The Attention Span. “Racehorses and Psychopaths.”

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 :

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.

Consciousness exists on a spectrum from pure abstraction (map) to pure engagement (territory).

The really, really dark side here is that the stronger an abstraction, often an outright lie, the more motivating it can be for tribal behavior. The soldier metaphor is doubly-appropriate. Taken to its most horrifying extreme, war and genocide is facilitated by abstraction.

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

confirmation bias is often the difference between sounding smart and being right. And sometimes something much, much worse.