reversing........................

 

     Our world, and each of our lives, quite suddenly became overwhelming technocratic, sucking millions into the simulation.  Scientists like to say that human knowledge is doubling every twelve months.  That is explosive, exponential growth.  But let's clarify that:  Complicated knowledge is doubling every twelve months.  Complex knowledge, which must be lived in real time and can't be discovered or stored by computers, is not increasing at all.  This asymmetry explains why we're bombarded with ingenious solutions to age-old problems but never seem to make progress toward greater happiness.  In fact, it's the reverse:  We are losing our sense of life's meaning faster and faster.

-Arthur C. Brooks,  The Meaning of Your Life

who knew.........................

 

     The world was built by practical people who knew how to get into a creative frame of mind, listen to their imaginations, and build on the ideas they found there.

-Roger van Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head:  How You Can Be More Creative

clarity....................

 

Clarity isn't about knowing what you want to do with your life, it's about knowing what you want to do this week. You don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to know your next step.

-James Clear, from this edition

patience...................

 

Youth walked before me and I followed him until we came to a distant field.  There he stopped, and gazed at the clouds that drifted over the horizon like a flock of white lambs.  Then he looked at the trees whose naked branches pointed toward the sky as if praying to Heaven for the return of their foliage.

     And I said, "Where are we now, Youth?

     And he replied, "We are in the field of Bewilderment.  Take heed."

     And I said, "Let us go back at once, for this desolate place affrights me, and the sight of the clouds and the naked trees saddens me."

     And he replied, "Be patient.  Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge."

-Kahlil Gibran, The Voice of The Master

Knowledge is good.................

 

“Investing in yourself is the most important investment you’ll make in your life.” - Warren Buffett. Gaining more knowledge and skills is never a mistake.

-from this assortment of quotes from some smart people

the important provinces..............

 

Like so many people wedded to the nineteenth-century view of science, Dawkins overlooks the nineteenth-century reaction—which said, "Wait a minute: science is not the only way to pursue knowledge.  There is moral knowledge too, which is the province of practical reason; there is emotional knowledge, which is the province of art, literature and music.  And just possibly there is transcendental knowledge, which is the province of religion.  Why privilege science, just because it sets out to explain the world?  Why not give weight to the disciplines that interpret the world and so help us to be at home in it?"

-Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

Wondering about Francis Bacon...........

 

The contention that knowledge is power, as advanced by Bacon, secularized the previously occult dictum to great effect. Disinterested curiosity was not Bacon’s only goal; he also envisioned the command of nature, its subjugation and bondage, in the advancement of human comfort, wealth, control, and power. And his vision would shape the dominant ideology of the next half-millennium. “Human knowledge and human power meet in one,” claimed Bacon in Novum Organum, charting the passage of that supposedly unsinkable ship of civilization toward the brighter and more prosperous future that enlightened men had long dreamed of. All that was required was a ritual sacrifice of the mystery that had suffused the world in the millennia the scientific revolution. 

-as culled from this Hedgehog Review essay

I knew being......................

 

............a history major would pay off:

By contrast, the invaluable abilities to distinguish fact from opinion, organize a logical argument, think creatively, and express oneself orally and in writing with clarity and verve — all of which a good liberal education bestows — never suffer obsolescence. Rather, these capacities equip liberal-arts graduates for high-paying positions by mid-career in management, law, and other fields, offering students durable advantages in work and in life. They are gained through exposure to a broad and rich curriculum, through the accretion of specific knowledge and concepts from the earliest grades.

It bears repeating........................

 

.................If mainstream media (or Intertunnel) coverage of the various on-going wars doesn't satisfy your desire for knowing, visit The Institute for the Study of War.  It has become a daily stop.

The goal.....................

 

The goal was never to transform the external world by acting physically upon that world, but to transform it in producing better human beings, in allowing human beings to develop an inward knowledge of themselves.

-Matthieu Ricard, as taken from here

Knowledge is good.............

 

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

-Nicolaus Copernicus 

thanks Rob

illusions...............

 

The greatest menace to progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.

-Daniel Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose

understanding......................

 

They had cliche answers but only to their self-created straw-men. To exaggerate only slightly, they had never talked to anyone who really believed, and had thought deeply about, views drastically different from their own. As a result, when they heard real arguments instead of caricatures, they had no answers, only amazement that such views could be expressed by someone who had the external characteristics of being a member of the intellectual community, and that such views could be defended with apparent cogency. Never have I been more impressed with the advice I once received: "You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do."

-Milton Friedman, as cut-and-pasted from here

I don't know...........................

 

Whatever success I've had has been more due to my knowing how to deal with what I don't know than anything I know.  Betting on the future is betting on probabilities and nothing is certain, not even the probabilities.  That's just the way it is.  While what I've given you up until this point is what I believe I know about the future based on my reasoning about the past, what I want to pass along that is probably more important is how I make decisions in life and in the markets based on what I don't know.  In a nutshell, here's what I try to do:

 *  Know all the possibilities, think about the worst-case scenarios and then find ways to eliminate the intolerable ones.

  * Diversify.

  * Put deferred gratification ahead of immediate gratification so you will be better off in the future.

  * Triangulate among the smartest people possible.

Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order:  Why Nations Succeed and Fail

life itsownself.................

 

"The end of being is to know; and if you say the end of knowledge is action—why yes, but the end of that action again, is knowledge."  Self-knowledge and self-cultivation he now sees not as a means to something but as the ends and goals of life itself.

-Robert D Richardson, Jr., Emerson: The Mind on Fire

Why philosophy......................

 

We want to know that the little things are little, and the big things are big, before it is too late; we want to see things now as they will seem forever—"in the light of eternity."  We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death.  We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by criticizing and harmonizing our desires; for coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics, and perhaps in logic and metaphysics too.  "To be a philosopher," said Thoreau, "is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust."  We may be sure the if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us.  "Seek ye first the good things of the mind," Bacon admonishes us, "and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt."  Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.

-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

invested...................

 

The more useful a term is for marking my inclusion in a group, the less interested I will be in testing the validity of my use of that term against—well, against any kind of standard.  People who like accusing others of Puritanism have a fairly serious investment, then, in knowing as little as possible about actual Puritanism.  They are invested, for the moment anyway, in not thinking.

-Alan Jacobs, How To Think

oriented....................

 

      When it comes to the purpose of the Socratic method, Socrates had colossal ambitions.  He believed that all of the trouble we have leading our lives, all of our dissatisfactions, all of our failures to progress, all of our moral imperfections, all of the injustices we commit, large and small, stem from one source: ignorance.   Socrates' claim that "I know that I know nothing" isn't an empty gesture of skepticism, but rather a plan for life.  It tells you that the key to success, whether you are navigating difficulties in your marriage, your terror at the prospect of death, or the politicized minefield of social media, is to have the right kind of conversations.  Given that we cannot lead lives based on knowledge—because we lack it—we should lead the second-best kind of life, namely, the one oriented toward knowledge.

-Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Live

be prepared....................

 

. . . the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all.

-Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum

Knowledge.......................

 

Knowledge, he realized, "was obtained rather by the use of the ear than that of the tongue."

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life