Handbook of Epictetus

The Handbook is short and sweet. 53 short segments, essentially paragraphs, on Stoic philosophy. The Handbook is a classic that is simple to read, bares rereading and random dipping into, and is thought inspiring.

37. If you undertake some role beyond your capacity, you both disgrace yourself by taking it and also thereby neglect the role that you were unable to take.

That's right, in ~100 A.D. Stoics got opportunity cost...

44. These statements are not valid inferences: "I am richer than you; therefore I am superior to you", or "I am more eloquent than you; therefore I am superior to you." But rather these are valid: "I am richer than you; therefore my property is superior to yours", or "I am more eloquent than you; therefore my speaking is superior to yours." But you are identical neither with your property nor with your speaking.

...and logic. People don't change much - the rich and the intelligent still often mistake their good fortune as reflections of their personal character [1].

The Handbook is elegant and compelling. As human character and traits have not changed since the time of the writing the Handbook is also timeless. The Stoics focused on character and on proper human focus, and therefore their work stands up today some 2000 years later.

Lowdown:
- at about $5 this clear, compact, compelling read is a steal

Notes:
[1] Academics are often simply people who can argue well - and not always because they are logical and well informed. As they often then make the invalid inference that they are thus superior they tend to get all moral on thou. Note that the immature argue in order to feel morally superior to their opponents (quite possibly due to evolutionary pressure - we are social animals, so pecking order is key, so building in a feeling of righteousness to help push forward in arguments in order to place the resources in it to win and get the dino-meat and cave-babe would be advantageous), without self reflection many/most do not move past this and likely do not even realize the danger. The deep feeling of not wanting to back down even when presented with arguments that make it clear one is clearly wrong is automatic (how many times have you found yourself continuing to argue well past the point that you should have given up?). Until one really confronts this feeling and persists in wanting to follow truth one cannot overcome this - with practice one can actually enjoy being proven wrong as you have just learned something new (the overcoming does not seem to be simply an artifact of aging, as many older people retain this undeveloped state). And by enjoy I don't mean a grudging post argument coming to accept the truth, but a "wow this is cool!" in the moment of the argument.

Kasparov: Life Lessons

Garry Kasparov's How Life Imitates Chess in a nutshell:

• review
• challenge resources
• confidence, or decisions delayed (then time crunch/stress)
• analysis of decisions & effect
• focus on results
• hard work
• self awareness & consistency: steady effort pays off
• experiment/push boundaries of capacity
• motivate yourself to push though
• small steady increments can lead to large gains (1 hr a day on activity X)
• worse type of mistake from habit - it makes you predictable
• "clock vs. board time" - number of steps to accomplish an objective...
• improve, swap or eliminate "bad pieces"
• spending time only useful if it will improve things
• imbalance: lack of symmetry that can be exploited for advantage
• accurate evaluation key: focus on each choice, prune poor choices, spend time considering good options
• don't over extend, don't ignore imbalances
• power of surprise strong: spend time thinking/learning to find new ideas
• break down your skills/performance - where strong? Weak? Enjoy? Shy away from?
• big branches on decision tree - forks with no way back. Spend careful time on these decisions.
• always valuable to ask - can I reverse course if the decision turns out poorly?
• if no benefit to making the decision now and no penalty in delaying, use time to improve your evaluation, gather information, examine other options
• err on side of intuition and optimism
• be aggressive with self-criticism
• take the initiative - self pressure
• complacency - lack of vigilance -> mistakes & missed opportunities: train yourself to want to improve even when things go right
• essential to have benchmarks to keep yourself alert
• create goals & standards - then keep raising them
• compete like you are an underdog
• find ways to maintain concentration & motivation - key to fighting complacency
• keep track of time - how much time a week doing irrelevant item X? target reducing this.
• lose as much as you can take (push yourself)
• if its been a while since you experienced the nervous thrill of trying something new, perhaps you've been avoiding challenge for too long
• the moment you believe you are entitled to something is the moment you are ripe to lose it to someone who is fighting harder
• pride in achievement mustn't distract from ultimate goals
• results are what matter in the end - concrete objectives and measure
• accept responsibility for results. Every decision made builds character and forms basis of future decisions.
• engaging with your weak points & drilling down so we understand them is best & fastest way to improve.
• good decisions: calculations, creativity, & desire for results.

The book is a pleasant and easy read. Traditional good advice, from a successful person and an interesting perspective. Well worth reading - most of us know this stuff, but it is always worth repeating for the positive reminder and push. The strength of the book is the concise and well presented overview of basic strategies for success, retold with an entertaining metaphor of "life~chess".

Programming - Basic

I earlier said that computers are the defining element of our society. As such, it is a basic requirement to know how to program - if you want to claim to be educated. Without this essential idea you simply are missing out on one of the biggest developments in history and the defining element of "us".

But I did not give any reference for those interested in trying to learn this essential skill.

Here is a basic book (no pun intended), and here is a online basic interpreter to try the examples in the book [-1].

I recommend the book as it really is an introduction [0], and it is written by a famous coder Chris Crawford (so it has contextual interest). As far as I can tell this is the best basic introduction to programming. Your kids can and should read this. You can and should read this. If you cried your way through your science requirements in high school/university, cursing the gods for their cruel ways, you can and should read this. The book is (1) free, (2) short, (3) opinionated [1]. It gets the basic ideas down.

Looking for a general introduction shows there really is not a good option out there for people - could it really be that an old text thrown up on the internet, and used with a free online interpreter, is the best option out there? This seems to be a glaring hole in the literature. Back in the day you could fire up your Apple ][ and run the ubiquitous BASIC before playing a rousing game of Oregon Trail. There is lots of stuff out there, but nothing (modern) that is dirt simple and limited and just there that gets across the basic points [2].

Skimming through this book, You should learn to program by Chris Crawford, was interesting and I sat down and read it more carefully after the initial skim: it is enjoyable (!!), and is surprisingly close to some of my thoughts [3]. The book appears to best fill the niche of actually teaching programming to true beginners [4]. You too should learn to program, and Chris will show you how - and he includes an appendix on how computers work, as well as sociological commentary on the programmer culture.

"Programming is like writing, woodworking, or photography. Anybody can do it. Doing it well, doing it like an expert – that takes a lot of work, a lot of experience, and a lot of talent. But anybody who can write a comprehensible paragraph can write a workable program. All it takes is a computer and some time." - Chris Crawford, Chapter 1

If you have ever taken a picture, wrote something, or made a simple wood project you know the pleasures that underlie these creations - we are built to act and create - and programming is yet one more form that you should explore to get some joy, learn about a key aspect of our society, and maybe find a new hobby or career [5].

