There are 69 posts tagged Reflection ().
“AI – great for computation and arithmetic, saves huge amounts of labor. It seems to me that it lacks humility, lacks imagination, and lacks humor.
– Mary Catherine Bateson, systems thinker, on the seeming lack of systems theory underlying our progress with AI e.g. ChatGPT, or more generalized larger issues like climate change or urban police reforms >> more
“It’s who can take the beating, who can make a mistake, who can take the pounding, then come up and do it again.”
-Laird Hamilton, big-wave rider >> more
Applies not in just any sport, like surfing, but in any endeavours in life…
“The coffee tells my story.”
– Alfred H. Peet, founder of Peet’s Coffee, more >>
For those curious, the word “coffee” is said to have stemmed from qahhwat al-bun, which in Arabic means “wine of the bean.”
“We are not what we know, but what we are willing to learn.”
—Mary Catherine Bateson, anthropologist and systems thinker, more >>
The only person who escapes the grim law of enantiodromia is the man who knows how to separate himself from the unconscious, not by repressing it—for then it simply attacks him from the rear—but by putting it clearly before him as that which he is not …
– Carl Jung, more >>
“While we are postponing, life speeds by. Time is the one loan which even the grateful recipient cannot repay.”
-Seneca, more >>
Golfer Tiger Woods was not a preordained champion. Rather perhaps, was he was more a product of raw talent, grit, ambition and his parents, notably of his Dad Earl Woods, former US Infantry Army officer and student of Werner Erhard’s “est” philosophy? >> more
“He was ignorant, conceited, lost his head..,” industrialist John D. Rockefeller would later say of Samuel Andrews, his right hand man. There is a little Sam Andrews in all of us. The lesson to walk away with is that temperament matters. A lot… more >>
Learning to be nourished by solitude rather than be defeated by it, Hermann Hesse argues, is a prerequisite for taking charge of our destiny. more >>
“So much of what I’ve tried to do as a leader is guardrail around what I think my weaknesses are. Really important to me that I avoid the danger — which I think all humans have, but I know I have — of falling in love with my own view of things, my own righteousness…”
-James Comey, in an interview with Michael Barbaro in the NY Times more >>
Achieving our goals matters of course, with a new year in 2018. But we should meditate, too, on the value of the process. How to navigate through Schopenhauer‘s valley of unsatisfied desires and goals in midlife … more >>
What Philip K. Dick captured with genius was the ontological unease of a future world in which the human and the abhuman, the real and the fake, blur together. We might actually be living in that type of future now… more >>
“We cannot stay still,” famed “Beginner’s Mind” philosopher Shunryu Suzuki cautions. “We have to do something … but be very observant, careful, and alert. Zen is not some kind of excitement but concentration on our usual everyday routine…” more >>
“Deliberate practice,” Anders Ericcson once observed, “is an effortful activity to help push yourself beyond your comfort zone, otherwise you can never improve.” In areas like Digital, the same concept applies – deliberately experimenting, applying Ericcson’s concepts, can substantially improve product, as it has done for Amazon and Facebook … more >>
“A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”
-Albert Einstein, in an old autograph >>
“Next time you encounter someone driving a Ferrari, assume not that the driver is greedy, but that he or she is extremely vulnerable to insult and to being ignored…” more >>
-Alain de Botton, on Status Anxiety
“The way that the mind works, very frequently, is that we start from a decision, or a belief, and then the stories that explain it come to our mind. And the sequence that we have when we think about thinking, that arguments come first and conclusions come later, that sequence is often reversed.
Conclusions come first, and rationalizations come later….” more from Daniel Kahneman >>
“Desire is a contract we make with ourselves to be unhappy until we get what we want.”
Decentralized, distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency might be the next big disruptive technology thing – potentially impacting big banks and big tech GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple).
Ten resources to bone up on blockchains, bitcoins and get up to speed … more >>
“The future Blockchain man will be not be unlike today’s performers in Hollywood free agent land, exposed to a broader calculus of career decisions and tradeoffs, unlike the Organization Man who grew up with the expectation of getting a job and working for the corporation” … more from Taylor Pearson at Ribbon Farm >>
You can have two big things, but not three – choose two among career, spouse, children, social life, startup, big hobby … more >>
“If you’re an amateur your focus should be on avoiding stupidity.” How to play the long game and succeed by avoiding mistakes … more >>
“Indeed, to the extent [that Whole Foods’] Mackey has compared Amazon to Waterloo is a valid analogy, Amazon is much more akin to the British Empire, and there is now one less obstacle to sitting astride all aspects of the economy.”
– “Amazon’s New Customer,” and “Amazon Go and the Future,” by Ben Thompson, Stratechery
Stoics saw human nature as capable of rationality if trained (a factor “rational actor” fans often ignore), training in three disciplines (of desires, actions, and reactions) and in four capabilities (“courage, temperance, justice and practical wisdom”) … more >>
“Obsoletion – where a cheaper, single-purpose product is replaced by a more expensive, general purpose product – is just as common as ‘disruption’ – even more so, in fact. Why the Mac (and PC), iPod, and iPhone weren’t so much disruptive as they were obsoletive.”
