Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2005 at Emory, real life is not college; real life is not high school. Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high. The world that you’re about to enter is filled with junior high adolescent pettiness, pubescent rivalries, the insecurities of 13-year-olds, and the false bravado of 14-year-olds.
-Tom Brokaw, Emory University Commencement Address (2005)
as found in this week's edition of Tim Ferriss's Five-Bullet Friday
it is an astonishment to be alive, and it behoves you to be astonished.
-attributed to John Donne
You'll get 10 times better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.
-Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier
.........................to an awesome life:
As Eric Hoffer once said, “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” Sometimes it’s quite deliberate but more often it’s unconscious. We’re just wired for it. This is what it means when we say humans are a social species. . . .
Peer pressure isn’t good or bad – your peers are. If you moved your troubled teen to a new high school filled with well-behaved students, would you be hoping your child was immune to peer pressure — or very susceptible? . . .
We’re never utterly autonomous. We’re social creatures. Why not leverage our fundamental nature rather than (often futilely) resisting it? Sometimes we’re weak on our own but groups are strong. We need others to help us do the right thing, even with individual goals. The logical conclusion is to be a part of a group where your desired reputation aligns with who you want to be as a person.
If you want to make the world a better place, work on being trustworthy, and honor those who are trustworthy. Be a good friend and surround yourself with worthy friends. Don't gossip. Resist the joke that might hurt someone's feelings even when it's clever. And try not to laugh when your friend tells you that clever joke at someone's expense. Being good is not just good for you and those around you, but because it helps others be good as well. Set a good example, and by your loveliness you will not only be loved, but you may influence the world.
-Russ Roberts, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide To Human Nature And Happiness
You will never obtain financial freedom while addicted to debt and consumer spending. Wealth comes from accumulation which is the exact opposite of consumption.
-Jon Hanson, Good Debt, Bad Debt: Knowing the Difference Can Save You Financial Life
We, human beings, are a species that's not only capable of acting on hidden motives—we're designed to do it. Our brains are built to act in out self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people. And in order to throw them off the trail, our brains often keep "us," our conscious minds, in the dark. The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide them from others.
Self-deception is therefore strategic; a ploy our brains use to look good while behaving badly. Understandably, few people are eager to confess to this kind of duplicity. But as long as we continue to tiptoe around it, we'll be unable to think clearly about human behavior. We'll be forced to distort or deny any explanation that harks back to our hidden motives. Key facts will remain taboo, and we'll forever be mystified by our own thoughts and actions. It's only by confronting the elephant, then, that we can begin to see what's really going on.
-Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant In The Brain
Reflexivity undermines stationarity. This was the essence of Goodhart's Law - any business or government policy which assumed stationarity of social and economic relationships was likely to fail because its implementation would alter the behaviour of those affected and therefore destroy that stationarity. In an early example of reflexivity, Jonah prophesied the destruction of Nineveh, having received inside information concerning God's plant to punish the city (his journey to Nineveh was interrupted by a bizarre encounter with a whale). But after his arrival the citizens repented on hearing his forewarning and the city was spared. This outcome 'displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry', feeling (unlike many modern forecasters) despondent at the very public refutation of his prediction. But God persuaded Jonah that the happy outcome was more important than the failure of his forecast.
-John Kay and Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers
The biblical story is found in Jonah 3-4.
Goodhart's Law = Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. Also phrased as "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
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