Notes:
[-1] The interpreter linked above doesn't use line numbers, so some changes to the ancient "goto" examples in the book would be needed. This aspect of computers - evolution, versions, and changing infrastructure making things difficult is one of the characteristics of computing. Dealing with hacks is also a key skill - remember the "Y2K" problem? Get used to it, this is a painful yet important idea and learning to confront this is one of the "take home skills" you will get from programming - and these problems exist in all aspects of human tools and society. But to prevent complete initial frustration from being a barrier to entry use this one, I have not yet gone through the entire book with the interpreter but a random selection indicates things generally work (with one caveat: you must include line numbers to inform the interpreter).
[0] Computer books are "sold by the pound" and are often huge poorly written books. Learning to program can improve your communication, but it will not automagically do this - as a look at most computer books attest to: you have to want it to and work hard at it, but programming does offer a route to better thinking and communication.
[1] Thus interesting. And the author has informed and earned opinions.
[2] There is "SmallBasic" from MS that looks okay, though only for PC's right now - why not on the web? Google has a powerful system, which has a great book for people ready for the next step of working with code that actually does stuff, but I don't see a dead simple system there either. Back in "the day" the Apple ][ was in every class, now a browser is everywhere. What is needed is someone like MS or Google making SmallBasic online - a big player backing a simple tool in order to make it ubiquitous. If you are a Google employee make it so with your 20% time!
[3] Overlap in opinion and ideas is likely a key factor in us deciding on likely quality of a text, and thus worth investing time on. Of course if the overlap is too large you just wasted your time, as you likely don't learn much! If the overlap is too small you likely will discount the text, or you may not be ready for the text. You want some sweet spot of agreeing with some points, and being mystified by some on a first scanning read. People who just read stuff that reiterates and defends their beliefs are called fundamentalists.
[4] If you think about it the vast amount of material in a first year CS class is huge, and one gets a split of the class into (a) those who have been previously exposed to the basics and find the class easy to a bit challenging, and (b) those who are crushed by the course as they have so many new things to learn all while competing against people well ahead of them. People in group (b) should likely read this book as a pre-course exercise to give them context and the basic ideas.
[5] Career? Likely not, but maybe... I am not a carpenter despite loving the one and only project I ever did. But I still have fond memories of my little creation. Even if your dip into programming is just reading Chris' book and playing with an online interpreter while do you do, well you will gain from it. Life is experiential.

Stuff

People buy a lot of stuff. This stuff is substantiated in reality: it is made out of material. To create the stuff materials have to be obtained and then shaped - this takes energy (read: pollution - noise, visual, air, water, ...).

Most of the stuff we buy is garbage, and goes into the garbage quickly. Like junk food, junk stuff is not fulfilling - yet is amazingly popular and the quick hit of pleasure one seems to gain from junk fuels a cycle of more.

As we have seen with the latest economic downturn we don't know how to deal with creating what is valuable - we are urged to buy, to prop up industries, to get stuff. Our lives are predicated on making and buying and churning stuff. To save the environment we are urged to scape cars and buy new, slightly more fuel efficient ones. In everything we do we get stuff. Stuff, stuff, everywhere stuff. Anti-depressants are prescribed like candy - perhaps because people live their lives making useless stuff and buying junk, all at huge environmental and opportunity costs [1].

Why not less stuff?

There are a few observations on stuff that can help you reduce it:

(1) Quality, not quantity, matters (for most things). 20 pairs of crappy shoes, or a few good pairs?
(2) Verb not noun. You want to buy verbs, not nouns. The closer something is to an inert object (noun) the less you want it. Tools - that you use often (see (1)), and trips - that give you memories, are two examples of things where money is well spent. These things are very "verby". The closer something is to a verb the more useful, and thus worthwhile, it is. If the verbiness of a item is dominated in the buying process you are wasting time, money, life [2].

The gains you will get by focusing on verby stuff are legion: simplified and dejunked life, focus on significance and action, alignment with human nature, self respect, opportunity savings, financial savings.

Notes:
[1] The energy, time, material, and other resources that goes into making junk diverts the resources from other ends. You are in cog industry X. Your efforts could have gone into art, useful industry Y, or hitchhiking to Alaska. The money that you wasted on yet another overpriced latte doesn't sit too well as some process in the back of your brain is saying "bottom billion - dollar a day". You are diverting your life's focus into irrelevant junk, all while others who would love to eat and have 1/80th of your opportunity in order to create are dying. You don't need a pill, you need to change your behavior.
[2] You are also likely not realizing that the verbiness of the buying process is what is pleasant, not the buying itself. Humans gain pleasure from action, yet we don't seem to realize this and are fearful of performing actions - this may be behind many peoples "shopoholic" tendencies, a need to feel action and an unwillingness to take the "risk" of putting your ability on the line. But shopping to gain this pleasure is like crack to gain pleasure - it is empty and emptying in the long run.

Computers

What is our greatest achievement as a society? I don't mean our ancient roots that focus on democracy and individuals and limiting manipulative power while increasing personal (positive) power [0], no I mean us as in lately and what defines the biggest thing going right now.

Computers.

Computers have changed things, dramatically. Our society has fundamentally changed due to this, and will continue for some time [1].

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

- Voltaire

And we have built our greatest masterpiece - the internet - for porn, urban legends, and stupidity. But Voltaire is only partially correct. Sure, battles and fighting and other low brow stuff went on - but art and play and oratory also did. We can find lots of junk on the internet, lots of time wasters, lots of negative material - but like the Roman amphitheaters the structure itself is beautiful, and like all technologies use neutral [2]. I am amazed at the internet. There is so much constructive, and positive, and mind expanding, and interesting, and beautiful on the internet. And that is just one aspect of computers - the aspect that connects us to each other and our works.

Programming computers changes how you think - at its best it clarifies your thinking, changes your thinking, improves your communication, increases your ability (via tools you build), teaches you to check context more. Basically programming puts thinking into notation and makes it a tool, a tool to be used, perfected, analyzed, considered, honed. Writing improves your thinking and communicating, and so does programming [3] - perhaps because these practices are so closely linked to how we think [4] and as are both well suited to deliberate practice [5].

I had once thought that the bulk of the "and then what" of computers was over, we got cheap desktops and wired them up to chat: end of story, sure with some interesting epilogue but story arc climaxed. I no longer believe that. Richard Hamming would spend his Fridays thinking about how to use computers to change things in his work, and how computers are changing things in general [6]. We would all do well to do this. I now believe that computer science has taken the role that physics once held - the king of hard sciences. I say this as computer science is fundamental, growing, and deep. Godel's work and much else fits in to computer science, as does much of physics. People vote with their feet, and just like all [7] the smart people stopped going into philosophy a long, long time ago [8] I believe all the smart people are no longer going into physics. Yeah, there are smart people in physics but the smartest and most interesting go elsewhere. Where? This is an empirical question, but the deepest thinkers seem to fit into the category of computer science writ large [9].

One of the things that make humans so powerful is our ability to simulate in our brains (the future, possibilities, stories, ...). Computers are a tool we built that allows us to simulate outside our brains, and thus both study the simulation process itself in detail as well as extend and modify simulations we perform: we have taken one of the key attributes of humanity and extended it.

Computers are making us as a people. We are growing as individuals and as a society because of them. You are not what you could be if you have not learned the basics of programming [10] and the practical use of computers. We live in the computer era.

