Be careful of taking advice from people with misaligned incentives. If someone advises you to do something that is mutually beneficial, realize they may not care if you end up being harmed. Traders understood this, they did not sell to other professional traders when they had excess inventory to unload – doing so would … Read more
In Book 1, Taleb introduces an outline of his arguments. Hierarchies aren’t so bad Hierarchies are not inherently bad, they are only harmful when they result in bureaucracies that help people separate themselves from the consequences of their decisions. Hierarchies should exist, and if they are localized and decentralized then they would not result in … Read more
The Time Paradox is a book by Phillip Zimbardo and John Boyd that explains how our attitudes towards time shapes the way we live our lives, who we become, and what we value. Boyd recalls a Crypt of the Capuchin Monks that he once saw, it had an inscription at the foot of a pile … Read more
A large proportion of people in the world do not have the ability to choose how they want to spend their time. The global economic machine can only function when sufficient sacrifices are made. What people sacrifice is time, it is the most precious commodity that humans have. Unless you have provided astronomical value to … Read more
In Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis tells the story about how he got into Wall Street because of the money, but when he was interviewed, he committed the error of admitting so. Apparently, it was faux pas to give “money” as the reason for wanting to be in f inance, you were supposed to be in … Read more
The earliest instance of this quote is found in Virgil‘s Aeneid: “facilis descensus Averno” (the descent to hell is easy). Fundamentally, it is a quote about inadvertent error – consider cases in which you acted with good intent, but found yourself opposing people in your struggle, or think of times in which you had the backing of … Read more
In 1985, Neil Postman wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. The book is a criticism of television and its effect on society. Postman argues that TV has dumbed down public discourse, making it more entertainment-focused and less informative. Postman criticizes the effects of television on … Read more
Chapter 11: The Huxleyan Warning Our world has any prison-cultures who have structures similar to what Orwell describes. If one were to read both 1984 and Animal Farm, and then for good measure, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, one would have a fairly precise blueprint of the machinery of thought-control as it currently operates in … Read more
Chapter 10: Teaching as an amusing activity Reading books and watching television differ completely in what they imply about learning. America is a case in point of what can be thought of as the third great crisis in Western education. The first was in fifth century B.C, when Athens transformed from an oral culture to … Read more
Chapter 9: Reach out to elect someone By bringing together in compact form all of the arts of show business—music, drama, imagery, humor, celebrity—the television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand Postman’s point here, it is useful to remember that capitalism, like science … Read more