“There are some encouraging signs of polarization.” Nothing flippant inheres in this remark; a long and risky life has persuaded him that only an open conflict of ideas and principles can produce any clarity. Conflict may be painful, but the painless solution does not exist in any case and the pursuit of it leads to the painful outcome of mindlessness and pointlessness; the apotheosis of the ostrich.
Monday, March 6, 2023
I'm sure this will end well...............
.............. California Department of Health is building a "Decision Intelligence Unit."
Back story here. Why do I think that "we will secure grants" was the driving factor of the story.
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.
On changing "reality".................
Once one realizes the reality of reality’s vast and incomprehensible-in-its-concrete-details complexity, one is naturally humble about what one can do to ‘change’ reality. Schemes for using the coercive powers of government to achieve economic and social betterment are then naturally viewed with enormous skepticism. How do you know? How will you acquire the knowledge you must acquire if your scheme is to work as promised? Such questions are instinctively asked by the wise and stubbornly ignored by the schemers.
-Don Boudreaux, from this post
Sunday, March 5, 2023
History may not repeat itself.......
................................but it often rhymes:*
Shortly after Jackson's death, one unforgiving New York Whig damned the General as "the undisputed head of a violent, proscriptive party . . . He did more to break down the republican principles of the government and enslave the minds of the people than all the rulers who went before him." Here reigned a virtual dictator, he continued, a master of "that pernicious popular homage called popularity." Fifteen years later, however, in the perilous secession winter of 1860, another Yankee, a New Hampshire Democrat, thought that only an indomitable Jackson-like leader could save the nation. "Would to Heaven," he wrote, "we had another Andrew Jackson . . . at the head of this Government . . . instead of James Buchanan." Both of these observers anticipated, in their divergent views, a sharp and seemingly endless debate over the meaning of power and populism in Jackson's America. The notion of the people preventing social elites and financial aristocrats from bullying, bestriding, or otherwise buying Congress is altogether attractive. And yet common man democracy's erratic energy collaterally legitimized Indian removal, slavery's expansion, and the troubling growth of presidential fiat. In important moments, as when Jackson ignored the Supreme Court in the Cherokee case or refused to honor the government's obligation to deposit monies in the National Bank, the rule of law appeared imperiled.
-David S. Brown. The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson
*this saying has been attributed to Mark Twain, however . . .
Opening paragraphs......................
 |
| The sarcophagus of John Paul Jones at the Naval Academy |
When I walked into the United States Naval Academy on a hot summer's day in the early 1970s, the first thing that happened to me was that I got a quick and brutal haircut. It was not only a sudden induction into military life but a way for the Navy to emphasize that my own power to decide anything, including the length of my hair, was emphatically terminated. Alongside twelve hundred classmates from every state in the Union and a smattering of foreign countries, we were then lined up in a very rough formation, broken into small groups—squads of about a dozen—and marched around the Academy grounds. The highlight of those first hours was an introduction to Captain John Paul Jones, or, more accurately, to his crypt in the heart of the massive Naval Academy Chapel—the de facto high church of the US Navy.
-Admiral James Stavridis, To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision
"turning inside"....................
In all of Colonel Boyd's writing he emphasizes that victory in combat accrues to the decision-maker who can "get inside the decision loop" of his or her opponent. This is precisely what happened in the climactic moment of the battle—Jones, despite having the weaker hand of cards, was moving more quickly to assess the situation (observe), analyze where the combat process was moving (orient), make swift choices (decide), and execute those decisions (act). In this process Jones anticipated the celebrated OODA loop developed by Colonel John Boyd two centuries later to categorize airborne fighter combat. In essence, Jones was "turning inside" the decision loop of his opponent, Captain Pearson. And it made all the difference, meaning he was observing/orienting/deciding/acting much more quickly.
-Admiral James Stavridis, To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision, as extracted from his chapter describing how John Paul Jones and his ship, Bonhomme Richard, salvaged victory from certain defeat in the battle against the British warship, Serapis. One version of the back story on the defining naval battle of the American Revolution may be found here.
Lessons from......................
...........................Major Dick Winters:
Even if you’re an older man, who never had the chance to try-out a period of full-on monk mode and now finds himself enmeshed in mature responsibilities, you can, and should, draw from the way of the monastic warrior. Find ways to periodically escape from the noise and distractions of the world to find solitude and “sharpen your saw.” Whether it’s a lonely morning run, an evening meditation, or a solo camping trip, such solitary retreats will clear your mind, rejuvenate your body, and leave you prepared to face life’s battles with heart and strength.
-via
Even us introverts need to get out and about....
Being isolated in your home, even with animals and the Internet for company, isn’t good for you, as millions of Americans have learned.
-Glen Harlan Reynolds, from here
Saturday, March 4, 2023
Tim Ferriss.................
..........consulted with Warren Buffett and learned some things:
(7) If we assume the point of investing is ultimately to improve your quality of life and the quality of life of those you most care about, investments that consistently add stress over long periods of time probably don’t make sense. Money is traded for things or experiences that catalyze certain feelings. If your investments are generating the opposite spectrum of feelings, it might be time to reassess.
It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. Money is a means, not an end.
And in the end, most things matter very, very little. Do what helps you sleep at night and wake up with a low heart rate. To me, those are the hallmarks of a world-class investor who gets the big picture.
On the essence of identity............
But when meaning has been disciplined out of language, and the pride of doing something better than other people banished, and the superficial clarity of being a man or a woman prohibited, and the practical instinct of protection and of self-protection disallowed, and life’s simple practices shamed out of existence—when all these timeless human things, all created out of the senses, melt into air, then nothing in our experience will remind us of anything else in our experience, and we will lose the ability to discriminate, to cherish, to judge. Instead of continually expanding our sympathies by helping us to follow the thread of truth through dissimilarity, the moral imagination will shrink to nothing. And then any comparison, and any equivalence, is possible.
-Lee Siegel, from this post
Who needed research to know this.......?
Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life — to mix metaphors, that they captain their own ship, not that they are simply being tossed around by an uncontrollable ocean — are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimization, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response.
-as cut-and-pasted from here
Friday, March 3, 2023
Richard Dawkins....................
...................asks some important questions:
Who are these cringing little wimps whose ‘safety’ requires protection against free speech? What on earth do they think a university is for?
Thursday, March 2, 2023
The short answer................be nice
Maybe the broadest way to protect yourself is the simple rule that the luckier you are, the nicer you should be.
The more successful you are, the nicer you should be.
The better things are going, the nicer you should be.
That’s probably the best – or only – way to guard against entitlement, which is the main thing that blindsides you when luck turns the other way.
-Morgan Housel, from here
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