Notes:
[0] Though that is what make Western nations so awesome. You want to whine about our society? Go for it - that is your right, and we have also created the wealth that enables you to spend time doing this. Just don't take the little niggles at the corners too seriously: our society has many flaws, but it is amazing. The fact you - that you can - spend time whining about your pet peeve is a wonderful development.
[1] And then what? Is perhaps the greatest and most interesting question - we made computing machines, and then they were used for communications. The internet was not the goal, but it was the destination we discovered.
[2] The side effects and "and then what" are often complained about - take nuclear weapons as an example - but confronting the ideals, potential, and meaning is what drives our evolution as a society. Do you seriously think we are better off without the bomb? The bomb is neutral. Our reaction to the bomb has matured and developed us. The fact is we are smarter and more developed as a society due to the bomb. Now, how much has the bomb endangered us? Do we even know? What is the odds of drastic climate change? Of an asteroid slamming into earth? That someone will use many, many bombs repeatably on "us"? We don't even have a context to compare the world pre- and post- bomb: have we significantly increased the danger to ourselves? Have we lessened it? The fact we simply don't know suggests that perhaps we should not get too worked up.
[3] I find that students pre- and post- programming undergo a transformation in their ability to think. I don't mean pre- and post- programming class, as I have met people who have 1st year programming courses yet do not know about commenting code, debugging, and other aspects (apparently it is "too hard" to mark this stuff, so they skip it and just get you to submit code that is tested for (1) compiling and (2) giving answers), but pre- and post- programming practice. As in you want to learn programming and you try to learn it. But I digress.
[4] Being forms of symbolic manipulation for the purpose of crystallizing meaning.
[5] You have heard of deliberate practice - practice that is systematic, focused, and measurable. The measure is key - if you can't quickly see your results you can simply lock-in bad habits and incorrect assumptions.
[6] Hamming notes that a couple orders of magnitude of change modifies change from "by degree" to "by kind". If something is 100 cheaper this qualitatively changes everything, and all the old assumptions are gone. Computers routinely change things by orders of magnitude.
[7] Okay, not all, but basically all...
[8] At approximately the same time philosophy no longer equaled science and all other things; once we split from generalists to niches of disciplines the philosophers were left with all the boring and irrelevant stuff, and basically comment on the fruits and results of the productive disciplines and arts.
[9] I include cognitive science and linguistics here, as I believe computer science "writ large" is the study of possible processes.
[10] Everyone should learn to program. Everyone should learn to program. It does not matter if you never write a line of code post sitting down to work through a book. To be properly educated you must know the basic concept. I only have the very basics down, and have done very little programming - but I have grown a lot from my few exposures and will be looking to learn more.

MBA: The Modern Finishing School

What is a Masters of Business Administration all about? In a nutshell, the MBA is a finishing school.

Finishing for what you ask?

"Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid." -- Bertrand Russell

To "lead"; to tell others what to do. Why? As Mr. Russell points out - this is pleasant and highly paid, and the other option (to "follow") is unpleasant and lowly paid. This is not fully true of course - this is only true in command-and-control economies, e.g. the former Soviet Union or a large company. If you work in a command-and-control structure, you likely want to get your MBA. The MBA itself is essentially "speak and spell", i.e. how to communicate, combined with learning some knowledge of the levers of power within a standard command/control infrastructure. The degree itself appears fairly simple, fun, and gets you networked up and ready to rake in the big bucks.

However, for your right to boss people around and get compensation packages that are well above what your value is to the corporation (or other infrastructure [0]) you have to give up a few things: self respect, the ability to create, and the ability to speak your mind. Don't get me wrong - you can lose these things on the other end in a command/control situation also - but it seems that the commanders are worse off as they are giving up their character, the one thing we have control of in this short life of ours. Sure, you can have a terrible boss and feel the pressure to give up character as a minion, just to ease life in the moment, but there is still an option of not doing so.

Listen to an MBAer speak - have you ever heard such whitewashed PC drivel in your life? Listen to the MBA elite versus others and you will hear a huge difference - that difference is what we commonly call a "soul". The constraints on the MBA elite is essentially equivalent to the removal of your soul - you represent the corp, and you cannot speak the obvious truth, or, well, say almost anything interesting at all. This is not true of all MBA elites, but look around - it is the rare MBAer who speaks truth, or anything remotely approximating truth.

So you can't speak your mind. So what? Well, you are not creating either. That is what humans need to do to feel and enjoy life. Either this statement resonates with you, or not. If not, you might not yet be human [1]. Sure, some MBAers might actually lead and actively engage in creative efforts. Again, this appears a rarity.

Now for self respect - you can't create, you cannot speak. You are a slave, who voluntarily gives up your character in exchange for money. The respect for your degree depends on people not realizing that it is a glorified finishing school [2], and this respect is eroding in the current economic climate where people are outright angry that MBAers as a class appear to have looted money in a parasitic manner without providing value and good decisions in exchange for it.

For a long time it seemed that getting an MBA has a good deal, but could that be shifting now? If a society follows command-and-control for means of production, organization, and governing, then yes it does (at least financially). Aristocrats are needed in such a world. But in a society where creative work, craftsmanship, small companies, flattened hierarchies - "Whole New Mind" stuff - and other productive work can be done without inefficient and highly segmented and hierarchical structures characteristic of classic command-and-control.... well, what role does a MBA play there? There, in a creative world populated by makers respect and the few leading roles will go to those who have proven themselves were it counts - in creating and communication.

That world is not here just yet - but it may be poised to come. As computers make the boring paper shuffling "operating system" stuff of corporations more and more automatic we will see first a collapse of middle management [3], which will be accelerated by the need to save money paving the way for going through with this change [4], and then as the buffer layer between producers and commanders is thinned the top level will need to be able to actually display a soul and ability to retain respect and ability to lead. Those with MBAs now, or soon, will be able to reap the command-control gravy train for their careers, but we may be living in the end of the command-control economy.

The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of the nature of command-and-control, the means of running corporations under this same approach may now be undergoing a similar fate: competition with more free, distributed, and creative entities (USA! USA! US... er, I mean, "the small and nimble business' guided by cheap and ingenious computing") that can now overcome, even surpass, the economy of scale in many situations is fierce. "Restructuring" is naturally occurring, and the current mess we are in may be in part be aggravated by the command-and-control nature still largely held by many large corporations, and in turn the hard times may accelerate and force the evolution [5].

There will always be a role for leaders, for people with charisma, for those with couth. But the MBA may not be the de facto route to this role any longer. The MBA is predicated on command-and-control, if we are lucky the evolution towards small, free, and creative will continue and move more and more out of computer science and arts into other areas [6]. Currently the public has some bad taste in their mouths regarding MBAers - judging the herd is difficult, but here structural changes seem to be ultimately leading to the conclusion that the MBA is irrelevant and a badge of shame and not one of honor that entitles one to (others) riches [7].

Lowdown:
- If you are thinking about getting an MBA think twice: is it actually what an uncritical glance says it is? Will you get what you want from it? The MBA depends on command-and-control working as it has in the past, there is reason to suspect this style of organization is and is going to continue to be shaken up.
- A stoic would say an MBAer is a sell out. Sure, those guys died out about 2000 years ago but they rocked and had some interesting things to say. Consider if an MBA actually gives you freedom, or not.
- We live in interesting times. It would be interesting to see if the death of the MBA as status symbol could be sped up by pointing out the emperor has no clothes: you went to finishing school?

