Never...................

 

Guard your speech.  Never speak of yourself, your affairs, or of anything else in a discouraged or discouraging way.  Never admit the possibility of failure, or speak in a way that infers failure as a possibility.  Never speak of the times as being hard, or of business conditions being doubtful.  Times may be hard and business conditions doubtful for those who are on the competitive plane, but they can never be for you; you can create what you want, and you are above fear.  When others are having hard times and poor business, you will find your greatest opportunities.

Train yourself to think of and to look upon the world as something which is Becoming, which is growing; and to regard seeming evil as being only that which is undeveloped.  Always speak in terms of advancement; to do otherwise us to deny your faith, and to deny your faith is to lose it.  Never allow yourself to feel disappointed.  You may expect to have a certain thing at a certain time, and not get it at that time; and this will appear to you like failure.  But if you hold to your faith you will find that the failure is only apparent.  Go on in the certain way, and if you do not receive that thing, you will receive something so much better that you will see that the seeming failure was really a great success.

-Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich

Let's talk............

 

In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in this world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.

-Robert Louis Stevenson, as found here

Four pundits calmly discussing.........

 

.........................."decapitation strikes".   In the New York Times of all places.

Polarization is underrated.........................

 

Slugging things out is underrated.

-Tyler Cowen

Would have liked the opportunity......

...........to have had a few beers with Samuel Adams: 

"By fretting at unfortunate events we double the evil."

"The censure of fools and knaves is applause."

Untroubled by perfectionism, he counseled friends not to overthink the details.

He excelled at friendship, which at its best he termed "thinking aloud together."

Though he bore the same name as his exemplary father, he invested little in bloodlines.  When traced far enough back, one bumped up against the inevitable horse thief.

He thought the best of people until he could no longer.  He shrugged off their opinions.

As affable in his manner as inflexible in his principals, he was at ease with everyone he met.

When he waxed rhapsodic it was about liberty and the rights of man.

Never in his life would he make a wise financial decision. Poverty was not so disagreeable a companion, he held, as the affluent seemed to believe.

What cigars and bourbon are for.........

      Getting things right requires triangulating with other people.  Psychologists therefore would do well to ask whether "metacognition" (thinking about your own thinking) is at bottom a social phenomenon.  It typically happens in conversation—not idle chitchat, but the kind that aims to get to the bottom of things.  I call this an "art" because it requires both tact and doggedness.  And I call it a moral accomplishment because to be good at this kind of conversation you have to love truth more than you love your own current state of understanding.  That is, of course, an unusual priority to have, which may help to account for the rarity of real mastery in any pursuit.

-Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

On the virtue of being boring................

 We are a nation of rules and the rules are boring. Embrace that. In times of difficulty, go with the boring option. When faced with a frightening crisis, tamp it down with ultra-boring moves. No matter what, stick with the rules.

I can’t avoid talking about Donald Trump but I’m going to make it brief. I know you don’t like him; neither do I. But let’s assume he’s only a politician. He’s not Hitler, Godzilla or the Beast of the Apocalypse—just a guy with a loud mouth and a desperate need for attention. Most Americans think of him that way.

This is not about him. It’s about you.

When you demonize those who disagree with you, you invite treatment in kind. When you refuse to engage in political argument and resort to performative moralizing, you make it clear to any neutral observer that for you there’s only one side, one opinion, one conformist crowd that can ever govern legitimately. The rest are disgusting subhumans who should never be tolerated near the levers of power. When you trample on the rules that say “all are created equal” like that, you are destroying the fabric that holds the country together. And believe me when I say this: You will reap the whirlwind.

-Martin Gurri, from this essay

Sounds like.......................

 ................................heaven on earth:

Conversation with real people replaces an imaginary life on social media.

People care about what you have to say and are generally interested in hearing different viewpoints without considering you an enemy of the state. Rather than using the pretense of listening as an excuse for what they will opine about next, their questions are sincere and thoughtful.

Perhaps, then.........................

 ............we should argue to learn, not to win:

     image via

Invisible friends......................................

      Machiavelli is a hunter, always on the lookout for the mechanism that moves human passions and acts on the lives of others.  Where is politics to grasped if not among ordinary people, when differences of opinion arise?  At the tavern are "a butcher, a miller, and two kiln tenders. With these men I dawdle all day playing cards and backgammon, which results in a thousand quarrels with streams of spiteful and wounding words."

