Are you a contrarian? Or just a fool? The question to ask is: Are you MORE OFTEN RIGHT than others? If not — then you’re just a fool, aren’t you? Of course there’s the question of payoff Maybe your scepticism makes you unduly reject prevailing wisdom sometimes, And maybe it makes you susceptible …
Tag: Understanding
The Software and Hardware of Mind
There’s a computational theory of mind Maybe it’s right maybe it’s wrong It’s cute, philosophically But isn’t it profound practically? Your results are downstream from your actions, which are downstream from your mind Isn’t your mind quite like a computer? We speculated about our nature since time immemorial But aren’t computers some of …
There Are No Gurus — Only Experts
There are no gurus Only experts We distrust experts Because experts are sometimes wrong, or corrupted What a joke It’s like distrusting air because sometimes it smells Doesn’t mean you should stop breathing Experts are still the best we have By definition, that’s what expert is — the most qualified, educated, capable person …
Sincere Care vs Sincere Learned-Care vs Insincere Care
You look at a thing / person / idea / phenomenon, and you CARE, or DON’T care You can choose to CARE in which case you will provide that thing with more attention, more effort in your actions, more thoughtfulness and respect in how you consider that thing, and it can result in some …
Always Run Top-Down And Bottom-Up
Top-down is a plan of how the WHOLE is going to work Bottom-up is how you intend to EXECUTE various subparts By nature top subsumes the bottom, but it’s only at the bottom that you explore it in all practical nuance (i.e. literally execute). And only once you executed the constituent parts — do …
Object Thinking vs RELATIONAL Thinking
We tend to consider reality in terms of FIXED OBJECTS, ENTITIES, E.g. dog, tree, you, me, Scotsman, Russia, etc. This of course runs into multiple problems, Entity you assume to be fixed — often eludes fixed boundaries, Which poisons your reasoning with category errors, E.g. judging entire race by the behaviour of some of …
Broad, then Depth, then OPPORTUNISM
-Let’s define broad as “the whole” -Let’s define narrow as the smallest division -Let’s consider “normal” breadth as the kind of breadth of subject matters that most people engage -Let’s consider “normal” narrow as the kind of focus that most people achieve in their single career First let’s acknowledge that those two are not …
Changing Your Mind Doesn’t Make It Right
The default state of knowledge is UNKNOWN Therefore, when you realise what you thought you knew was false — you usually just return to that pitiful state of NOT knowing Sometimes you at least learn what is NOT But often you don’t even know that Often the only thing you learned is that you: …
Modest In Understanding, Cautious In Action, Yet Utterly Arrogant In Speech
-your relation to most things is that “YOU DON’T KNOW” -and you know that you don’t know — because you could test it -you could test your understanding by making predictions -you could BET on your predictions -but you don’t. You know you’d lose Every action you take is a bet on certain state …
Creation Transcends The Creator, And They Share VERY LITTLE
Beauty, ideals, virtue, art, creation — transcend the artist, the creator, the artisan and the engineer, the philosopher, the object Not merely as an idealised ideal, which we can’t touch Of course the ideal is our vision, then we merely strive to get closer to it, but can never reach it The former is …