Pinker starts with pointing a hypocrisy that exists across all religions, but in particular, Christianity. Modern day Christians pay lip service to the Bible as their moral guide, but their morality really comes from other sources. The saints that are celebrated in Christianity all died in gruesome ways. They went through extreme forms of torture … Read more
The Secret of Long Life Lead a good life. Two things bring life speedily to an end: folly and immorality. Some lose their life because they have not the intelligence to keep it, others because they have not the will. Just as virtue is its own reward, so is vice its own punishment. He who … Read more
In Acting or Refraining, weigh your Luck. More depends on that than on noticing your temperament. If he is a fool who at forty applies to Hippocrates for health, still more is he onewho then first applies to Seneca for wisdom. It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide yourluck even … Read more
Let’s Get Digital is a book about digital publishing, it includes good information about the online publishing industry, and outlines some way an aspiring novelist can market their content. Royalties How much do writers make in traditional publishing? Not much. Below is the distribution of revenues by most large publishers. $25 Hardback $8 Paperback Trade-Published … Read more
In The Longevity Diet, Longo recommends we use multiple sources of information when going on a diet, rather than to trust the latest fads. There are hundreds of theories of how and why we age. Many are partially true and overlap. One, the popular free radical theory of aging proposes that oxygen and other reactive … Read more
Bertrand Russell was part of a generation that was brought up on the saying: ‘Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.’ In Praise of Idleness challenges this piece of common wisdom. Since he was a virtuous child, he believed what he was told, and acquired a conscience that made him industrious, even when … Read more
“The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting,” by Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore, offers a comprehensive and accessible guide to the practice of fasting for health benefits. The book draws on Dr. Fung’s clinical experience as a nephrologist, his thorough research into the science of fasting, and … Read more
He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not … Read more
There are several principles that the Nassim Taleb has talked about, including the precautionary principle, which teaches us to be cautious under conditions of uncertainty. But sometimes, his principles seem to clash with each other. The precautionary principle, for example, would seem to clash with survivorship bias, another mental model that Taleb has popularized. Key Definitions 1. … Read more
And it is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; only thus is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it at first makes its appearance. . . . The individual, who has not staked his life, may, no … Read more