controlled by it,  but they also know when to accept the inevitable. They have close friends and good relationships. The coronary-prone elements of Type A, in contrast, are chronic, intense anger, social isolation, and a continuing feeling of frustration and fury about events that are our of one's control.

Myths of Expressed Anger:
When you permit children to play aggressively they don't become less aggressive, as the catharsis theory would predict, they become more aggressive. What reduced the children's anger? Not talking about it. Not playing with guns; that made them more hostile and aggressive as well. The most successful way of dispelling their anger was to understand why their classmate had behaved as she did (she was sleepy, upset, not feeling well).

The point is that aggression, in whatever form, is an acquired strategy for dealing with anger, not a biological inevitability. It is no use telling placid, pacifistic, and rational people that they ought to "let go" and ventilate their rage with a violent display, throwing saucepan or bitting pillows. They will only feel worse if they do.

If you can't say something nice about a person, don't say anything at all - at least if you want your anger to dissipate and your associations to remain congenial. But if you want to stay anger, if you want to use your anger, keep talking.

Angry Divorce:
They made a point of never physically or verbally attacking one another and keeping anger within bounds and not use children as scapegoats or allies. Among all the things that people can do to protect their children in the wake of divorce, this is one the hardest and on of the most important. It is, unfortunately, one of the least common.

Managing anger depends on taking responsibility for one's emotions and one's actions: on refusing the temptation to remain stuck in blame and fury or silent resentment. Once anger becomes a force to berate the nearest scapegoat instead of to change a bad situation, it loses its credibility and its power, It feeds only on itself. And it sure as sunrise makes for a grumpy life.

10 Unusual Friendships In The Animal World

- More Here

How To Fine Tune System 2 - Daniel Kahneman

It’s a complicated question, but what is the simplest, most straightforward advice you’d give to someone who wants to make sure their System 2 isn’t ceding certain important decisions and calculations to System 1?

Not really a complicated question because the answers are not surprising. Slow down, sleep on it, and ask your most brutal and least empathetic close friends for their advice. Friends are sometimes a big help when they share your feelings. In the context of decisions, the friends who will serve you best are those who understand your feelings but are not overly impressed by them. For example, one important source of bad decisions is loss aversion, by which we put far more weight on what we may lose than on what we may gain. Advisors are likely to give us advice in which gains and losses are treated more neutrally—they are more likely to adopt a broad and long-term view of our problem, less likely than the affected individual to be swayed by the fears and hopes of the moment.

- More Here

What I've Been Reading

Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study by George E. Vaillant. I agreed with David Brooks few weeks ago when he wrote what data cannot do but little did I know that George Vaillant's meticulous data would give me an answer to one of the many questions that had been bothering all my life:

"What goes right is more important than what does wrong."

With perseverance, persistence and patience, data can at-least lead us in the right path if not a precise answer.

There are two pillars of happiness revealed by the seventy-five-year-old Grant Study. One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.

This more important as we get old that I don't want you to think less of yourself  , I want you to think of yourself less and if you haven't learned that by the time you are my age,you are in for a lot of trouble. 

Wisdom Of The Week

Last night I started reading George E Vaillant's book Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study and the lessons so far has been life altering to say the least...

• First lesson is that positive mental health does exist, and to some degree can be understood independent of moral and cultural biases.
• The second lesson is that once we leave the study of psychopathology for positive mental health, an understanding of adaptive coping is crucial.
• The third lesson is that the most important influence by far on a flourishing life is love.
• The fourth lesson is that — people really can change, and people really can grow. Childhood need be neither destiny nor doom.
• A fifth lesson is that what goes right is more important than what goes wrong, and that it is the quality of a child’s total experience, not any particular trauma or any particular relationship, that exerts the clearest influence on adult psychopathology. Let me repeat myself: what goes right is more important than what goes wrong.
• A sixth lesson is that if you follow lives long enough, they change, and so do the factors that affect healthy adjustment. Our journeys through this world are filled with discontinuities. Nobody in the Study was doomed at the outset, but nobody had it made, either. Inheriting the genes for alcoholism can turn the most otherwise blessed golden boy into a trainwreck. Conversely, an encounter with a very dangerous disease liberated the pitiful young Dr. Camille from a life of dependency and loneliness.