Notes:
[0] The difference between a typical leader of a corporation and a typical politician is one of degree. No pun intended. As in everything, I'm speaking generalities here - there are a handful of politicians who are of high character and intelligence, as there are business leaders, but the question is one of the general class and environmental pressures.
[1] "Let us say I suggest you may be human. Your awareness may be powerful enough to control your instincts." - quote from Dune. The struggle to become free is a difficult one - we are borne among many who are enslaved to their natural animal instincts, and thus most of our social environment consists of non-humans in the Dune sense. In our society it is easy to grow and obtain the view that consumption is sufficient for a good life.
[2] An MBA means you are signaling that you want to "succeed" in the business world and that you pass a minimum threshold of IQ and work ethic and that you have, post MBA, proper manners. i.e. you will take certain actions, you will respond to certain incentives, you will behave in a certain way. You have been properly vetted and neutered.
[3] Middle management is basically the operating system of a company. You handle the basic processes, shuffle paper around, pass stuff up/down, make reports, distill information, etc. etc. etc. i.e. you can/should be replaced by a script.
[4] Traditionally we see this - every recession pushed out bloated middle management. But as the workers can be replaced by internal databases, Google engines, filters, wikis, etc. and other aspects outsourced to Indians with crisp accents, strong work ethic, and smaller paychecks we should see the re-inflating of the middle management become increasingly less. Has the computer - which can take care of so much of the logistics needed to run a company - replaced the middle manager, with only some time needed to finish the process?
[5] Bail out plans may be simply prolonging the agony - if some corps, say GM, were notorious for command-and-control failures sending them money to prop them up will prevent their evolution to the new standard processes required to survive. As a secondary significant forcing will soon be on us - the retirement of the boomers - it might be wise to let evolution happen quickly to better handle the shifts that will be occurring.
[6] Hey, if Apple can outsource the iPod what is to stop a small design shop from doing the same? Consumer hardware is cheap, as is clothing, software, jewelry - the list of places where design and the small can rule is large - the question is if the domain of the small is significantly increasing and what will remain limited to huge budgets.
[7] It will be interesting to see how MBA programs react to changes, if the public will be back on board with the MBA elite symbol soon, and if devolution from command-and-control happens relatively quickly or if the change drags on for decades.

Bottles and the Homeless

I remember as a kid collecting pop bottles when I needed some money. It was easy to do and was a ready source of cash. For some people this is their main source of income - a subset of the homeless.

One of the key ideas of economics is that incentives matter. This is a simple but deep idea. Incentives dictate outcomes more often than hopes, "what's right", or need.

Understanding homelessness is difficult [1]. There are not very good numbers available and our understanding of homelessness is murky. Homelessness began to rise in the early 1980's. Between the early 1970's and late 1980's the number of beds in U.S. mental hospitals was quartered. This "deinstitutionalisation" has been suspected to cause an increase in the number of homeless [2]. Bottle deposit was introduced roughly in the late 1970's and early 1980's in the United States. The coincidence of bottle deposit introduction and increase in the homeless is interesting. But is it meaningful?

Many factors influence homelessness. In the late 1960's and early 1970's renewal in American cities lead to old and inexpensive housing being replaced by more financially lucrative uses. Containerization and forklifts and other advances greatly reduce the need for casual labor and greater skills are required to find employment. Innovations in drug technology (crack, meth, etc.) reduces price and increases cost. Social welfare programs constantly change. Time frames for various forces are not crisp - for example deinstitutionalisation started as early as the 1940's. Alcohol and the homeless equate in the minds of many. The variety of potential influences, their overlap, the spread out implementation and diffusion of impacts all make understanding homelessness difficult.

The idea that bottle deposits is a key factor in homelessness, is enticing in some ways. Why? There is a correlation there, so the possibility of this being a factor exists. The idea is positive, as it sees the homeless not simply as victims but as economic and hard working people who perform an useful job: would you be up to the task of digging through the trash to earn your paycheck? It is also positive in the sense that it improves the life of the homeless: availability of ready cash is always good, and it is now easier to escape a worse situation such as an abusive home. Viewed in this light deposit programs are a vital social program, one where everyone benefits [3].

Deposit on beverage containers reduces the impact of homelessness by supplying a low skill and ubiquitous job. When costs of something are reduced one should expect to see an increase in its consumption [4].

Notes:
[1] It appears that the homeless rate is roughly the same in Europe as in the US/Canada. For all the claimed differences between the US and Canada, or the US and Europe, most seem to fall into what Freud termed the "narcissism of small differences." If homelessness isn't much different, what true deep and significant differences exist? Most of the differences seem to be small differences of some parameter, yet all the institutions and frameworks are largely similar if not exactly equal.
[2] Of course correlation is not causation. It is best to keep ones mind open to many different correlents before making up ones mind regarding possible/plausible causation. I'm making a claim here regarding a correlation I have not heard discussed before.
[3] One possible negative impact of putting this idea out there is that some cities could change bottle return policy in order to discourage "vagrants" - simply by making it a requirement that bottles be returned by car (for some lame/fake "safety" reason). Of course attaching this idea to the bigger idea could help minimize the likelihood. If Rambo taught us anything - and he has taught us a lot - it is that cities will stop at nothing to enforce "not in my backyard". Rambo taught the city but good, however one battle in a war is nothing.
[4] Call to econometric masters out there - look at data and bottle introduction times, I think this could make a very interesting little paper. Data is sparse, but perhaps deaths of homeless are one recorded number (one would expect a dip in deaths as life got easier, and then an increase as number of homeless increased due to homelessness becoming more attractive) that could tease out information. Some cities may have decent numbers (???). A quick look around suggests that our society doesn't track things like this very well so I leave it up to someone who can arbirtage their knowledge here. Or, actually, we don't seem to track much of anything very well - quick: how many homeschoolers are there? Well, the current estimate post huge movement garning attention is something like 3% of children - however, since it is required by law to send your children to school the exact number should be known. Even for things were we should have data - we track birth/deaths, and kids are suppose to be in school so their absence should be investigaged to ensure they are not chained to a radiator somewhere- we don't).

Creativity, originality, and independence

"The ancients stole all of our best ideas." - Mark Twain

It is extremely hard to be original - to be original you have to have an idea that someone else did not. Even if you come up with an idea independently, how do you know if it is original or not? In science publishing gets you some rights to say "original", but often the ideas are "in the air" and someone would soon find the particular discovery, even if you did not. Looking at the history of science we see a lot of things that are squarely stated as being Dr. X's idea arose near simultaneously (as many were scrambling after the same prize), or even before but not developed as much or as clearly or communicated as well, and (I suspect/hope, rarely) sometimes was stolen by Dr. X [0].

So we have a measurement problem - even if you are original, how can you tell? In addition to this a lot of "original" ideas are essentially assured: once the time is ripe for an idea it will be followed, pursued, and found. In that case, does it even matter very much? Sure it is nice to claim "the prize", but it is not earth shattering - if dozens to hundreds of others where hot on the trail and close behind [1].

So what? Do not worry about being original, and do not focus so tightly on "big men" [2] of the past. Often people we think are gods among men are simply those who got there slightly first, presented slightly better, aggressively defended their claim to the idea, or went slightly farther. Do we really think that we would not have discovered the structure of DNA if the Nobel prize winners didn't do their work? [3]

It is more interesting to be independent. This is fairly easy to do - and even if you end up saying something that others think, have discussed, or had thought you bring your own background and perspective to the table. You also hone your thinking and creativity, making it more likely you will - perhaps - be original.