     At nightfall, finally, it is time for Machiavelli to pay a visit to his invisible friends who live in ancient books.  They died a long time ago, but they sustain us.  They, too, can be asked for news.  But for that, you need to go to a little trouble, make yourself presentable, to join solemnly in conversation with the men of antiquity:

     When the evening comes, I return home and go into my study.  At the door I take off my everyday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and don garments of court and palace.  Now garbed fittingly I step into the ancient courts of men of antiquity, where, received kindly, I partake of food that is for me alone and for which I was born, where I am not ashamed to converse with them and ask them the reasons for their actions.  And they in their full humanity answer me.  For four hours I feel no tedium and forget every anguish, not afraid of poverty, nor terrified of death.

-Patrick Boucheron, Machiavelli:  The Art Of Teaching People What To Fear

Words matter.................................

      Joe had always considered individual words as finite units of currency, and he believed in savings.  He never wanted to waste of unnecessarily expend words.  To Joe, words meant things.  They should be spent wisely.  Joe sometimes paused for a long time until he could come up with the right words to express exactly what he wanted to say.  Sometimes it confused people (Marybeth fretted that perhaps people thought Joe was slow) but Joe could live with that.  That's why Joe despised meetings were he felt the participants acted as if they were paid by the number of words spoken and, as a result, the words began to cheapen by the minute until they meant nothing at all.  In Joe's experience, the person who talked the most very often had the least to say.  He sometimes wished that every human was allotted a certain number of words to use for their lifetime.  When the allotment ran out, that person would be forced into silence.  If this were the case, Joe would still have more than enough in his account while people like Les Etbauer would be very quiet.  Joe had attended meetings where little got accomplished except what he considered the random drive-by spewing of words, like unaimed machine-gun bullets.  What a waste of words, he often thought.  What a waste of currency.  What a waste of bullets.

-C. J. Box, Open Season:  A Joe Pickett Novel  (first in the series)

Self talk matters...........................

 It turns out that, if you ask yourself “Can I keep going?” rather than “Can I make it to the finish?” you’re far more likely to answer in the affirmative. 

-Alex Hutchinson, from this essay

via

Let's talk...................................

 . . . humans are social animals and communication plays an important role in decision-making.  We frame out thinking in terms of narratives.  And able leaders - whether in business, in politics, or in everyday life - make decisions, both personal and collective, by talking with others and being open to challenge from them.  Humans, uniquely, produce artefacts of extraordinary complexity and are able to do so only by the successful development of networks of trust, cooperation and coordination.  Market economies function only by virtue of being embedded in a social context.

-John Kay and Mervyn King,  Radical Uncertainty:  Decision-Making Beyond The Numbers

Letter writing:.............................

.................................a lost art, and we are all the poorer for it.

     "Seven o'clock, and retired to my fireside.  I have determined to enter into conversation with you."  Jefferson began one letter to Madison in October 1785.   Distance did not lessen their intimacy:  Jefferson wanted his far-off friend to hear his voice;  he wanted to see his friend listening.  Something had upset the American abroad, and he needed to hash it out.   Jefferson was in Fountainebleau, a town forty miles from Paris where the king of France hunted, and where the court attended him when he did so.  Jefferson had gone for a walk, "to take a view of the place," and had fallen into conversation with a woman laborer who showed him a hillside path.  She told Jefferson she had two children (she made no mention of a husband) and she earned eight sous, or four pennies, a day—when she could find work, which was not always.  As she and Jefferson parted ways, he gave her twenty-four sous, at which she burst into tears.  "She probably never before received so great an aid."  This led Jefferson into "a train of reflections" on the cause of his guide's plight—the unequal distribution of property.
     "The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.  If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated"—that is owned by individuals—"we must take care that other employment be provided to those" who own no land at all.  "If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed."  How would Jefferson encourage a distribution of property that would not leave his guide weeping over a twenty-four sous tip?  He made two suggestions:  abolishing feudal forms of inheritance that steered an estate to one heir, and progressive taxation.  Abolishing feudal forms was advice aimed at France, Virginia had already abolished primogeniture and thus, Jefferson believed, mammoth estates like the king's at Fountainebleau.  But Jefferson's letter implied two more radical ideas.  Property is only a secondary right, since society allows it "for the encouragement of industry," and the right to earn a living—"to labor the earth"—precedes it.  Such thoughts would call all Virginian, and American, society into question.   Jefferson was grappling with a deep political subject—the intersection of work and rights—and he sent his thoughts to Madison because Madison was smart enough to follow them, and bold enough not to dismiss him out of hand.