Persuading twenty-first-century Wall Street types that love is all you need was going to be a hard sell.

There are two pillars of happiness revealed by the seventy-five-year-old Grant Study. One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.

Triumphs of Experience - George Vaillant

George Vaillant’s 70-year longitudinal study of 268 Harvard students, which is one the greatest psychological studies ever is now captured in his new book, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study (review here via Andrew)

The study, a product of the period in which it was conceived, has its limitations. Its only subjects are white, privileged men. Still, many of its findings seem universal. If they could be boiled down to a single revelation, it would be that the secret to a happy life is relationships, relationships, relationships. The best predictors of adult success and well-being are a childhood in which one feels accepted and nurtured; an empathic coping style at ages 20 through 35; and warm adult relationships.

Regarding finances, just one of Vaillant’s 10 measures of adult well-being, men who had good sibling relationships when young made an average of $51,000 per year more than those with poor sibling relationships or no siblings at all, and men who had warm mothers earned $87,000 more annually than those who did not (in 2009 dollars). Overall, reflecting their privilege, the Grant Men made a lot of money. The findings go on and on like that, and the message relentlessly emerges: The secret to life is good and enduring intimate relationships and friendships. Mental health, as Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson indicated, is embodied by the capacity to love and to work.

Years ago when I first read his study, it felt like a confirmation bias of our instincts and it changed my perspective on how I live my life.

Resilient, Friendly People Are More Responsive To Placebo Treatment

Why should a person's agreeableness be related to their response to placebo treatments? "In the patient-doctor relationship, agreeableness appears likely to contribute to a strong therapeutic alliance," the researchers said, "as well as to frank, collaborative feedback through the therapeutic process. Thus, it appears that individuals high upon this trait are particularly well equipped to fully engage in therapeutic efforts, and in this sense, be a good responder to treatment, even if it is placebo." Meanwhile, the finding for angry hostility fits with past research showing that angry people tend to exhibit less indigenous opioid activity in their brains.

- More Here

ROBOT - Liz Garbus

An unique story about ROBOTIC friendship!!



- More Here

What I've Been Reading

How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky. The first six chapters are sprinkled with age old wisdom distilled into contemporary format and also, they (rightly) bash both extremes - the religion of invisible hand and environmental fear mongers of climate change. But in the disappointing final chapter (a.k.a remedies), the authors retract to the extreme left wing rhetoric... if only...

Adam Smith thought that “frugality” was part of self-interest, and that laws restraining luxury spending were therefore unnecessary. What he failed to foresee was that, in affluent societies, the competitive spending on luxuries previously confined to the very rich would become universal, resulting in the endless postponement of plenty.

Seven basic criteria's for a good life:

• Health - Health means a happy obliviousness of one’s own body, as of a tool perfectly fitted to its tasks. In the words of French physician René Leriche, it is “life lived in the silence of the organs.” Health looks outwards. Illness throws one back upon oneself.
• Security - An individual’s justified expectation that his life will continue more or less in its accustomed course, undisturbed by war, crime, revolution or major social and economic upheavals.Those who cannot find work locally are urged to relocate, those whose talents have become redundant to “retool.” This is to get things precisely backwards. It is not human beings who need adapting to the market; it is the market that needs adapting to human beings. That was the guiding principle of the early twentieth-century social liberals, whose enlightened efforts to minimize the insecurities of capitalism have now largely been jettisoned.
• Respect - Suppose (what is not too implausible) that persistent unemployment were to lead to the division of society into two hereditary castes, a working majority and a jobless minority. It would then be all too easy to enshrine this de facto distinction in law, with differential civil and voting rights. Democracy as we know it would cease to exist. It is also important for mutual respect that inequality not exceed certain bounds.
• Personality - Personality implies a private space, a “room behind the shop” as Montaigne called it, in which the individual is at liberty to unfurl, to be himself. It denotes the inward aspect of freedom, that which resists the claims of public reason and duty. A society devoid of personality, where individuals accepted their social role without tension or protest, would scarcely be human. It would be more like a colony of intelligent social insects, of the sort envisaged in certain science-fiction films.
• Harmony with Nature - A sense of kinship with animals, plants and landscapes is hardly a Western peculiarity. The abundance of nature poetry in Sanskrit, classical Chinese and other languages around the world is sufficient proof of that.
• Friendship - Why do we speak of “friendship” instead of “community,” a word that has become horribly popular in recent decades? Our concern has to do with reification. It is all too easy to talk about the “good of the community” as though this were something over and above the good of its constituent members. The term “friendship” is not open to this kind of abuse. If we could learn to think of communities in this fashion, as networks of friends, one notorious source of political oppression would be removed.
• Leisure - In contemporary parlance, leisure is synonymous with relaxation and rest. But there is another, older conception of leisure, according to which it is not just time off work but a special form of activity in its own right. Leisure in this sense is that which we do for its own sake, not as a means to something else. The philosopher Leo Strauss wrote of his friend Kurt Riezler that “the activity of his mind had the character of noble and serious employment of leisure, not of harried labor.”