For a good example, see Paul Graham's essays - I don't think I've read anything "original" in his work, but from the writing you can tell that the ideas are independently arrived at and they bring in an interesting twist [4]. You likely had similar thoughts of many of the essays, or know someone who does, or read works that address the same ideas but in a different framework or in a different field: but that doesn't matter, you will learn from the essays anyways. The background and interests of Paul will give you new insight on idea X, and thus you will understand idea X better than before, and you will most likely be presented with different data that support idea X.

The downfall of independent ideas is sometimes you often find your "original" idea is not so hot. But is this so bad? If already thought and demonstrated, this is evidence that your thinking is engaging reality. If it doesn't measure up, that's life, and at least you gained discipline and strength and some insight. If wrong - you learn: and this is how you really learn, by making mistakes. You can spend forever absorbing what others have said, found, demonstrated - or you can go out and do. Maybe you reinvent the wheel. Doesn't matter. A slightly different wheel likely will have a niche.

Original is over rated: much of it is inevitable, trivial, falsely focused on a single person versus a community that was bubbling over with ideas, and it is hard to really tell if you are original anyways [5]. But independent - that is the way to go. And since being "original" can move society forward, even if just a little faster, it is worth working on being an independent thinker - it will increase your odds of being original in an important way (finding something that many others are not about to find anyways, or finding it in a way that adds a different perspective).

Most importantly - being independent is fun. You engage ideas, people, artifacts, work - and it becomes play.

Notes:
[0] Or Dr. X had lower regard for honestly presenting data and its quality.
[1] Indeed, looking at it this way being the first can be a sign of lack of meta-imagination. One needs to look at the context to see if first is truly meaningful, or not. This not to discount the obvious work, imagination in tackling the project, and drive required.
[2] Or women, or groups, or books, or institutions, ... But frankly, most of the big people of the past and present are men.
[3] The interesting part of "original" is when you speed things up by a lot. I haven't looked at the history of DNA structure discovery too much, but it sounded like there was a speed up of - say - a couple of years. That is nothing in the scheme of things. Now Godel's theorems, that seems like a jump ahead. How long before someone else would have figured this out? I suspect a long time. Hell, physicists as a group still don't seem to be aware of his work more than 3/4th of a Century later and they are not exactly cut off from math and logic and his work is relevant for them.
[4] Like most interesting people you can guess that he (1) doesn't watch TV and (2) enjoys thinking and exploring ideas on his own. How do you tell a boring person? Look at the correlation of their opinion to the mass medias. Boring people consume opinion, interesting people fabricate their own opinion from their experience.
[5] Plus, how can you account for sheer luck? Lets say you are a grad student in field X. You pick are given a project Y to do. It has some odds of success. If your PhD project tanks, you will get your degree but goodbye future academic posting. If it does well, move on to postdoc project Z. Repeat. The "winners" obviously are talented and work very hard (in general) but this doesn't mean that the pruned in the race to the academic posting are any worse. I doubt we can improve much on the way things are, hey even Adam Smith discussed this and concluded you likely can't beat the incentives of the system as set up (rewarding success, and hence punishing failure - despite the obvious role of luck), but people should at least clearly understand this aspect. Surprisingly many do not seem to, even many profs do not seem to be aware of their good luck.

Clutter: Less = Good

We have found that our use of monoculture leads to huge insect attack problems. It turns out that in the bad old days people would grow many things together, and have a little perimeter of one monoplant weed around a garden. Why? The visual clutter of the main garden would overwhelm the insects, and they would instead attack the clutter free weeds [1].

We are not that different than insects. Visual clutter causes us stress. Perhaps this is hard coded deep in the truck of our evolutionary DNA tree pre-bug/human branching. Perhaps not [2]. It doesn't matter - visual clutter stresses us out. Some people a lot. Everyone some.

Dijkstra [3] puts the anal into analytics [4], but check out his desk and office - sparse and clean and it looks like one could really think and work in his office. Contrast with your desk - I suspect there is a difference. I know looking at my desk right now makes me embarrassed in comparison.

So what? The key idea is that clutter is stressful. Wait - oh... Our lives are cluttered with clutter. Our homes bursting with junk, our desks piled with papers, our schedules bursting with entries. Emails. Facebook. Chores. Meetings. Hobbies. Books to read, TV to watch, things to do. We better multitask to get things done - so much clutter that we are doing multiple things at once, with the predictable increase in stress and reduction in effectiveness [5]. Just thinking about the clutter can stress you out. Arg.

To improve ones life one must declutter.

How?

Simple, but not easy. You know how. You simply need a pleasant nag to push you.

Enter Leo and Power of Less. The book is short, has ample white space and sparse content (with plenty of bullet lists). Aesthetically the book is nice [6], and it is easy to read. I don't think I confronted a single new idea - but the ideas are nicely discussed and packaged. You don't read books like this for deep insights or new narratives: you read them to get your logistics down and to offer a simple program to follow to get results. The book delivers. The style reflects the message. The message is clear and simple. The road to success is laid out cleanly. I could summarize the key points here - basically kill clutter (from the frame of tighten focus), do 30 day small habit changes to lock them in [7], chew your food [8], etc. but you should simply get the book if you read this far without your eyes glazing over or rolling [9]. The book is simple. Uncluttered and, if followed, uncluttering.

Lowdown:
- Like bugs we get stressed at clutter.
- Our lives are essentially defined by clutter.
- We thus have highly stressed lives.
- Leo will show you how to declutter.

Notes:
[1] One of the more interesting science reads you should consider getting is about insects and crops (American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT): I heard an overview talk on this and it has been on my "to read" list since - very interesting! In writing this entry I am reminded about this, and have ordered the book.
[2] Here is one story: when there is clutter it is hard to determine if there is a predator or not. If in a cluttered environment you better be on the watch - i.e. stress levels will go up. Our deep evolutionary ancestors that stressed in cluttered (i.e. many hiding places) environments lived. Those who didn't got pruned.
[3] "EWD" were little notes on various ideas that Dijkstra would disseminate. That's right - Dijkstra had a blog before there were blogs!
[4] You wouldn't want him in charge of all software projects - almost nothing would ever ship, but you would want him in charge of projects relating to airplane software and nuclear power plants. I shudder each time I trust my life to some hack coder. I also suspect that there is a watch dog timer somewhere in the nuclear warhead response system either in the US or Russia that has some bizarre bug in it. Tic tic tic... On a related note: every software house should have a battle wizened guru like Dijkstra - someone to speak in enigmatic riddles, that codes mathematics, that you can climb the mountain to visit when in need of some good old fashioned advice. His code and style is concise and elegant. It is honed to perfection, the honing process leaving only pure beauty and substance. Sure, the honing process takes forever so everyone can't do this (or has the patience for it) - but the insights that this master gains will lead to great advice and can temper the hacks that are needed to get things done. This wizard likely schemes away, cackling to himself in an ocean of parenthesis...
[5] Does anyone really think that the quality of ones actions can remain the same when focus is diminished?
[6] My copy has a printers error where ink splots are sprayed across some pages. This, fittingly, gives a very Zen like beauty, rather than the expected annoyance of such a problem. I say fittingly as Leo is the author of a popular blog "Zen Habits".
[7] Leo gives many good reasons why. One he omits is this - if you do 2+ new habits you will not be able to tell which action gives gains, or if one action is negative and bogs down the rest. An experimentalist does not want to act in an uncontrolled manner - pick one variable and change it. Observe results. Pick another variable. Observe results. Etc.
[8] Seriously. Leo is all about chewing your food. Er, I mean, Leo is all about engaging with the present. Which includes chewing and enjoying your food and its flavor. Truly connecting with the present and subjective reality improves your life.
[9] Or look at his blog, or scan the table of contents and first few pages on Amazon to get the key point that he then follows up in the rest of the book. If you dig that, you will dig the book. Dirt simple message, nicely done.