– Ben Thompson, “Obsoletive,” Stratechery
“It’s a grave mistake to think Google can replace your memory. It can, however, complement it, if we keep in mind what each does best.”
–Daniel Willingham, psychology professor at University of Virginia, “You Still Need Your Brain,” New York Times.
“What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.” Harvard political scientist Graham Allison says the Thucydides Trap can occur when a ruling power, feeling threatened by an assertive rising power, often resorts to war. Mr. Graham argues nations like the U.S. can apply lessons from history, apply mutual deterrence strategies, to deal with today’s emerging powers like China … more >>
“A good founder is capable of anticipating which turns lead to treasure and which lead to certain death. A bad founder is just running to the entrance of (say) the “movies/music/filesharing/P2P” maze or the “photosharing” maze without any sense for the history of the industry, the players in the maze, the casualties of the past, and the technologies that are likely to move walls and change assumptions.” more >>
–Balaji S. Srinivasan, venture capitalist, “The Idea Maze“
Self-talk can help us learn and think better. When we’re engaged in a conversation with ourselves, we typically ask ourselves questions along the lines of: “How will I know what I know? What do I find confusing? Do I really know this?” Whether we hit the pause button while listening to a podcast or stop to reflect while reading a manual, we develop skills more effectively by thinking about our thinking… more >>
–Ulrich Boser, book author and senior fellow at American Progress
“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang onto.”
–Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and a prolific reader of books, once reading two per day in various disciplines when he was younger… more >>
“When I talk to researchers, when I talk to people wanting to engage in entrepreneurship, I tell them that if you read research papers consistently, if you seriously study half a dozen papers a week and you do that for two years, after those two years you will have learned a lot. This is a fantastic investment in your own long term development.”
– Andrew Ng, A.I. expert “Inside The Mind That Built Google Brain: On Life, Creativity, And Failure“
“Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog.”
– Li Qing-Yun, Taoist Immortalist and herbalist, who is said to have lived for over 250 years >>
“Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.”
-U.S. Marine General James Mattis (now the U.S. Secretary of Defense), via Shane Parrish. See General Mattis’ reading list >>
“Events that take place in the first three months of gestation, a stage when the [human] fetus is really very small and developing very rapidly, can affect an individual for the rest of his or her life.”
– Nessa Carey, from her book “The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance.” You can get the book on Amazon.
“The point of travel is to go to places that can help us with our inner evolution. The outer journey should assist us with the inner one.”
– Alain de Botton. Visit his site “The Book of Life“
“The duty of man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads and … attack it from every side.”
Has the human mind, finite in its capacity, been finally eclipsed by science and technology? more >>
“Courage, President Kennedy knew, requires something more than just the absence of fear. Any fool can be fearless. Courage, true courage, derives from that sense of who we are … and the belief that we can dig deep and do hard things for the enduring benefit of others.”
– Barack Obama, in a speech on May 7th while accepting the 2017 Centennial “Profiles in Courage” JFK Award… more >>
“The same incompetence that leads people to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence.”
-Dunning & Kruger
“I divide my officers into four groups: clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. [Among the four groups] anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions.”
-German general Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, used Hanlon’s razor to assess his men
“Of all ridiculous things, the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy – to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work.” Busy, in other words, is a decision … you don’t find the time to do things, you make the time to do things.
“The best remedy to anger is delay. For men are no beasts, who know no more how to be angry than they know how to pardon.”
Like these two brothers and many visitors to the Plum Village, I came, in 2016, with no expectations and no prior knowledge of the place, the people, or its practice. I did come armed with questions and brought a couple of books by Thich Nhat Hanh, renowned Zen master and Buddhist. After a month practicing silent meditation, I came away transformed … more >>
Charles Dickens, Henri Poincaré, Ingmar Bergman and Charles Darwin working in disparate fields in different times, all shared a high passion, ambition and capacity to focus, yet only worked a few hours a day. How did they manage to be so accomplished? more >>
Napoleon Bonaparte was said to have studied all the great wars before his time, those of Hannibal, Alexander the Great and others, so completely and intently that he was able to intuit coup d’oeil – the right strategy at the right opportunity – to earn his many victories in the battlefield. more >>
“Any type of change is hard, but institutional change – with the need to overcome tradition and bureaucracy – is the most difficult.” How father of modern oceanography Matthew Fontaine Maury mastered geographical, wind and sea data, and transformed maritime exploration… more >>
“You’ll have to work twice as hard to get half as much. So get busy,” says a mom to a 10 year-old Marty Chavez after complaining that he was the only Hispanic kid in a private school in New Mexico. Chavez is now Goldman Sach’s incoming CFO after years at the firm and as a serial tech entrepreneur… more >>
“The deep learning and AI sector have heated up in labor markets to relatively unprecedented levels. Large companies are recently paying $6–10 million per engineer for talent acquisitions, and $4–5M per head for pre-product startups still in academia …” more >>
“Our family lives in over-scheduled [team-sports] suburbia. Sometimes it feels downright dystopian. If you live in the suburbs [in the US], participation in team sports seems to be all the social activity on offer…” more >>
“Choosing whom to commit ourselves to [or stay married with] is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.” A short pep talk attempting to help modern couples live with the dilemma of needing closeness and freedom at the same time – from one of my favorite contemporary philosophers Alain de Botton. Visit his site “The Book of Life“
“This world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.” Sarah Kay writes, reads, and performs poetry for diverse audiences. I love her body of work.
