Behavior is hard to fix. People say they’ve learned but they underestimate how much of their previous mistake was caused by emotions that will return when faced with the same circumstances.
Being good at something doesn’t promise rewards. It doesn’t even promise a compliment. What’s rewarded in the world is scarcity, so what matters is what you can do that other people are bad at.
People learn when they’re surprised. Not when they read the right answer, or are told they’re doing it wrong, but when their jaw hits the floor.
Most fields have only a few laws. Lots of theories, hunches, observations, ideas, trends, and rules. But laws--things that are always true, all the time--are rare.
"See, my terrible lecture on ADHD suggested several reasons for the increasing prevalence of the disease. Of these I remember two: the spiritual desert of modern adolescence, and insufficient iron in the diet. And I remember thinking “Man, I hope it’s the iron one, because that seems a lot easier to fix.”"
When I've had the opportunity to talk with true experts in different fields, I was surprised to find that they tend to focus in very few factors, unlike books or other practitioners.
Wasn't Karate Kid training something like that? The master was only interested in a few exercises that were done doing repetitive tasks apparently unrelated to fight.
The full context of the Wilson Newton/Darwin quote, from an obscure lecture (Worldcat has no record), is this:
The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon their quick cooperation, their ready response to the commands of instinct or intelligence, their amicable community of purpose. Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men, with highly differentiated functions, no doubt, in our modern day of specialization, but with a common task and purpose. Their cooperation is indispensable, their warfare fatal. There can be no successful government without leadership or without the intimate, almost instinctive, coordination of the organs of life and action (pp. 56-57).
> Median family income adjusted for inflation was $29,000 in 1955. In 1965 it was $42,000. Today it’s just over $62,000. We think of the 1950s and 1960s as the golden age of middle-class prosperity. But the median household today has roughly twice the income as the median family of 1955.
I mean, sure, but I'm pretty sure the median household income today is from 2 working adults, where 1955 and 1965 are a single working adult.
There's also purchasing power, which isn't touched on here. Yes, TVs and such are super cheap compared to that era, but owning a house is nearly out of reach for a family living off $62k/year. In 1955 and 1965 it was completely normal for a single-income family to own a home with a yard, etc.
I don't think that owning a house is nearly out of reach for a family making $62k/yr. Standard advice is that one can afford a house costing 2.25 times one's annual income. That means the median family can afford a $140k house.
Briefly checking my city, paying $140k for a house in my city is enough for a 3 bedroom detached house with a large yard, in the suburbs, with a 15 minute drive to downtown.
The 50s and 60s were a golden age of middle class prosperity, because median family income went from $29K to $42K with only one adult working. If you were living through it, it must have been amazing.
I took it as a quick opportunity to stop reading, since I wasn't surprised at any point.
But now I'm thinking: in the morning I found out that "la hoja" is "the sheet [of paper, etc]" in Spanish. How do I still know it in the afternoon if my jaw didn't meet the floor at any point?
Re. "la hoja" - try auto spaced repetition. Embrace the fact that these are pretty mundane realizations! Something like jointoucan.com, which repeatedly generates these moments (no affiliation, just a happy user).
Great observations IMO. The points about telling the most compelling story and telling people what they want to hear resonate especially well with the current international stage.
> Don’t expect balance from very talented people. People who are exceptionally good at one thing tend to be exceptionally bad at another, due to overconfidence and mental bandwidth taken up by the exceptional skill.
Also because of cross-compensation. Sometimes talent can compensate for the lack of another skill, thus allowing the person to be worse at that other skill and still succeed.
Very thought provoking, they remind me of the 48 Laws of Power.
A lot of these are intuitive or things I've experienced/seen before, but I've never seen them formalized.
My favourite three, though I think almost all of them are great:
- The person who tells the most compelling story wins. Not the best idea. Just the story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads.
- Henry Luce said, “Show me a man who thinks he’s objective and I’ll show you a man who’s deceiving himself.” People see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and view the world through the lens of their own unique life experiences.