Money is the one thing of which there is never enough, for the simple reason that the concept “enough” has no logical application to it. There is perfect health and happiness, but there is no perfect wealth.
We do not want to banish the engineers of growth only to see them replaced by the engineers of bliss.

What I've Been Reading

On the Meaning of Life by Will Durant. I never knew about this brilliant and lesser know book by Durant until last week.

"Spare me a moment to tell me what meaning life has for you, what keeps you going, what help -- if any -- religion gives you, what are the sources of your inspiration and your energy, what is the goal or motive-force of your toil, where you find your consolations and your happiness, where, in the last resort, your treasure lies." 

That's was the question Durant put forth to number of popular and celebrated minds of 20th century. The replies were so diverse - eloquent reply by H.L.Mencken to mundane one from Gandhi but they did cover all quintessential bits of wisdom one would expect for such a loaded question. H.L.Mencken almost stole the show from Will Durant. But no question - Durant's splendid reasoning urging a fictitious man not to commit suicide was the very best !!

H. L. Mencken:
"As for me, I have had an extraordinarily pleasant life, despite the fact that I have had the usual share of woes. For in the midst of those woes I still enjoyed the immense satisfaction which goes with free activity. I have done, in the main, exactly what I wanted to do. Its possible effects upon other people have interested me very little. I have not written and published to please other people, but to satisfy myself, just as a cow gives milk, not to profit the dairyman, but to satisfy herself. I like to think that most of my ideas have been sound ones, but I really don’t care. The world may take them or leave them. I have had my fun hatching them.

I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it. The belief in it issues from the puerile egos of inferior men. In its Christian form it is little more than a device for getting revenge upon those who are having a better time on this earth. What the meaning of human life may be I don’t know: I incline to suspect that it has none. All I know about it is that, to me at least, it is very amusing while it lasts. Even its troubles, indeed, can be amusing. Moreover, they tend to foster the human qualities that I admire most -- courage and its analogues. The noblest man, I think, is that one who fights God, and triumphs over Him. I have had little of this to do. When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness. No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever."

Will Rogers:
The whole thing life is a ‘Racket,’ so get a few laughs, do the best you can, take nothing serious, for nothing is certainly depending on this generation. Each one lives in spite of the previous one and not because of it. And don’t start “seeking knowledge,” for the more you seek the nearer the “Booby Hatch” you get.   And don’t have an ideal to work for. That’s like riding towards a Mirage of a lake. When you get there, it ain’t there. Believe in something for another World, but don’t be too set on what it is, and then you won’t start out that life with a disappointment. Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead.

And life changing lines from probably the most read Philosopher of all time - Will Durant

"There is no knowable limit to what this trousered ape will do with his multiplying discoveries; doubtless he will some day throw his engines around the stars, and deport his criminals to Betelgeuse. If you insist upon dying, undertake tasks of some danger and use in adding to these discoveries; risk yourself in medical or mechanical experiment, and give some significance to your life and death. But whatever you do, don’t die of philosophy.