Taoism

What is Taosim? The core is 81 little sections (1 pp. or less, most often less) that makes up the Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu. Get the version translated by Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo, as they do not hold your hand and try to explain but instead translate [1]. A very nice feature is that in each section one line is transliterated, and a small dictionary is included in the back - this allows the reader some direct contact with the original text and look over the translators shoulders [2].

Like everything Taoism consists of some high quality core, and then a lot of layers and interpretations and additions on top of varying quality and impact. For me, and most others, the rest is basically garbage - but unlike many things the core of Taoism is pretty easy to identify and go through: get the Tao Te Ching and then read the Wikipedia article to learn about the magic realism style and other cultural artifacts layered on top and you are an instant "expert".

The rest of Taoism is like English and Philosophy departments versus the core texts they study: sure there is some gain, but the ratio of garbage generated (words, papers, books, etc.) that simply critiques and discusses versus original and interesting content is large. Some quality material is generated, and some solid learning can happen. But it seems often that the role and function of these departments is often misconceived - sure, "everything is text", but not all text is of the same quality. English/Philosophy/some other departments are basically academic blog factories which discuss and otherwise point to other material or general thoughts and teach you to "blog" also, if you luck out with a faculty position. Unlike academic blogs real blogs do not have such heavy constrains: high fees, often needing to parrot back a profs position/opinions to get a decent mark, PC and other limiting constraints on thought and expression [3] (tenure does not really work to fill its claimed function), needing to get people in a physical space at the same time, forcing everyone to listen to student X's insipid "thoughts" [4] etc etc etc. Ug, flashbacks to sitting in [5] on African Studies class.

Taoism itself is pretty enigmatic versus, say, Stoicism and much closer to the pure mystical view of the world versus the Stoics pure rational view. But it is interesting to reflect on, especially since where someone sits on the rational/mystical scale seems to be a set point that is built into many people so reflecting on both views will help you understand people. Taoism is the counterpoint to Stoicism, at least in feel and approach, but comes to basically the same conclusions.

44 (snippet). Extreme love exacts a heavy price.
Many possessions entail heavy loss.

Monks used to copy texts by hand, and the Tao is the only book that I personally have done this for. I learned two things doing this (1) I am happy I am not a 1st Century monk, (2) coping a text like the Tao is conducive to deep reflection and makes you a better person [6]. I copied the text for a friend, including the pictograms and dictionary, and this gift gave both to me and to him I think. I probably got much more than him actually (hmm... a crappy hand written book? Gee - "thanks").

Lowdown:
- Tao Te Ching is a short & powerful (but not fast) read.
- The Tao Te Ching embodies the core of a whole philosophy/religion - so it has huge return on investment.
- The view is close to a pure mystical view: since it seems a high portion of people "think" this way it is good to understand this style.

Notes:
[1] This book really demonstrates the power of a good translation - real empirical evidence that you can have widely varying differences in quality and tone that can change a book qualitatively from "ug" to "wow". In the preface they have a small comparison between several translations of the first line, here are 3 of 10 different available translations

The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way (Waley)
The ways that can be walked are not the eternal Way (Mair)
The tao that can be said is not the everlasting tao (Gibbs)

Here how it is done in this book:

Tao called Tao is not Tao.

To my ear this much less verbose style of translation is clear, compact, elegant . The translators aim to retain the "simplicity, rhythm, and power of the Chinese" in order to achieve the impact of the original.
[2] This "interactive" feature is wonderful, very enlightening and fun. In addition to the roman transliteration the pictograms are painted alongside which adds a beauty. Pictograms and stylistic paintings are interspersed in the text which adds some minimalistic visual candy on the journey through the book.
[3] Would a prof say the rest of Taoism is garbage? Or is that "too risky"? What if a student self identifies as a Taoist? Will that offend him/her? Such questions are likely asked around every statement made, trimming down what can be said into the most pablum like residue left. Okay, I admit the rest is not literally garbage - but in terms of diminishing returns for the majority of people it might as well be.
[4] When reading one can simply scan over boring/trite/or otherwise lame material, and one already reads ~ 3X faster than people can speak (maybe ~2X if you read slow like myself, or ~4X if you read very fast), plus people trim out the lamest material when writing (uh, ah, er... this one time... ), and double-takes are easy - simply go back and reread, if someone says something you sorta missed you have to ask them to repeat.
[5] That's right - sitting in: you can crash University classes, since most are huge. I likely should have asked the prof, as I starting doing later, since the class was "small" (~40 people?).
[6] i.e. painful, but constructive pain.

Stoicism Lite

William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

This book attempts to sell the reader on a pop version of Stoicism as a way of life, and as one would expect with such a purpose is easy to read. The author is a professor of philosophy who was interested in obtaining a philosophy of life, and since academic philosophy does not provide this looked into Stoicism. Zen Buddhism was discounted, apparently because it seems too difficult for the modern man, and few other competing strategies are discussed. This is somewhat surprising, as the author is a prof and since he is attempting to sell the reader on pop Stoicism - Stoicism Lite. A few related (at least to causal thought) approaches such as Humanism, philosophical Taoism, and Confucianism jump to mind [1]. This lack of comparison is made even more glaring since the author spends time (our time) rambling about "what if I made the wrong choice? what if Stoicism is not the true path?". Gee, what if? How about you look around instead of arguing/whining in a vacuum?

Never-the-less even without a comparison of other approaches Stoicism as presented looks good. The text could easily be dropped 20-25% in length and retain the good parts. Stripping out empty rhetorical questions, the well intended but weak modern justification of Stoicism based on evolutionary psychology [2], the continuous chatter and mild talking down to the reader [3], and generally taking a more aggressive editing approach would have tightened up the presentation, but since the intent is to soft sell the reader on pop Stoicism this doesn't matter too much - the book remains an easy read. And perhaps the flaws I see are a selling point which make the book "approachable"?

So what makes up Stoicism and makes it a compelling way of life? Here - where it matters - the book excels, giving an easily digestible and simple sketch of Stoic tools.

Goal: Tranquility.
Base Approach: Reason & Observation.
Psychological Techniques: 5 main ones, in order of returns
(1) Negative Visualization (gratitude),
(2) Dichotomy of Control (focus on what you can affect),
(3) Fatalism (of past/present - look for the positive here, focus on changing future not "if onlys" about the past),
(4) Self-Denial (reset your adaptation point, so your base life feels great),
(5) Meditation (reflection).

It seems that modern evidence has confirmed all these approaches are useful. There is a famous gratitude study that showed that people who kept a gratitude journal had surprising improvement in mental health versus a regular (reflective) journal control, people who "fight the tide" drown in life while those who compete against themselves and what they can control tend to do well, cognitive psychology - which includes a positive past/present fatalism view - demonstrates better results in treating depression then medication [4], hedonic adaptation ("keeping up with the Jones' ") is a well known problem that self-denial can help by resetting, and reflection has long been proscribed to improve ones life ("an unexamined life is not worth living") as this allows problems to be caught early ("an once of prevention...") and choices and paths seen and trimmed [5].

