On the importance..........................

 

........................................of side quests.

Embracing uncertainty................

 

The nature of discoveries is that they are unexpected: they may not fit neatly into our existing edifice of knowledge. Although the research may be originally motivated by a perceived gap, the knowledge resulting from the discovery may in fact not complete any part of the wall but instead may lead to the construction of a completely new and unexpected area: we may be forced to build a new wall orthogonal to the first, or even to tear down parts of the existing structure. This is an uncomfortable concept for many of us, who would prefer a tidy and beautiful universe, where a rational process helps us to illuminate the world. And yet, the most interesting unknowns of science are unknown unknowns—gaps that we were not even aware of before chancing upon them.

-Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher.

via the wide wide world of Tim Ferriss

seeing..........................

 

The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.

-Marcel Proust

the notion of originality..............

 

. . . in the quest for ideas, the entrepreneur should not overly obsess with the new.  That we tend to venerate the original without always penetrating the notion of originality.  Sometimes, if not frequently, the best idea is a refinement of something that already exists or a recombination of parts that no one else has thought to assemble.  And success comes so often in the remorseless perfection of execution.

-Albert Read, The Imagination Muscle

a product.......................

 

Material possessions can be here today and gone tomorrow, and if your happiness is tied up in them, it too can be here today and gone tomorrow.  But happiness, a product of a mindset that combines curiosity, the joy of perpetual intellectual discovery, and an appreciation of life's experiences, can be more lasting.

-Gad Saad,  The Saad Truth About Happiness

Limits....................

 

You won't see most of this planet.

Under each rock.

Beneath the water.

Secrets of air and soil

Can you feel the joy behind this limitation?

That there is always a new thing to discover,

a new way to grow, 

is one of the sweetest parts of living,

and it's free and inexhaustible.

-Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

connections................

      By being truly alone I had seen how deeply reliant I am on human ties and in ways that were unexpected.  It was not simply a matter of having company to pass the time, or backup in case of emergency.  During the expedition, I found that the absence of others had shaped my behaviour, my thoughts, my actions, my reasoning.  I had seen for myself that it is human relationships that bind us to places, time, and purpose, human relationships that make us who we are as individuals and that our contentment, and our happiness, depend on those precious human connections.

-Felicity Aston, Alone In Antarctica

Beating up on Malthus.....................

     Malthus had quite accurately foretold the one phenomenon [population explosion], but had missed the other altogether [productivity increases].  Why? Because of the systematic pessimistic bias to which prophecy is prone. . . . They all thought they were making sober predictions based on the best knowledge that was available to them.  In reality they were all allowing themselves to be misled by the ineluctable fact of the human condition that we do not yet know what we have not yet discovered.

-David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity

The journey is the point.....................

 Dorothy had the slippers all along.  The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion already possessed everything they needed to find happiness.  And the wizard didn't actually need a broomstick.  So why bother going on this perilous journey?

     The quest for the broomstick was a MacGuffin, of course, an illogical centerpiece that moved the story forward.  Illogical, and yet, The Wizard of Oz, eighty years later, remains one of the most remembered and beloved movies ever made.

     Corporate profits aren't at the center of Dorothy's journey in the Wizard of Oz.  Neither is selfish gain.

     The movie resonates with us because it's about connection and possibility.  It captures our desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to help others when, perhaps, there's not much in it for us.

-Seth Godin, as excerpted from The Song of Significance

Reconditioning....................

 My most surprising discovery in the last five years is that peace and happiness are skills.  These are not things you are born with.  Yes, there is a genetic range.  And a lot of it is conditioning from your environment, but you can un-condition and recondition yourself.

You can increase your happiness over time, and it starts with believing you can.

It's a skill.  Just like nutrition is a skill, dieting is a skill, working out is a skill, making money is a skill, meeting girls and guys is a skill.  It starts with realizing they're skills you can learn.  When you put your intention and focus on it, the world can become a better place.

When working, surround yourself with people more successful than you.

When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.

-The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

About those meetings.................

