1. Nash Equilibrium Each person in a group makes the optimal decision for himself, based on what he thinks others will do. And nobody can improve their choice by changing it. In the Movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’, John Nash played by Russell Crowe tries to explain game theory differently. He is at a bar with … Read more
The Call to Adventure In mythological stories, there is the call to adventure. And in Biblical stories, the call to adventure happens to people who are in late age, and are imperfect, and have taken too long to leave their homes. The motif of these myths is always the same. It is better to go … Read more
A Dialogue Unless you are terribly honest with yourself, you will not question the real reasons why you are avoiding something. But assuming you are someone who is honest, and there is something that you want to do, for example, starting a business or ending a relationship or making a lifestyle change but don’t, then … Read more
Summary How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger is about the health benefits of eating your fruits, vegetables, nuts, and spices and the dangers of eating too much meat, or any meat at all. In the same way that smoking was ignored as a health hazard for so long, many people today are ignoring … Read more
In the spirit of The Checklist Manifesto, I will keep this summary short. High stakes mean that margin of error is low. Surgeons and pilots must minimize error because of high stakes. They love checklists. If your work doesn’t save lives, it’s okay. You can still improve the quality of what you produce. Use checklists … Read more
To know that there is a clear difference between intelligence and wisdom, one must simply ask themselves if one can exist without the other. Can you be intelligent without being wise? Can you be wise without being intelligent? The answer to both these questions is yes. Intelligence without wisdom is less clear to see. But … Read more
The Courage to Trust Others Don’t trust others because you’re naïve, trust them because you’re courageous. You should expect them to have the capacity to hurt you, but you should be willing to take a chance anyway. That is the foundation of society. Some people are too disagreeable, they refuse to be naïve about anything. … Read more
In Thoughts Without a Thinker, Mark Epstein makes the case that what is missing from psychoanalysis is Buddhism, that the two are complementary. Psychoanalysis is a reversion to the past, but a study of the past, while necessary, can be infinite and ineffective. There must be a focus on the present, this is the idea … Read more
The Ying-Yang symbol has its roots in Taoism. If you look at the symbol, you will notice that the white half has a black circle inside of it, and the black half has a white circle inside of it. The philosophical connotation, according to Peterson, is that the world is divided into chaos and order, … Read more
To be proud of your insufficiencies is arrogant and foolish. Peterson recalls a conversation he had with a student who was a bad writer, in which the student asserts that she is not actually a bad writer, but that she has a unique style that is difficult to understand. Instead of graciously taking advice to … Read more