The book has a boiler plate intro/background, then (the meat) discussion on these 5 tools in the Stoic tool set, discusses some Stoic advice, and wraps up with the authors reflections on living the Stoic life and an appendix on further reading. The advice part is pretty weak - rewarmed advice is never as good as reading the original - but important for keeping the text self-contained. I'd like a little less hand-holding and interpretation here, but it goes with the chatty style of the book.

All in all - this is a fast and easy read, well worth going through. The core is the section on Stoic Psychology (about 60 pages of the total roughly 300 pages - which includes a bibliography and an index) and I would recommend reading this first [6]. If you get interested, I'd then skip right to the primary texts. If you are not hooked on the Stoic Life Plan, then read the rest of the book through to get the pop version and some take away tid-bits and advice.

Stoicism is a basic framework that you likely partially use and have found on your own. The consistent framework, strong literature, and pedigree makes Stoicism compelling and worth considering. Essentially an exercise plan for life logistics with some good teachers. If I had to put Stoicism in a nutshell, I'd say it is all about the Dichotomy of Control - focus on what you can control (i.e. your character and actions) using reason and honesty as your tools.


Notes:
[1] As Humanism likely has a strong influence on many scientists and artists and other intellectuals the lack of discussion seems strange, are not most University like people at least implicitly affected by this? And as Confucianism is getting some play currently due to China looking for a replacement for Marxist thought it is also strange that an author writing a pop book would overlook the opportunity to discuss this.
[2] The evolutionary psychology section is much too hand wavy - if you want to add this sugar coating put more effort into this, and the "Zeus" claim made by the the original Stoics - which this whole evolutionary psychology spiel attempts to address - can be interpreted in a metaphorical manner as writings suggest that Zeus/logos/nature were used somewhat interchangeably). i.e. this whole section seems un-necessary to begin with, and poorly done.
[3] A danger of repeatably teaching introductory philosophy? From my memories of the handful of second year philosophy classes I took the level of discourse is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
[4] Studies show a roughly equal success rate in treating an "episode", but cognitive psychology appears to prevents relapse better than medication.
[5] Instead of the evolutionary psychology section I would have much preferred to see a results based justification, using examples of studies and other evidence such as briefly sketched here. The author discusses hedonic adaptation, but could sketch out more of "positive psychology", and other, findings that support the Stoic tool set.
[6] If you are looking for discussion regarding the Stoic frame, such as briefly touched in my "filter" post, this book is not were you want to go. You will not find terms such as "kataleptic" or a deep look at the subtle and deep Stoic frame in "Good Life" - this is a pop view after all. The Stoic frame may be where real changes in your views come from. To use a hackneyed analogy - taking on "Stoic Lite" is like "learning" a new and more powerful programming language, without actually learning the key new mode of expression that makes the language different and powerful. You can use Python like you use Basic, or you can dig deep and learn something new and learn Python instead of using Python notation to write Basic code. Sure, you will likely get some gain and pleasure moving to Python and writing you Basic code in it but this approach misses out on the deepest and most significant gains. The Stoicism Lite as promoted by "Good Life" is basically standard pop psychology (i.e. self help genre), that may be pleasant, easy, and give some important gains, but possibly misses out on the most radical and important aspects of Stoicism. I say "possibly" as I have only barely scratched the surface of Stoic thought and thus cannot provide a useful claim either way. It does seem that the Stoics thought deeply about human action and have created a subtle approach that can give us some insights, as I suspect this framework is fairly different than the standard approach we pick up in our society.

Bonferroni's Principle

In a nutshell: if you look harder than the quantity of data supports, you will find a pattern that "fits".

I have just heard of Bonferroni's Principle, under that label, but this is a key issue and well deserving of a name. The meaningfulness of an answer depends on the evidence that stands behind it. Bonferroni's Principle, that you will "find" something if you look hard enough, underscores conspiracy theories, much of social and economic empirical findings, and data-mining in general. We have all done this ourselves, and have seen others do this. Our brains are pattern matching and story telling machines - we will find a pattern and a story to fit what we see (barring complete lack of imagination). The question is if the pattern and story is legitimate or not: is it overly fragile and "overfit" to the data? Did we use a "training set" to come up with our story, and a "test set" to test it out? Conspiracy theories are notoriously brittle - they strain credulity, even in the case in question, and if you take the theory and look at any other piece of life it falls apart: the theory over fit some specific event, often with liberal doses of biased assumptions included, and makes no sense once you expose it to new, fresh data.

In large part science is about Bonferroni's Principle - we want to learn how to pick out legitimate patterns and stories from what we observe, for several reasons (we love stories and patterns, we find our lives improve if we have accurate and interesting ones, we can get social recognition from a group of likeminded searchers in our quest, etc.). The scientific method is all about good story telling - by asking (good) questions and (honestly) listening to the answers we get a good, and more true than not, story.

Our brains are amazing pattern finding and story weaving organs, and our job is to consciously test the stories and patterns that are being spun: we want to help our brains in its "brain storming" ways, by adding even more possibilities, and we need to help with critical analysis of the conclusions we jump to.

Examples:

A related sub-effect is the Barnum effect, which is Bonferroni's Principle applied to personality categories: people will agree with categories they are placed on, and believe that the categories are illuminating, for example astrological signs. Again, until recently, I did not know there was a name for this effect - but have seen it is strong in many people. I had a roommate who was convinced that horoscopes where accurate in describing people, as a test I read two signs and had him pick which one was his (e.g. his sign, and as random as one I could pick as another option, read in random order) and every week for a month I had him select his using a weekly 'scope he thought was good. Surprisingly he picked wrong every time (less than 10% odds, if his selection was random).

Townhall meeting: otherwise known as sample bias. Only those in the tails of the distribution of people effected by some decision will bother to show up. Most political decisions are structured so a small subset gain significant advantage, with a cost borne by everyone else. This small-many ratio ensures a small cost (so most likely not worth showing up) and a huge gain (so if you stand gain you will show up). So the tail of those to gain will be in the house, and perhaps some "anti" wackos. Result: "widespread support" that is underscored by only an embittered small scattering of crazies who oppose. The choice is clear...

Health science. Are supplements good for you? Who knows. We do know that those who take supplements tend to care deeply about health, so if we just compare these people against the average (i.e. unhealthy subjects) are we comparing difference in taking supplements, or differences in: exercise, positive attitude, smoking, drinking, etc. We are testing them all. So unless supplements have huge negative effects we will see a positive effect. Sadly, many studies have poor protocols such as using different sample groups - the study will find a difference between groups, but what causes this? In general, the scientific scam known as "significance" is at play here. Passing a p-test deems a hypothesis "significant", but Bonferroni's Principle tells us if we look hard enough we can always pass a p-test. Further, the use of "significant" hijacks our brains by misusing our filters. This is unfortunate, as the field of health is important and people make choices based on weak "science".

