both are true

A prominent billionaire gave a graduation speech the other day. The key message? Work hard to be successful.

Another prominent billionaire gave a graduation speech a year later. The key message? Working hard is bad advice. Do what feels fun for you to be successful.

There is so much mystique around the creative life. It’s fetishized and coveted and seen as mysterious even by the people who inhabit it. We have a cultural script that says: There’s too much consumption, not enough creation! If you want to be a [tasteful/interesting/admirable/happy] person, you should make more things. But then also: Social media... See more

Are we idealists or pragmatists? Do we have principles we hold dear, and a vision for the future we want to create? Or are we fumbling along, tinkering, finding what works, and forever allowing contact with reality to rearrange our mental furniture, make a mess on our conceptual floor, and occasionally punch so many holes in the walls that need to... See more

At Stanford’s dy/dx program, founder Tony Xu was asked about the qualities he interviews for at DoorDash. One of the five traits is holding and making sense of opposing ideas. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to... See more

Logic requires that people find universal laws, but outside of scientific fields and once human psychology has a role to play, it is perfectly possible for behavior to become contradictory. A tax rise can cause you to work less because the returns of your labor are lower, or work harder to maintain your present level of disposable wealth. There are... See more