But here I have lost myself so much in myself that I have forgotten you, my unknown soldier of despair, who are about to commit suicide. You will see that what you need is not philosophy, but a wife and a child, and hard work. Voltaire once remarked that he might occasionally have killed himself, had he not had so much work on his hands."

Wisdom Of The Week

Andrew's enlightening post on HOW TO BE HAPPY

Be a good friend:

In a study appropriately titled "Very Happy People," researchers sought out the characteristics of the happiest 10 percent among us. Do they all live in warm climates? Are they all wealthy? Are they all physically fit? Turns out, there was one—and only one—characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10 percent from everybody else: the strength of their social relationships.

Will Wilkinson admits it's harder than it sounds:

If I had to name my single greatest flaw, I'd say it's dereliction of friendship. I don't actively cultivate new friendships. They either happen to me or they don't, and mostly they don't because I don't put in much effort from my side. I'm not sure why, but I think it's mostly because I find the idea of extending a hand stressful. Worse, I'm terrible at keeping in touch with old friends. After too much time without calling or emailing or texting or anything, I feel really embarrassed. And then, perversely, that embarrassment makes me more not less averse to reestablishing contact.

The Power of Introverts - Susan Cain

Susan Cain, author of one of my favorite book of the year - Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.

• Stop the madness of constant group work.
• Go to the wilderness - have your own revelations. 
• Take a good look at what's inside your suitcase and why you put it there.

Animal Friendship - Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer hits the Bulls-eye - Times cover story, no less.

Since 1995, John Mitani, a primatologist at the University of Michigan, has been going to Uganda to study 160 chimpanzees that live in the forests of Kibale National Park. Seventeen years is a long time to spend watching wild animals, and after a while it’s rare to see truly new behavior. That’s why Mitani loves to tell the tale of a pair of older males in the Kibale group that the researchers named Hare and Ellington.


Hare and Ellington weren’t related, yet when they went on hunting trips with other males, they’d share prey with each other rather than compete for it. If Ellington reached out a hand, Hare would give him a piece of meat. If one of them got into a fight, the other would back him up. Hare and Ellington would spend entire days traveling through the forest together. Sometimes they’d be side by side. Other times, they’d be 100 yards apart, staying in touch through the foliage with loud, hooting calls. “They’d always be yakking at each other,” says Mitani.


Their friendship—for that’s what Mitani calls it—lasted until Ellington’s death in 2002. What happened next was striking and sad. For all the years that Mitani had followed him, Hare had been a sociable, high-ranking ape. But when Ellington died, Hare went through a sudden change. “He dropped out,” says Mitani. “He just didn’t want to be with anybody for several weeks. He seemed to go into mourning.”

What I've Been Reading

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (she is scheduled to give a TED talk this year). I wish this book come out when I was in my teens. I wish my old friends read this book. I wish my future friends read this book. I wish women in my life read this book. I wish... but thank you Susan for writing this book and "vindicating" us.
Technically, I am an introvert but far from being shy. I need alone time to "recharge", quite long walks with Max and all the hoopla of a quintessential introvert. Sadly that innateness comes with a social taboo. A decade ago, I decided to screw it and do what makes me happy; but with a catch that William James so eloquently put it a century ago.

A man has as many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups.
- William James


On Patience from Steve Wozniak's memoir, IWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It:
"I acquired a central ability that was to help me through my entire career: patience. I’m serious. Patience is usually so underrated. I mean, for all those projects, from third grade all the way to eighth grade, I just learned things gradually, figuring out how to put electronic devices together without so much as cracking a book.… I learned to not worry so much about the outcome, but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it."


Group brainstorming doesn’t actually work:
Research by Marvin Dunnette.


