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".

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.

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.

The Black Knight (Suicide)

Cause of death: suicide.
Who: 1-2% of modern nations
Why: factors are related to "something is wrong with your head" - depression, manic-depressive, drug/alcohol, schizo, agitation, etc. Walk into an emergency room: most people are there because something is wrong with their heads (low IQ, alcohol induced stupidity, mental illness, etc.), you will see the high risk. Now look at the doctors - they are also at high risk: under stress, lack of sleep, mood swings. Their knowledge does not protect them.

Put the whom into perspective: 1-2 % of everyone is huge. Everyone will die of "old age", baring accident or intent. Live long enough and you will die of cancer, heart failure, or other degenerate proximate cause. The ultimate cause is the same: you are old and worn out. If you treat your body poorly you will wear out faster - smoke, drink, eat garbage, don't exercise. We all know this. The fact that 1/100 to 1/50 will die by their own intent is therefore a huge number - and a number that is likely an underestimate (taking large risks, joining the army in time of war, and generally placing oneself in harms way can be an effective means of killing oneself). Look at it another way - suicide is the second leading cause of death for college students.

Suicide is a systematic and sizable problem with our society. Doctors have a fairly high level of knowledge about suicide, know the factors involved, and know how to access further information. This does not help them very much - as a group they commit suicide fairly frequently. Knowledge alone does not prevent suicide.

How can we address suicide? We must start from knowledge and move to action. Suicide is not "rare". It is prevalent, it will impact your life at some point. We all should know a little bit about suicide, as it is one of the primary causes of death - and one of the largest ones (intent: suicide or murder, accident, and decay are the possible causes). The key factors relate to mental health, a truism if there was ever was one.

We know that medication can help - lithium, anti-depressants, and cognitive therapy are known to reduce the incident of suicide, and thus early treatment is important [note: the availability and efficiency of these drugs has changed the population in universities - at one point in time those most likely to kill themselves would not be in university, as the factors contributing to suicide risk would overwhelm their lives and they would not "make the grade". This population can now better manage their problems, and can now make it into university, yet their risk remains high. Universities have not yet dealt with this "new" issue (for them).] Medication gives crutches, allowing people to hobble forward. This is not a "cure", or sufficient. But can keep people hobbling until things improve.

But in general the issue seems to be environmental - social and emotional environments are important. Stress, depression, sadness, bitterness, pain, exclusion, negativity. These are simply labels for, and symptoms of, sparse, poisoned, and broken social and emotional environments. Once you find yourself in a sparse and ugly environment you are in trouble - your "network" is diminutive, and so is your life. Joy is dead, you do not see beauty, you do not see how to solve things. You are literally unconnected. Choices, possibilities, beauty - not there. You cannot imagine a better life, you cannot image how to change things. The black knight is on the table.

It is a simple truth that the networks that define our lives are nonlinear - having 3 close friends is not 3X better than having 1, but much much more than that. Our lives become rich in more than proportion to what we have, and our lives become painful in extreme ways when we do without social connections and positive emotional experiences. One simply cannot imagine life with no meaningful connections and meaning (e.g. good social and emotional lives). We cannot understand what it will be like (and thus cannot prepare well to get through rough times) and we cannot bare it for long if we find ourselves in such a state.

Due to the requirement for social and emotional life, and the highly nonlinear nature of networks, we are at risk. We cannot plan well for loss and we cannot easily build capacity to sustain ourselves through hard time. What can we do?

