feature or a bug?
how advantages can be disadvantages and strengths can be weaknesses
feature or a bug?
Our cognitive apparatus is designed, at least in part, to sustain us in the long term rather than balm us in the near term.
Daniel H. Pink • The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward
The ease of having an ambition is that it can be explained to others; the very disease of ambition is that it can be so easily explained to others. DAVID WHYTE
Paul Millerd • The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life
THE GREAT TRIUMPH (OR horrible tragedy, depending on how you look at it) of being human is that our brains have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to understand our mortality.
Caitlin Doughty • Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
The “thinking mind” is the part of the mind that seeks to make sense of the world; it analyses situations, imagines scenarios, evaluates solutions, and tells stories. It’s an inherent aspect of what makes us human. However, it’s limited by multiple cognitive bottlenecks.
The human mind has many limitations. For instance, our limited sensory... See more
The human mind has many limitations. For instance, our limited sensory... See more
Ness Labs • Cognitive bottlenecks: the inherent limits of the thinking mind
Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.
-Jack Kornfeld
“Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become, and the same is true of fame.”
—Arthur Schopenhauer
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Rob Henderson @robkhenderson
Rob Henderson on X
A 2018 study found that people typically pursue higher levels of education because they believe it will lead to more leisure time. But, in fact, more educated people tend to have less leisure time.13 They earn more money, but also work more hours. This upends their expectations and ends up having a net zero effect on overall happiness.
Rob Henderson • Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
I developed the governing impression that our minds are wonderful explanation machines, capable of making sense out of almost anything, capable of mounting explanations for all manner of phenomena, and generally incapable of accepting the idea of unpredictability.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto Book 2)
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
— Ralph Waldo Emerson