E.O.Wilson's theory on public speaking anxiety:
"When our ancestors lived on the savannah, being watched intently meant only one thing: a wild animal was stalking us. And when we think we’re about to be eaten, do we stand tall and hold forth confidently? No. We run. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution urge us to get the hell off the stage, where we can mistake the gaze of the spectators for the glint in a predator’s eye. Yet the audience expects not only that we’ll stay put, but that we’ll act relaxed and assured. This conflict between biology and protocol is one reason that speechmaking can be so fraught. It’s also why exhortations to imagine the audience in the nude don’t help nervous speakers; naked lions are just as dangerous as elegantly dressed ones."


Introverts are sensitive (story of my life !!):
The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive. They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day. They love music, nature, art, physical beauty. They feel exceptionally strong emotions—sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments—both physical and emotional—unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss—another person’s shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.
In most settings, people use small talk as a way of relaxing into a new relationship, and only once they’re comfortable do they connect more seriously. Sensitive people seem to do the reverse. They enjoy small talk only after they’ve gone deep. When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else.


Functional, moderate guilt:
This may promote future altruism, personal responsibility, adaptive behavior in school, and harmonious, competent, and prosocial relationships with parents, teachers, and friends. This is an especially important set of attributes at a time when a 2010 University of Michigan study shows that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were thirty years ago, with much of the drop having occurred since 2000. (The study’s authors speculate that the decline in empathy is related to the prevalence of social media, reality TV, and “hyper-competitiveness.”)


From the book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life by Dacher Keltner:
Keltner says that if he had to choose his mate by asking a single question at a speed-dating event, the question he would choose is: “What was your last embarrassing experience?” Then he would watch very carefully for lip-presses, blushing, and averted eyes. “The elements of the embarrassment are fleeting statements the individual makes about his or her respect for the judgment of others,” he writes. “Embarrassment reveals how much the individual cares about the rules that bind us to one another.”


Introverts are not smarter than extroverts (a.k.a stop stereotyping):
According to IQ scores, the two types are equally intelligent. Extroverts are better than introverts at handling information overload. Introverts’ reflectiveness uses up a lot of cognitive capacity, according to Joseph Newman. On any given task, he says, “if we have 100 percent cognitive capacity, an introvert may have only 75 percent on task and 25 percent off task, whereas an extrovert may have 90 percent on task.” This is because most tasks are goal-directed. Extroverts appear to allocate most of their cognitive capacity to the goal at hand, while introverts use up capacity by monitoring how the task is going.


When FLOW engulfs nothing else matters...
Important explanation for introverts who love their work may come from a very different line of research by the influential psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the state of being he calls “flow.” Flow is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity—whether long-distance swimming or songwriting, sumo wrestling or sex. In a state of flow, you’re neither bored nor anxious, and you don’t question your own adequacy. Hours pass without your noticing. The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings. Although flow does not depend on being an introvert or an extrovert, many of the flow experiences that Csikszentmihalyi writes about are solitary pursuits that have nothing to do with reward-seeking: reading, tending an orchard, solo ocean cruising. Flow often occurs, he writes, in conditions in which people “become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself.” In a sense, there are some activities that are not about approach or avoidance, but about something deeper: the fulfillment that comes from absorption in an activity outside yourself. Psychological theories usually assume that we are motivated either by the need to eliminate an unpleasant condition like hunger or fear or by the expectation of some future reward such as money, status, or prestige. But in flow, “a person could work around the clock for days on end, for no better reason than to keep on working.”


On Asian Culture:
Talk is for communicating need-to-know information; quiet and introspection are signs of deep thought and higher truth. Words are potentially dangerous weapons that reveal things better left unsaid. They hurt other people; they can get their speaker into trouble.
Has anyone read Amartya Sen's The Argumentative Indian? Between, I always wondered why Indians aren't usually considered typical "Asians" in US of A.


In Asian cultures, there’s often a subtle way to get what you want. It’s not always aggressive, but it can be very determined and very skillful. In the end, much is achieved because of it. Aggressive power beats you up; soft power wins you over.


On Free Trait Theory:
Introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly. It explains how it’s possible for an extroverted scientist to behave with reserve in her laboratory, for an agreeable person to act hard-nosed during a business negotiation, and for a cantankerous uncle to treat his niece tenderly when he takes her out for ice cream. Free Trait Theory applies in many different contexts, but it’s especially relevant for introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal.