Lowdown:
- Quality must have quantity as support.
- Use simple tests to check your data (representative?) and story (legitimate?).
- Much of "science", particularly in social and health fields where biases and feelings and complexity runs high, falls prey to Bonferroni's Principle and is a scam. Cavet emporor.
- Having a label for something is nice - drop Bonferroni's Principle on people. Like an idiom a label for a developed idea allows rapid, deep, incisive discussion. In learning about science and human thinking Bonferroni's Principle should be one of the key points discussed.

Filters

"The map is not the territory." - Alfred Korzybski

We perceive the world via our senses: the external makes an impression on us. This impression is not neutral and fresh, but heavily filtered and distorted via our biases. We - or more precisely, processes within our minds - silently attach propositions immediately on the impression, and we typically assent to these propositions. Critical thinking is the routinized mechanism of teasing out this filtered and categorized and assented to framework, a bag of tricks used habitually to improve our filters, to question them, to suspend our assent and an attempt to make informed assent. Rhetoric and propaganda is the attempt to use the filters and implications to get an audience to assent to the entire bundle, both the impression and a parasitic framework which is a Trojan horse.

Our minds make up a map of the world, one that is reduced in content but, hopefully, reflective of the significant features of the world. Filtering suggests it is hard to make a good map.

To see the effect of a filter pay attention the next time you learn something new, X, it becomes a new pattern, a new filter and you will start to see item X in the world around you, whereas previously you had filtered it out. Learning new ideas and patterns enables you to make sense of the impressions of the world using your new filter. Everyone is familiar with this, many call this "coincidences" - to the careful they see this as illuminating how our minds work, and a warning, to the less careful they see conspiracy theories and evidence of the supernatural, profound evidence. We can also consider illusions - these are well known examples where our minds profoundly layer something onto an impression which we know is not true, and yet we still perceive incorrectly; to a great extent everything is an illusion, a combination of a true impression and an additional assumed and added framework. By understanding an illusion we can remove assent - facts we can demonstrate to be true will change our assent - although we cannot stop slathering the added framework as it is automatic and uncontrolled. In fact, the existance of illusions is the most clear means of teaching the neccessity for critical thinking.

We can see people as givers of assent - if you are careful you will critically give, or suspend, assent to the impressions and their associated implied (by our minds) propositions, baggage, and implications. If you are not careful you will not examine what the underlying impression is, and take the whole package as true. You will not take the effort to attempt to discriminate what is true, and what is an assumption that we slathered on top.

The agnostic is one who only provides his assent to implications that at strong - what Stoics would call kataleptic impressions - something where the implications are basically not falsifiable. Your feelings of pain, consciousness, existance of external reality - kataleptic. A Bayesian would assign very little uncertainty to kataleptic impressions. Both a Stoic and a Bayesian treat the world differently than most - they work to give assent only to what is concrete and knowable, and treat most of what we "know" as more ephemeral and work to suspend assent.

Lowdown:
- what we see is: illusion = filter(impression), the illusion suggests implications, critical thinking is trying to determine if we should assent to the implications.
- Work to be an agnostic. Focus on the "hard core" and don't cling to the ephemeral. Belief is an uncritical opinion, a freely given assent to an impression, and is irrational and often false.
- Agnostic ~ Stoic ~ Bayesian ~ Critical thinker != the "natural" man.
- Stoic psychology of mind: input - filter(impression), output - assent, or suspension of assent, to the implications we bundle to impressions. To compare peoples minds, compare their assent to impressions; to compare their character, compare how they assent.
- There is nothing new under the sun: NLP seems to be Stoic personality theory, rediscovered and with some more medical information behind it and focusing on the tactics and tricks versus the overarching strategy

Logistics

Logistics is often overlooked, can make or break things, and those who take care of logistics get the returns in the long run.

Quite simply logistics is the management of the flow of resources between the start and the finish of some process. Taking care of logistics can reduce stress, increase odds of success, and tends to make things smoother. Ever notice you get nervous before a talk or doing something new? Often the nervousness is over logistics - will I get there in time, what if X happens, etc. Many confident people simple know that the logistics are taken care of, and that they can rely on a general scaffold around what they are doing. Becoming confident often boils down to learning the logistics in place in some environment, or setting up the logistics yourself. A large part of logistics is simply managing your own reactions to events, which is further aided by gathering tools or otherwise manipulating the environment in your favor.

So how to set up logistics? The key is to simulate the environment, in order to become aware of what will be needed to manage the resources (and indeed, to know what resources you need). There are a couple of time tested methods to getting logistics under control, mainly (1) practice, (2) thought experiments, and (3) constraints. By practicing you go through a mini run and "work out the bugs", thought experiments allow you to consider what-if scenarios in order to manage possibilities, and constraints are things you must fulfill giving you targets. The closer the simulation is to reality the better you will catch problems and hone the required logistics, the better thought out the constraints are the more you will get done.

For example, let us say you want to write a book. What are some logistics you can focus on? One is simply making a schedule - picking a temporal environment - and selecting a physical location for writing. You then find tools - dictionary, computer, desk, comfy chair, whatnot - and consider what you can do to improve odds of success: having a neat workspace, having water, being well feed, unplugging the phone, etc. Simply imagining you working and what could go wrong simulates the process. Then simply repeating the actual experience allows you further improvement on logistics - perhaps you though early morning would work for you, but you later find late in the night is better, etc. etc.

One of the key logistical tools you have at your disposal are constraints. Simply by picking a time that you must write for and having a target of how much to do will go a long long way to ensuring success. By finitely bounding the task you ensure you get to it, and also makes you don't do too much of it. Think of scheduling as turning priorities into time - you should set aside time in proportion to priorities. If writing really is a priority you better have time set aside for it, if you family is a priority ditto - and you better make sure your writing time doesn't cut into your family time.

Logistics is the art of managing your environment and yourself. This can sound, and often is, boring. But a little effort in simulating pre- task, adding useful constraints around the task, and considering what may arise can help you succeed. The reducing in stress is worth the sometimes tedious work, and putting a little effort into logistics will improve your odds of success. Also, by focusing on logistics you will find that this simple art of management is pretty transferable between tasks. Once you figure out logistics for one thing you can use the particulars for other things, often with minimal differences.

Logistics is really just preparing a little before jumping into a task - this preparation helps you make the jump, and improves the likelihood that something good will happen. After the splash you then reflect on what went well, and what didn't, and then you jump again. Logistics is about managing your jumps - ensuring you do it, and do it well (or at least slightly better than if you didn't take care of logistics). The key is jumping. Don't over think, just set aside some time for simulation, think up some useful constraints, do some practice if that is possible, and then do it, reflect on the experience and how you can improve the logistics, and do it again.

While logistics itself is often boring, it gets you doing exciting things.

Logistics is about getting comfortable with an environment, and tuning both your reactions and bringing tools to help you in that environment. Simulation is not reality, so your best bet is to actually just do what you want to do, but a little simulation can allow you to extract the most out of an experience and help it go smoothly. If you get stuck in the simulation phase you will never get comfortable. The best approach is iteration - think of what you can, jump in and learn, think about what you learned, jump in again, ... But jump, and jump often.

Get your basic logistics down, and then get down. Successful people manage themselves and their environments - they have logistics under control. Often is it "just" logistics coupled with persistence that leads to good outcomes.

You can get by without logistics - for example you can get an undergrad degree with extremely poor/nonexistent logistics - but if you want to thrive this is a basic tool you need.