- Simple explanations are appealing even when they’re wrong. “It’s complicated” isn’t persuasive even when it’s right.
Morgan Housel consistently writes great essays. Crazy to me how much he puts out at such a high quality level. I have submitted a few and upvoted a few but think this is one of the first ones to make it to the front page.
"The only thing worse than thinking everyone who disagrees with you is wrong is the opposite: being persuaded by the advice of those who need or want something you don’t."
Also, the things you or they want don't have to be right.
Take software choices.
Their users all got their own reason why they prefer one over the other and all could be wrong.
Which leads us to another rule.
"Logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe"
If everyone of them can be doing things for the wrong reason; arguing if their choice does or does not support their reasoning doesn't help.
I'm really tired of people not noticing how a certain phone/OS/editor/food/whatever can be a great choice for themselves, but not for everyone, because everyone makes the choice theirselves.
> Self-interest is the most powerful force in the world. Which can be great, because situations where everyone’s interests align are unstoppable; bad because people’s willingness to benefit themselves at the expense of others is so seductive.
No way. Self-interest is useful enough for day-to-day interactions, but for the stuff that truly matters it is not even in the top five.
Love, trust / faith, goodness, thoughtfulness, so many other things are more powerful that mere self-interest.
> History is deep. Almost everything has been done before. The characters and scenes change, but the behaviors and outcomes rarely do.
I think about this multiple times in a day. Whenever I am presented with seemingly impossible tasks/deadlines, I ponder that the history must have witnessed atleast one person with the same circumstances as I am. Most of my problems are not so unique and there could be plenty of examples to emerge successfully. Sometimes that keeps me going.
"Something can be factually true but contextually nonsense."
This strikes me as the problem with most "news" organizations these days: They give facts about something that happened, but they place it in the context of their (the news organization's) narrative. This is true both of Fox and of CNN. And so they tell true things, but they don't tell the truth. Instead, they use true things to tell their story.
Behaviors and outcomes rarely change, but history is driven by surprising events...? I admit that this juxtaposition of the listed rules confuses me. The first part/rule would seem to indicate that history is driven by predictable, probable, or otherwise bell-curvy events.
The author may have been thinking along similar lines to Shaw's aphorism, which goes something like: The reasonable man changes himself to fit the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to change the world to fit himself; therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.
Civil rights movement was started by Rosa Park sitting on the bus. It was surprising big event. Most characters in that story kept going by same scripts as before, with only slight variations and only little bit of learning from previous experiences.
[+] [-] skmurphy|5 years ago|reply
Behavior is hard to fix. People say they’ve learned but they underestimate how much of their previous mistake was caused by emotions that will return when faced with the same circumstances.
Being good at something doesn’t promise rewards. It doesn’t even promise a compliment. What’s rewarded in the world is scarcity, so what matters is what you can do that other people are bad at.
People learn when they’re surprised. Not when they read the right answer, or are told they’re doing it wrong, but when their jaw hits the floor.
Most fields have only a few laws. Lots of theories, hunches, observations, ideas, trends, and rules. But laws--things that are always true, all the time--are rare.
[+] [-] gonzo41|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|5 years ago|reply
Scott Alexander over at SSC has a lovely phrasing for this rule applied at scale: society is fixed, biology is mutable.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolo...
The money quote from the middle of the post:
"See, my terrible lecture on ADHD suggested several reasons for the increasing prevalence of the disease. Of these I remember two: the spiritual desert of modern adolescence, and insufficient iron in the diet. And I remember thinking “Man, I hope it’s the iron one, because that seems a lot easier to fix.”"
[+] [-] narag|5 years ago|reply
When I've had the opportunity to talk with true experts in different fields, I was surprised to find that they tend to focus in very few factors, unlike books or other practitioners.