The black knight is always in play, and if you lose capacity you will be cornered. We know empirically that the black knight is part of the board of our society, the black knight is ready to engage every and any of us. We have only a handful of tools open to us in pushing the black knight to the perfillary of the board - (1) recognize that suicide is common and a systematic problem in our lives, (2) take care to build up our emotional and social networks and lives, and (3) reach out to our friends and others who find themselves in sparse environments. A series of negative emotional situations can quickly make one perceive things as negative in a systematic manner, a social vacuum quickly leaves one without perspectives and help, a belief that suicide is rare leaves one feeling inadequate and ashamed of such thoughts - I'm so fucking weak and pathetic. No you are human, a human that has found yourself in an ugly situation, one that is overwhelming as we do not teach each other that emotional and social reality make up 2 out of the 3 key aspects of being human and instead we all focus on the more easily (yet not easy) measurable and taught third factor - objective truth. It is somewhat ironic that the depressed are often more capable in the objective plane, with more realistic assessment of their skill level, etc., but this is not helpful to them as they lack the fruits of the other two aspects of human reality (emotional & social). They are 2/3rds dead already, and "logically" they see suicide as the only realistic solution.

If you see your friends or children cut off, you must try to reach them. It will be hard, for they will likely not admit to having suicidal thoughts (shame), and they will not be able to see a way beyond and through the pain. The gap between their emotional and social reality and the emotional and social reality required for a bearable, let along thriving, life is too large for them to transition without help. "You don't understand", and it is true - talk to someone who made it through, and they cannot even put themselves back into the past to fully describe the lack that defined life. Before you kill yourself you are not human, you cannot imagine becoming human, you considering killing yourself as you are already dead in the ways that matter. How to we bring people back to life? We can only try to help them do it themselves, we can only hope that we catch the downward spiral before it is too late. If you do get yourself or another on medication this is just the beginning.

Primitive societies had serious issues with decay, accidents, and violence as causes of death, problems that our society has vastly reduced. If you chose to lead a physically healthy life medicine can help you immensely by getting you though emergencies, allowing you to live much longer. Basic hygiene and vaccinations has dramatically increased life span. The state has monopolized violence, reducing intragroup conflict, and the consequences of state-state warfare among competent states has become so large as to reduce intergroup conflict to an astonishing extent. So to a large extent, we have pushed off decay and accident in order to lead longer and healthier lives, and we have diminished the likelihood of someone intending to kill us. But that leaves self-intent as a large factor contributing to death, one that we have not addressed anywhere near sufficiently. It is somewhat surprising that we have largely ignored suicide - fundamentally there are not that many ways to die, so just on conceptual grounds alone one would think we would confront this more. Empirically suicide is a huge issue, an issue that points to a vastly impoverished emotional and social life.

Suicide suggests that we continue to be poor in our society - by focusing on suicide we can learn more about what it means to be human and we can improve our own and others lives. We can create wealth and beauty.

Lowdown:

Suicide is one of the key characteristics of our society, one that is not discussed and thus one that will remain prevalent. Empirically we know that 1-2% of people will kill themselves, a huge number - suicide will effect your life. A society that largely ignores 2/3rds of what it means to be a human is bound to have problems with allowing people to create fulfilling and beautiful lives. Positive social and emotional state is key in preventing suicide. "Emergency treatment" with drugs enables one to hobble onward, allowing social and emotional networks to be created, but the drugs alone are insufficient and "treatment" begins there. The good news is that the process is actually enjoyable and enriching once underway.




Reference:

Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide : Suicide enlightens the human condition, every educated person should be versed in basics of suicide. This book is the best I have seen on suicide - essentially everything in this posting is directly from the author (e.g. "black knight" metaphor), was an earlier observation of mine that the author also notes (e.g. the emergency room example - which is filtered in terms of suicide here, but in general is a good example of how "brain problems" causes much pain and expense to society, ironically I was in the emergency room with someone who suffered an intense migraine attack when I first became aware of this), or was written in reaction to author (e.g. emotional + social aspects being largely ignored in our society, with the objective element of the human condition being focused on to the exclusion of these other factors). You should read this book, you should have your friends read this book, if you are a teacher you should discuss this book with your students (one tidbit you will learn: in the time it takes for one class, which you could devote to the book, 3 Americans will kill themselves - why are we not talking about this more?), if you are a parent you must read this book. If you are in a book club, read this book.