-Richard Brookhiser,  James Madison

On the importance of debate..............

     Hayek condemned those who wanted to suppress debate, what he called "the presumption of any group of people"—such as Myrdal's unanimous development experts—"to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe."  The absence of dissent would "produce a stagnation of thought and a decline of reason."  Hayek argued that it is not possible to know which innovation in thinking will succeed (otherwise it wouldn't be innovation!):  "results [of thinking] cannot be predicted . . . we cannot know which views will assist this growth [of reason] and which will not—in short . . . this growth cannot be governed by any views which we now possess without at the same time limiting it."  For development to occur it is thus necessary to have the debate among many "different views." . . .
     All that can be predicted is that inhibiting debate is bad for the progress of reason.  The absence of debate on the technocratic approach to development stifles progress in development, which in itself is immoral.

-William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts:  Economists, Dictators and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor

On the "philosophy of ignorance"...................

It is our responsibility to leave the men of the future a free hand.  In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time.  This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant;  if we suppress all discussion, all criticism, saying: 'This is it, boys, man is saved!' and thus doom man for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination.  It has been done so many times before,
     It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress and great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress that is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations."

-Richard Feynman, from his 1955 speech/essay, The Value of Science

thanks

an invitation...........................

Declaring our uncertainty in our beliefs to others makes us more credible communicators.  We assume that if we don't come off as 100% confident, others will value our opinions less.  The opposite is usually true.  If one person expresses a belief as absolutely true, and someone else expresses a belief by saying, "I believe this is true, and I'm 80% on it,"  who are you more likely to believe?  The fact that the person is expressing their confidence as less than 100% signals that they are trying to get at the truth, that they have considered the quantity and quality of their information with thoughtfulness and self-awareness.  And thoughtful and self-aware people are more believable.
     Expressing our level of confidence also invites people to be our collaborators. ... By saying, "I'm 80%" and thereby communicating we aren't sure, we open the door for others to tell us what they know.  They realize they can contribute without having to confront us  by saying or implying , "You're wrong."  Admitting we are not sure is an invitation for help in refining our beliefs, and that will make our beliefs much more accurate over time as we are more likely to gather relevant information.

-Annie Duke,  Thinking In Bets:  Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All The Facts

On civility and open-mindedness......

Tim Harford offers a check-list for the art of disagreement:

1.   Take five minutes before responding. Walk around the block.
2.   Don’t argue to win, argue to learn.
3.   Avoid people who fan flames.
4.   Don’t feel you have to weigh in on every topic.
5.   If your peers demand you weigh in, ponder your choice of peers.
6.   Seek out thoughtful people who disagree with you. Listen.
7.   Examine your own emotional responses.
8.   Summarise your opponents’ arguments fairly and thoughtfully.

Scott Adams.......................

....................................is pushing some buttons:

One folksy definition of “crazy” is that it involves trying over and over again a solution that has never worked while hoping it works next time. President Trump is doing something closer to the opposite of that. He’s doing something new, both strategically and verbally. To be fair, new things can be crazy too. But usually only if they don’t work. When a new and unexpected thing works out well, we call it genius. And that begs the question: Is President Trump’s approach to North Korea working?

Those were the days my friend.......

I grew up in America in the 1960s when, sure, we had our own nonsense. But back then, defending the First Amendment was a left-wing cause, and we mutinous youth exercised our freedom of speech like a motherfucker. We marched against the war, dared to use profanity in the days it still sounded dirty, burned the flag, refused to get married just to have sex, and lobbied against prudish censorship laws. We danced naked on stage and sneaked into Deep Throat under-age. We wanted to do and say whatever we bloody well wanted. For the young, struggling from cultural straitjackets seems normal to me. Struggling into one doesn’t.

Classical liberals like me are forever pontificating that freedom of speech is precarious, and all too easy to lose. Yeah, yeah. But contemporary western young people appear to value this right so little that the prospect of losing it isn’t faintly troubling.

...the young casually assume not only that they’re the cutting-edge, trend-setting arbiters of the acceptable now, but that they always will be. The students running campuses like re-education camps aren’t afraid of being muzzled, because they imagine they will always be the ones doing the muzzling — the ones dictating what words we can use (cis, not heterosexual), what books we can read (Tom Sawyer is out), what practices we can embrace (white people may not wear dreadlocks). These millennials don’t fear censorship because they plan on doing all the censoring.

-Lionel Shriver, as culled from here

The world has always been an interesting place.  Twenty years from now will be no different.