How good friends discuss politics................

This one has really aged well. James Spader and William Shatner calmly discuss presidential politics, all without reloading:

 

Good advice......................

 Today's persuaders don't want you to stop and think.  They want you to hurry up and feel.

      Don't be rushed.

-Tim Harford, How To Make The World Add Up:  Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers

Weighing...............................

Separate your "must-dos" from your "like-to-dos" and don't mistakenly slip any "like-to-dos onto the first list. ...
Anything is possible.  It's the probabilities that matter.  Everything must be weighed in terms of its likelihood and prioritized.  People who can sort probabilities from possibilities are generally strong at "practical thinking";  they're the opposite of the "philosopher" types who tend to get lost in the clouds of possibilities.

-Ray Dalio,  Principles

Yawning is now fashionable.........

"But it is hard to resist the idea that there is a news-fatigue element to what is going on. Stocks, traditionally, have overreacted to news. A thing happened, and traders thought they were smart and over-interpreted it, and the next day something else happened and people over-interpreted it the other way. But there is just too much news now. If you over-interpreted all of it, you'd get whiplash. So a retreat into under-interpreting -- from panicking at minor news to shrugging off huge news -- seems like a natural reaction. The new way to tell yourself that you're smart is by not reacting to news"


-Matt Levine, as extracted from here

Some truth here............................

thanks jess

Ingenious beams of speculation..............

     Well, in an effort to cope with the incomprehensibility of infinite reality, we ever-curious, ever-pondering, compulsively controlling Homo sapiens create theoretical models.  These models are ingenious beams of speculation that we use to penetrate and define the dark mysteries of boundless existence.   Sometimes elegantly structured, usually self-confirming, our models are like the headlights of a car, designed to light our way.  Whatever is illuminated becomes our truth, and we organize our lives around it.  But this light we create can also blind us.   Too often we are blinded into believing that our models are the whole reality, forgetting that they are simply useful fact/fantasy coping devices.

-Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting The Giant Hairball:  A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving With Grace

This seems about right......................

Hot takes have replaced much of what used to constitute clear-headed analysis to the point that it’s nearly impossible to trust anyone to offer a reasonable approximation of what’s really happening.

Emotions are running extremely high. I don’t blame people for being emotional in these uncertain times. Emotions are what makes us human. But you have to pair emotion with reason if you ever wish to survive.

-Ben Carlson, as excerpted from here

On creeping determinism..............

     In his talk to the historians, Amos described their occupational hazard:  the tendency to take whatever facts they had observed (neglecting the many facts that they did not or could not observe) and make them fit neatly into a confident-sounding story:

          All too often, we find ourselves unable to predict what will
          happen; yet after the fact we explain what did happen with
          a great deal of confidence.  This "ability" to explain that
          which we cannot predict, even in the absence of any addi-
          tional information, represents an important, though subtle,
          flaw in our reasoning.  It leads us to believe that there is a
          less uncertain world than there actually is, and that we are
          less bright than we actually might be.  For if we can explain
          tomorrow what we cannot predict today, without any added
          information except the actual knowledge of the actual out-
          come, then this outcome must have been determined in
          advance and we should have been able to predict it.  The
          fact that we couldn't is taken as an indication of our limited
          intelligence rather than of the uncertainty that is in the world.
          All too often, we feel like kicking ourselves for failing to
          foresee that which later appears inevitable.  For all we know,
          the handwriting might have been on the wall all along.  The
          question is:  was the ink visible?

     It wasn't just sports announcers and political pundits who radically revised their narratives, or shifted focus, so that their stories seemed to fit whatever had just happened in a game or an election.  Historians imposed false order upon random events, too, probably without even realizing what they were doing.  Amos had a phrase for this.  "Creeping determinism," he called it - and jotted in his notes one of its many costs:  "He who sees the past as surprise-free is bound to have a future full of surprises."

-Michael Lewis, as culled from The Undoing Project

Suspecting this is a majority..............

These people are neither Republicans nor Democrats, liberals nor conservatives—they’re “leave me alone and do your job” voters.

-Joe Bob Briggs, as culled from this essay on "angry" people

This blogger has been.....................

..............a big fan of Ray Dalio ever since stumbling across his Principles.   He recently published a LinkedIn essay, Reflections on the Trump Presidency, One Month after the Election.  It is not the typical essay on Trump, and you will likely find it well worth the reading.

This is likely true.........................

"We face a blooming, buzzing confusion of interpretive frameworks for the election. Because it is only one event, we are not going to be able to sort it out."

-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from here

I get that........................

"Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.” 

"In our chearful discourses, better than in the formal reasonings of the schools, is true wisdom to be found. In our friendly endearments, better than in the hollow debates of statesmen and pretended patriots, does true virtue display itself. Forgetful of the past, secure of the future, let us here enjoy the present; and while we yet possess a being, let us fix some good, beyond the power of fate or fortune. To-morrow will bring its own pleasures along with it: Or should it disappoint our fond wishes, we shall at least enjoy the pleasure of reflecting on the pleasures of to-day."

-David Hume, as culled from Essay XVIII, The Epicurean, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects

Antifactors............................

Certainty is no longer as certain as it once was.  When I am connected to the Screen of All Knowledge, to that billion-eyed hive of humanity woven together and mirrored on a billion pieces of glass, truth is harder to find.  For every accepted piece of knowledge I come across, there is, within easy reach, a challenge to that fact.  Every fact has its antifact.  The internet's extreme hyperlinking will highlight those antifacts as brightly as the facts.  Some antifacts are silly, some borderline, and some valid.   This is the curse of the screen:  You can't rely on experts to sort them out because for every expert there is an equal and opposite anti-expert.  Thus anything I learn is subject to erosion by these ubiquitous antifactors.
     Ironically, in an age of instant global connection, my certainty about anything has decreased.  Rather than receiving truth from an authority, I am reduced to assembling my own certainty from the liquid stream of facts flowing through the web.  Truth, with a capital T, becomes truths, plural.  I have to sort the truths not just about things I care about, but about anything I touch, including areas about which I can't possibly have any direct knowledge.  That means that in general I have to constantly question what I think I know.

-Kevin Kelly,  The Inevitable:  Understanding The 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Sorting it out...............................

Sifting..................................

"The one thing technology doesn't provide us with is a sense of how to make the best use of technology.  Put another way, the ability to gather information, which use to be so crucial, is now far less important than the ability to sift through it."
-Pico Iyer,  The Art of Stillness:  Adventures in Going Nowhere

Apparently I'm a business conservative.....

.............or, so says Pew Research after I took their Political Typology Quiz.  Labels really are not my thing.  Nor am I overly fond of either/or questions.  Life seems more nuanced (or gray, if you prefer) then their answers would suggest.  But, for now, file me with 10% of "the population."

thanks mark

He wasn't the only one.................................

"Perhaps I was out sick the day they issued the philosophers' stone that allows for the transmutation of good intentions into desirable outcomes..."
-Samuel Wilson, as excerpted from this marvelous post

Sorting it out....................

"The internet is not a source of information it is a source of disinformation.” 
-Craig Ferguson

cartoon via