The Attention Span. “Racehorses and Psychopaths.”

The synthesis of these ideas may merely prove to be confirmation bias, but they are deeply resonant with me. And that’s the crux of the filtering process. That resonance hints at an internal alignment around values. You can intuitively detect it when you read it, when you hear it, and when you speak it. Shepherd wonders if what we hear as “eloquenc... See more

The value of information is determined by what’s discarded in the process of creating it.

Perhaps the simplest and best definition of wisdom I’ve heard is “knowing what information is important.” This kind of knowing is not solely done in the intellect. Data is constantly being fed into your unconscious, then cross referenced against your experience.

“For the most important inquiry, however, there is a method. Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: “What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?” Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and perhaps they will reveal a law... See more

How do you achieve resonance?  [Resonant quotes] or places your attention is drawn to and “sticky ideas” that you just can’t let go of are key indicators of your values. Nietzsche put it beautifully :

This is the difference between dissonance and resonance. When head and body are aligned or conflicted. As in the famous example of George Soros and his back pain, bodily sensation is a key indicator of unconscious dissonance; of when your intellect is missing something important from the outside world. His back hurt when his portfolio was positione... See more

Once you know exactly where you are on the map, you still need to orient yourself and move in the territory. And this is the key insight I learned from writing this piece. If you rebuild your new model based on abstractions it’s no more likely to be correct than the old one. So, you need to rebuild it in harmony with the world around you. The Taois... See more

from Karen Stenner:"All the available evidence indicates that exposure to difference, talking about difference, and applauding difference - the hallmarks of liberal democracy - are the surest ways to aggravate those who are innately intolerant, and to guarantee the increased expression of their predispositions in manifestly intolerant attitudes and... See more

As the author of Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari, puts it: “you could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”