Impressions are your preconscious reactions to the world. Some things are appealing to you, others are appalling. Your reactions to these things are normally outside your conscious awareness. They are defined by factors that are usually outside your control like your genetics and environment, and they will define everything about your life, from how you … Read more
Think about what Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram really are. They aren’t antisocial applications. They are forms of serial socialization. Imagine living on earth around 3000 years ago, you would have known only a few people at a time. You may have been around more people, but they are the same people. Over a … Read more
Stay Foolish If you have ever read anything about Steve Jobs, you must have heard his famous line, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” The psychologist Carl Jung emphasized that the fool was the precursor to wisdom. This idea has been articulated in the Bible and other ancient texts. In mythological stories, this is called the call … Read more
Don’t Tell People What To Do (or What Not To Do) The human mind is innately rebellious. Often, it is said that children are rebellious, but that is not true, everyone is rebellious, and it has everything to do with control. The loss of control physiologically causes us great stress. In fact, completely different areas … Read more
Imagine creating the perfect media channel—unbiased, scientific, truthful, fact-based, insightful. How would it differ from what exists today? Perhaps it would function as an independent body systematically fact-checking statements, slowly earning trust through rigorous methodology. It might vet other outlets for political slant, staffed by experts with relevant credentials in each domain they cover, all … Read more
The comedian Tim Minchin once observed in a graduation speech that “opinions are like assholes—everyone has one. But unlike assholes, they should be constantly and meticulously examined.” His crude wit echoes a profound insight that philosophers have grappled with for millennia: the danger of unexamined conviction. Socrates understood this paradox twenty-five centuries ago. When the … Read more
We live in an era flooded with information. While this abundance initially appears beneficial, it can quickly turn problematic. Excessive data overwhelms our minds, blurs our focus, and impairs clarity. Information is a gift, yet unchecked, it transforms into a curse. Some claim that the proliferation of information liberates our thinking by offering countless perspectives. … Read more
There are many things that are fun to do. But if you keep doing what’s fun for long enough, you’ll get depressed. Why? Because you substituted short-term gratification for long term happiness. That is the story we are often told, but there has always been a missing piece in this story, and I believe one … Read more
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
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