How to Become Interested in Everything
This is my attempt to tell the story of four people who decided it would be a good idea to take waterfall hits of 15x salvia in the midst of a LSD trip. This happened almost 15 years ago during my heady undergrad days. I haven’t done psychedelics in nearly as long but this experience … Read more
Experience with pendulum – October 4, 2020 In the post that follows, I will assume certain things about how the left and right brains operate. Do not worry, there is research and evidence presented for these claims about hemispherical lateralization but the purpose of this post is to describe my phenomenology. The following details … Read more
I’ve read so many cultural doomsday think pieces about why our smartphone habits are signaling the end of human civilization. But is being glued to your phone really so bad? Computers have been “personal” for a long time. Indeed, technology itself, of any kind, has always been personal because it is us humans — real, … Read more
There is a common retort to those of us who are index fund investors. The retort is based on a thought experiment: “Index fund investing can’t be a good idea because if everyone did it the market would collapse!” This is known as the “tail wagging the dog” problem or, in other words, “the … Read more
I’m currently reading William Irvine’s book The Stoic Challenge and I think it’s just brilliant. Since he is drawing upon the lessons of ancient Stoic philosophy, nothing is fundamentally new but I really enjoy his modern framing of Stoicism. Particularly, I like his core concept of the “Stoic test strategy,” which he defines as: “…Stoic test strategy: … Read more
“Child prodigies, it turns out, rarely go on to change the world. When psychologists study history’s most eminent and influential people, they discover that many of them weren’t unusually gifted as children.” ~ Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World You might be tempted to look at the most successful people on the planet … Read more
1. “Deliberate practice requires a mind-set of never, ever, being satisfied with your current ability. It requires a constant self-critique, a pathological restlessness, a passion to aim consistently just beyond one’s capability so that daily disappointment and failure is actually desired, and a never-ending resolve to dust oneself off and try again and again and … Read more