Azeem Azhar talks with Professor Jeff Zachs, an authority on economic development and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Good conversation covering a wide range of topics: AI, wealth inequality, automation and ethics by Aristotle, who is one of my favorite philosophers. Soundcloud link (46 minutes)
“Celebrate immaturity. Play every day. Fail early and often.” Why babies are just plain smarter than we are.
“Paying attention is the only thing that guarantees insight. It is the only real weapon we have against power.”
–Michelle Dean, a writer for the New Yorker and New York Times, on why paying attention is a moral obligation.
“Fear can often keep us mediocre. We don’t risk being wrong.”
“Social media has also effectively turned us all into publishers. Each time you like a Facebook post, your connections become a new audience. And it has your implicit signature of approval.”
-Nate Silver, on the fake news phenomenon – Twitter, Facebook and Google can’t solve it alone; restrictive regulation, censorship or “AI-directed safe spaces” may result
“Look, my job is essentially just corralling more and more facts and information, and occasionally seeing whether that leads to some action. And Charlie [Munger] — his children call him a book with legs.”
-Warren Buffett, famous investor, billionaire, and a prolific reading machine who spends 80% of his day reading … more >>
The art of any deal is really the art of its next deal. “When we fail to consider the future consequences of mistreating our counter-parties in a current ‘deal’ or first phase, it can wind up leaving our “reputational cue ball” ill-positioned for the next shot—the next deal or phase to come down the pike.”
-Charles Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack, and Shane Parrish on the four types of relationships.
Caterina Fake writes about literature, poetry, social justice and the arts on her site at caterina.net. I’ve been following her work and writings since 2000, around the time she launched her site and years before she became more well-known for founding Flickr (acquired by Yahoo), and Hunch (acquired and shut down by eBay). Over 118 thousand followers on Twitter and a Fast Company’s Fast 50 awardee.
Avinash Kaushik at Occam’s Razor is a main go-to resource for me on analytics and the data sciences. His blog is (and books are) written in very simple, plain English, and are easy to read, in honor of the former Franciscan friar William of Occam who above all valued principles of economy and simplicity.
Gary Vaynerchuk rocks. Hyper-kinetic entrepreneur, social media expert, digital media baron, businessman, mentor, hyper-energetic speaker, #AskGaryVee. Over 1,400,000 followers on Twitter. Here’s a sample video of one motivating talk.
Azeem Azhar covers Exponential View and gives a weekly “tour” of how technology is changing business models, society, politics and the economy. I make room in my schedule once a week to at least listen to and reflect on his podcasts on Soundcloud. He has over 15,000 subscribers and 17,000 followers on Twitter.
Perhaps Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini does not deserve his nom de guerre, but he correctly predicted many of the events in the last Great Recession in 2008. I am one of his over 425,000 followers on Twitter and a subscriber to his Economonitor site.
“My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy…the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic. Joseph Schumpeter, the economist who coined the term ‘creative destruction,’ would be proud.”
–Marc Andreesen, former founder of Netscape and venture capitalist at A16Z (listen to their podcasts), in a 2011 essay “Software is Eating the World,” still relevant to this day.
Wikistrat crowdsourced consulting’s analytic community of over 2,200 diverse and interdisciplinary subject matter experts on geopolitics, strategy and economics is the future of management consulting. Its roster of over 500 PhDs and 125 former military officers, and simulation-driven methodology offer a compelling alternative to McKinsey or Deloitte.
John Brockman’s The Edge is my go-to resource for answers to “questions on the edge of knowledge,” a never-ending source of stimulating discourse from brilliant minds. Mr. Brockman, the son of a former flower seller, has nearly 50,000 followers on Twitter and many contributors to his annual questions, such as this one posted in 2008 on what have you changed your mind about and why?
James Clear writes about “behavioral psychology, habit formation, and performance improvement.” I’m one of over 350,000 subscribers to his weekly newsletter and consumer of his simple but good content on mental systems. His article on four burners theory is a favorite of mine.
Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings ,”a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why,” is my go-to resource for meditations on design, philosophy, and psychology. Ms. Popova was a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree and in Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative in Business list.
Benedict Evans at Andreessen Horowitz is my main resource for “what’s going on and what will happen next” in artificial intelligence, mobile, technology and “software that is eating the world.” He has tens of thousands of subscribers and over a quarter of a million followers on Twitter.
Shane Parrish’s Farnam Street blog is my go-to resource for “making better decisions, creating new ideas, and avoiding stupid errors.” One of my aims in the years ahead is to rebuild my own mental latticework of models. Parrish has over 500,000 subscribers and is a big fan of Buffett and Munger as I am.
