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I *liked* your conclusion. This would make an awesome blog meme, and would also be useful as a very brief test on filtering out people who can think as opposed to spewing back cliches.
Short. Bursts. Of Advice. To Do Something.
Leo Babuta, on his very popular blog Zen Habits and in a post titled "Do Interesting Things," writes: Do something. Do something interesting. Be a part of the conversation, and say something remarkable. Create something unique, new, beautiful. Build upon the works of others and transform it into...
Some things are less flawed than others. When you find something less flawed, jump.
Clinging to the Wreckage
Four months ago I wrote a post titled In Praise of Feeling Utterly Confused. I said confusion, self-doubt, feeling like you're treading just above water, deep uncertainties about things others seem so certain about: this is part of life, or at least part my life. Andrew Sullivan has a thoughtful...
The "Guilty sense of privilege" link is a mailto.
Oldies But Goodies From the Archives
New reader to this blog? Check out the Best of Ben page for some of my favorite posts from the past few years. You can also browse this blog by category: Books || Business || Current Affairs || Entrepreneurship || Globalization || Health / Fitness || Life || Philosophy || Random || Religion / ...
I can't stand postmodernism and I've never read any grave analyses of literature, but I write fiction and I'm sad to say that I understood every bit of that advice.
Very Simple Writing Advice from James Wood
Judith Shulevitz at Slate reviews and summarizes James Wood's book How Fiction Works. Wood is the most influential book critic today. Some of his very easy-to-understand do's and dont's for writers: Writers should treat their fictions with the deference due something real; or, if they don't, th...
Actually, I recommended one big OOPS rather than lots of little oops - though this is where you've got an opportunity for a big OOPS at the start, but stretch it out instead. In general, just say as much oops as possible as fast as possible; don't stretch a big one out, don't accumulate little ones.
Also, my suggestion was that important failures successfully resolve, usually involve realizations of personal incompetence.
Failing Forward: Dealing with and Learning from Failure
Every quarter Chris Yeh and I convene some friends in the Bay Area to talk about topics that are not usually talked about. We've had conversations about humor, happiness, Americanism, storytelling, death, love, belief systems, and advice. This time the Silicon Valley Junto met to discuss Failing...
Well, that answers my question: you're defining "rational" as "assuming others are rational whether or not they are", which is of course irrational.
Easier to Deny or Rationalize Behavior Than Evolve Your Own Identity
"To take control of their lives, people tell themselves stories about the person they want to be." - Jonathan Franzen Intelligent people have a remarkable ability to rationalize irrational past actions, to re-interpret history to fit their preferred narrative. I've noticed this happens most when...
What do you mean "rational"? Do you mean "consistently believing what is true" and "consistently making the right choices to protect what's important to you" or do you have some kind of picture of Spock going here?
Easier to Deny or Rationalize Behavior Than Evolve Your Own Identity
"To take control of their lives, people tell themselves stories about the person they want to be." - Jonathan Franzen Intelligent people have a remarkable ability to rationalize irrational past actions, to re-interpret history to fit their preferred narrative. I've noticed this happens most when...
Rationality. (In the Bayesian-wannabe, epistemic-accuracy and expected-utility sense, lest someone accuse me of having uttered a tautology which means simply "thinking the way you should think".)
Which Traits Increase Value Nonstop?
In today's Wall Street Journal an article titled Tough CEOs Often Most Successful, a Study Finds ends with this provocative paragraph: Messrs. Street and Smart say it may be that some of the "soft" traits are best in moderation, while the value of "hard" traits increases nonstop. A certain amoun...
If you happen to be leading an idealistic movement, you're faced with a very strange dilemma: How can you stop the humorlessness effect?
Lecturing people on how they must avoid humorlessness isn't going to work.
You can't practice humor out of a desire to be virtuous. I've known rationalists who have this idea that they ought to be able to laugh at themselves, and pursue it very earnestly - making sure that everyone sees how carefully they ridicule themselves. Worst of all, their jokes aren't funny. Surely this is not the Way.
I even know some people who, as far as I can tell, have no senses of humor at all. But they didn't ask to be born that way, so what's an idealist to do?
It's easy to call for laughter when you happen to have been born with a strong sense of humor.
The Humorlessness of Idealists
Caitlin Flanagan is one of the funniest, most penetrating writers on feminist issues. And she has range. See her on MySpace predators, or on the supposed oral sex epidemic on college campuses. In the latest Atlantic ($) she rips into Hillary Clinton. Along the way she says Hillary has the "worst...
"Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can. Do this the instant you realize what you are resisting; the instant you can see from which quarter the winds of evidence are blowing against you. Be faithless to your cause and betray it to a stronger enemy."
Said of the third virtue, lightness.
The Importance of Admitting a Big Mistake
Eliezer hits it on the head again: After I had finally and fully admitted my mistake, I looked back upon the path that had led me to my Awful Realization. And I saw that I had made a series of small concessions, minimal concessions, grudgingly conceding each millimeter of ground, realizing as l...
Maybe it's different in science than entrepreneurship, because in science there is only one explanation. I can only recall two Eureka experiences in the process of building the Singularity Institute and both of them turned out to be wrong. But the Eurekas on how cognition worked lasted.
The Eureka moment in science builds slowly, over years, but it does crescendo. There is an audible click when everything finally falls into place, a click like thunder. You would be wildly wrong to focus on this part of the developmental process. It would be like looking at the IPO, instead of the whole process of building a corporation.
The Myth of One Giant Eureka Moment
I was talking to a journalist today about entrepreneurship. I told him my theory that the myth of creativity is that it all happens in one, giant "Eureka!" moment. You know the image: The idea comes to mind and you freeze. Its brilliance strikes you. It's going to change the world! Tears start s...
I would feel despair if my outlook on life, the universe, and everything was as bleak as yours.
Odd, that's the same way I feel about most religious outlooks.
I would ask where you obtain this godlike perspective
Thank you very much! All you do is refuse to be intimidated and go on working out the implications of a hypothesis, whether it's a cosmically large hypothesis or an ordinary everyday hypothesis. Do this without fail, without flinching, and without obeying thought-stopsigns like "God", "spiritual" and "cosmic". Then you will obtain a perspective that others call "godlike", meaning that you ran through one of their stopsigns.
The way the universe would look without any God is straightforward; the study of it is called "science" and it agrees very well with observed reality. No one has ever found an electron that moves up instead of down when it is morally right to do so.
The way the universe would look with various types of superintelligence added is theoretically if not practically straightforward; it would look modified in the direction of the superintelligence's goalsystem.
The way the universe would look with a benevolent God added is in some ways hard to know, but it surely would not contain the Holocaust or sexually abused children, etc.
This seems quite straightforward to me, and I see no reason to complicate it.
Your Last Three Minutes: What Would You Say?
The speechmaker is given no more than three minutes and is instructed to imagine that, as soon as the talk concludes, he or she dies. My friend said that the speeches were uniformly riveting, but, more notably, they were surprising. The men and women charged with the honor of giving these speech...
I am the "friend" of whom Ben speaks (he didn't know if he had permission to attribute or not.)
Expose Yourself to Bulk, Positive Randomness
One of my life principles is to expose myself to as much randomness as possible. I firmly believe that if we keep our mind open and explore the unknown, good things will (eventually) happen. If I reflect on some of the best things in my life they are more a result of random events (which I took ...
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