feature or a bug?

how advantages can be disadvantages and strengths can be weaknesses

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

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)

Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

Richard Feynman

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 capabili... See more

Ness Labs • Cognitive bottlenecks: the inherent limits of the thinking mind

“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

Outlook

“Contrary to popular belief, time does not heal, time does not fly, time does not do anything. Time has no consciousness. It does nothing for you. The key to happiness now is what you choose to do with your time right now. Are you, right now, making the most valuable use of your time? This moment is, after all, the time of your life. Your choices a... See more

“It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.” — Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

We’re good at learning by tinkering—which is fortunate, because we’re terrible at getting things right the first time.

Bent Flyvbjerg • How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between

Someone dumber and lazier than you is making 10x the money because they are too dumb to doubt themselves.” - Kyle Harrison via Trevor McKendrick newsletter