 Accenture's team also discovered that something that nearly every meeting does is a waste of time: introductions.  The data show that everyone except for the person speaking is neurologically frustrated during these recitations.  Instead of an introduction, Accenture now puts names on paper tents in front of attendees. Using name tents also avoids "introduction creep" in which one person offers an in-depth description of his or her job, career and personal goals, sporting activities, children, and dog.  People are able to meet each other during frequent breaks without formal introduction.

-Paul J. Zak, Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness

The day...........................................

 .............................the dinosaurs died.

On the importance of Feynman..........

 One of the most important things Feynman ever taught me was that some of the most exciting scientific surprises can be discovered in everyday phenomena. All you need do is take the time to observe things carefully and ask yourself good questions. He also influenced my belief that there is no reason to succumb to external pressures that try to force you to specialize in a single area of science, as many scientists do. Feynman showed me by example that it is acceptable to explore a diversity of fields if that is where your curiosity leads.

-Paul Steinhardt, as culled from here

thanks Chris

Contrasting outlooks...........................

      The difference between Hopper's version of history and IBM's ran deeper than a dispute over who should get the most credit.  It showed fundamentally contrasting outlooks on the history of innovation.  Some studies of technology and science emphasize, as Hopper did, the role of creative inventors who make innovative leaps.  Other studies emphasize the role of teams and institutions, such as the collaborative work done at Bell Labs and IBM's Endicott facility.  This latter approach tries to show that what may seem like creative leaps—the Eureka moment— are actually the result of an evolutionary process that occurs when ideas, concepts, technologies, and engineering methods ripen together.  Neither was of looking at technological advancement is, on its own, completely satisfying.  Most of the great innovations of the digital age sprang from an interplay of creative individuals (Mauchly, Turing, von Neumann, Aiken) with teams that knew how to implement their ideas.

-Walter Isaacson, The Innovators:  How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

History doesn't repeat itself...............

 .......................................but it often rhymes.*

After a tumultuous first term in office, Grant occasionally dreamed of returning to his farm in St. Louis.  "I was not anxious to be President a second term," he confided to a reporter, "but I consented to receive the nomination because I thought that was the best way of discovering whether my countrymen . . . really believed all that was alleged against my administration and against myself personally."

-Ron Chernow, Grant

*Ed Note:  saying attributed to Mark Twain, but who knows for certain.

Rewards and risks...............

History shows that the way innovators make ideas into practical and affordable products or processes is trial and error. Edison understood that, as does Jeff Bezos, who made plenty of mistakes on his way to huge success. Says Bezos: ‘Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week.’ Among Silicon Valley’s best features is a forgiveness of going bust at least once. Capital there is patient and takes risks.

-Matt Ridley. as culled from this essay on unleashing trial and error, serendipity, speed, and innovation

Well, fifty years ago anyway...................

“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

-Will Durant

I wonder if young Wooly Mammoths............

...............................................believed in the Tooth Fairy?

On Crowds........................

....................................Josh Brown's post is here.  Quick take here:

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary conquered Mount Everest in 1953

"Being special requires taking a risk and doing something unproven – and difficult – before it becomes just another selfie opportunity for everyone else."

The line forms at the rear.  Mount Everest in 2019

The great undiscovered ocean..................

The passage from Newton's pen that I like best is:  

          I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to
          myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on
          the seashore and diverting myself in now and then
          finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary,
          while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

To me, Newton's pebbles and shells are indeed smooth and pretty because they are so simple.  However, they did not seem simple before he recognized their nature.  Mankind shall find more pebbles and more beauty.
     The ocean of truth now offers a vista of a hundred billion suns clustered in the galaxy Galileo glimpsed with his telescope.  The universe contains billions of galaxies which, having started 15 billion years ago in a small space, now are moving apart at tremendous speeds.  Newton pointed out that the laws that apply to galaxies are the same as the laws that apply to atoms.  Regardless of how different galaxies, atoms and the application of laws may superficially appear, their common consistency is now clearly visible.
      But the simplicity in the structure and origin of the universe has not as yet been fully discovered, and therefore all people can repeat with Newton, the great ocean of truth is still undiscovered.

-Edward Teller,  The Pursuit of Simplicity