On Self-monitoring:
Self-monitors are highly skilled at modifying their behavior to the social demands of a situation. They look for cues to tell them how to act. When in Rome, they do as the Romans do, according to the psychologist Mark Snyder, author of Public Appearances, Private Realities, and creator of the Self-Monitoring Scale. To high self-monitors, low self-monitors can seem rigid and socially awkward. To low self-monitors, high self-monitors can come across as conformist and deceptive—“more pragmatic than principled.” But self-monitoring is an act of modesty. It’s about accommodating oneself to situational norms, rather than “grinding down everything to one’s own needs and concerns.” Not all self-monitoring is based on acting or on working the room. A more introverted version may be less concerned with spotlight-seeking and more with the avoidance of social faux pas.

On Restorative Niche:
“Restorative niche” is term for the place you go when you want to return to your true self. It can be a physical place, like the path beside the Richelieu River, or a temporal one, like the quiet breaks you plan between sales calls. It can mean canceling your social plans on the weekend before a big meeting at work, practicing yoga or meditation, or choosing e-mail over an in-person meeting. Acting out of character too long without restorative niches might lead to health and emotional issues. 


Introvert vs Extrovert couples:
The introverts desperately craving downtime and understanding from their partners, the extroverts longing for company, and resentful that others seemed to benefit from their partners’ “best” selves.

How to take care of an introverted child:
Remember that introverts react not only to new people, but also to new places and events. So don’t mistake your child’s caution in new situations for an inability to relate to others. He’s recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact. As we saw in the last chapter, introversion-extroversion levels are not correlated with either agreeableness or the enjoyment of intimacy. Introverts are just as likely as the next kid to seek others’ company, though often in smaller doses.


Finally, remember to follow this simple rule in life:
Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.

What I've Been Reading

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. There are zillion things we can learn from Kahneman, one of the most wisest human alive. It's impossible to distill quotes from this book since every word oozes with wisdom.

“This is a landmark book in social thought, in the same league as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.”
- Nassim Taleb

The most important lesson I learned (lessons of humility for the citizens of Lake Wobegon) from his life was that whatever knowledge and wisdom he gave us over his life time was feasible only because of his special friendship with Amos Tversky. They both were lucky to have found each other. This friendship will be remembered forever in the annals of history.

"The pleasure we found in working together made us exceptionally patient; it is much easier to strive for perfection when you are never bored. Perhaps most important, we checked our critical weapons at the door. Both Amos and I were critical and argumentative, he even more than I, but during the years of our collaboration neither of us ever rejected out of hand anything the other said. Indeed, one of the great joys I found in the collaboration was that Amos frequently saw the point of my vague ideas much more clearly than I did. Amos was the more logical thinker, with an orientation to theory and an unfailing sense of direction. I was more intuitive and rooted in the psychology of perception, from which we borrowed many ideas. We were sufficiently similar to understand each other easily, and sufficiently different to surprise each other. We developed a routine in which we spent much of our working days together, often on long walks. For the next fourteen years our collaboration was the focus of our lives, and the work we did together during those years was the best either of us ever did.

We quickly adopted a practice that we maintained for many years. Our research was a conversation, in which we invented questions and jointly examined our intuitive answers. Each question was a small experiment, and we carried out many experiments in a single day. We were not seriously looking for the correct answer to the statistical questions we posed. Our aim was to identify and analyze the intuitive answer, the first one that came to mind, the one we were tempted to make even when we knew it to be wrong. We believed—correctly, as it happened—that any intuition that the two of us shared would be shared by many other people as well, and that it would be easy to demonstrate its effects on judgments.

Amos and I enjoyed the extraordinary good fortune of a shared mind that was superior to our individual minds and of a relationship that made our work fun as well as productive. Our collaboration on judgment and decision making was the reason for the Nobel Prize that I received in 2002, which Amos would have shared had he not died, aged fifty-nine, in 1996."


Kahneman is 77 years old and we can only hope he writes more books.