Wasn't Karate Kid training something like that? The master was only interested in a few exercises that were done doing repetitive tasks apparently unrelated to fight.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|5 years ago|reply
The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon their quick cooperation, their ready response to the commands of instinct or intelligence, their amicable community of purpose. Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men, with highly differentiated functions, no doubt, in our modern day of specialization, but with a common task and purpose. Their cooperation is indispensable, their warfare fatal. There can be no successful government without leadership or without the intimate, almost instinctive, coordination of the organs of life and action (pp. 56-57).
Original: http://www.garynorth.com/public/12711.cfm
https://www.loc.gov/item/08017752/
[+] [-] terr-dav|5 years ago|reply
In response to Wilson, I’d argue that Marx’s work provides a better analytical framework for understanding government than Darwin though.
(;
[+] [-] larrik|5 years ago|reply
I mean, sure, but I'm pretty sure the median household income today is from 2 working adults, where 1955 and 1965 are a single working adult.
There's also purchasing power, which isn't touched on here. Yes, TVs and such are super cheap compared to that era, but owning a house is nearly out of reach for a family living off $62k/year. In 1955 and 1965 it was completely normal for a single-income family to own a home with a yard, etc.
[+] [-] isaacg|5 years ago|reply
Briefly checking my city, paying $140k for a house in my city is enough for a 3 bedroom detached house with a large yard, in the suburbs, with a 15 minute drive to downtown.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epidemian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] a_imho|5 years ago|reply
This is called Fundamental Attribution Error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
[+] [-] kubanczyk|5 years ago|reply
I took it as a quick opportunity to stop reading, since I wasn't surprised at any point.
But now I'm thinking: in the morning I found out that "la hoja" is "the sheet [of paper, etc]" in Spanish. How do I still know it in the afternoon if my jaw didn't meet the floor at any point?
[+] [-] jolmg|5 years ago|reply
It doesn't say people only learn when they're surprised.
[+] [-] mcamac|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auggierose|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2020/08/10
[1] https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2018/10/26
[+] [-] ThePadawan|5 years ago|reply
Thank you for putting them in that order!
[+] [-] alanfranz|5 years ago|reply
EDIT: it's broken on Firefox.
[+] [-] mkaic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umvi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FlyingSnake|5 years ago|reply
"Humans have paleolithic biology, medieveal institutes, and futuristic technology"
[+] [-] ribs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FeepingCreature|5 years ago|reply
Also because of cross-compensation. Sometimes talent can compensate for the lack of another skill, thus allowing the person to be worse at that other skill and still succeed.
[+] [-] ribs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZephyrBlu|5 years ago|reply
A lot of these are intuitive or things I've experienced/seen before, but I've never seen them formalized.
My favourite three, though I think almost all of them are great:
- The person who tells the most compelling story wins. Not the best idea. Just the story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads.
- Henry Luce said, “Show me a man who thinks he’s objective and I’ll show you a man who’s deceiving himself.” People see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and view the world through the lens of their own unique life experiences.
- Simple explanations are appealing even when they’re wrong. “It’s complicated” isn’t persuasive even when it’s right.
[+] [-] alexpetralia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karl11|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|5 years ago|reply
Also, the things you or they want don't have to be right.
Take software choices.
Their users all got their own reason why they prefer one over the other and all could be wrong.
Which leads us to another rule.
"Logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe"
If everyone of them can be doing things for the wrong reason; arguing if their choice does or does not support their reasoning doesn't help.
[+] [-] _def|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 3pt14159|5 years ago|reply
> Self-interest is the most powerful force in the world. Which can be great, because situations where everyone’s interests align are unstoppable; bad because people’s willingness to benefit themselves at the expense of others is so seductive.
No way. Self-interest is useful enough for day-to-day interactions, but for the stuff that truly matters it is not even in the top five.
Love, trust / faith, goodness, thoughtfulness, so many other things are more powerful that mere self-interest.
[+] [-] haskellandchill|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhayhegde|5 years ago|reply
I think about this multiple times in a day. Whenever I am presented with seemingly impossible tasks/deadlines, I ponder that the history must have witnessed atleast one person with the same circumstances as I am. Most of my problems are not so unique and there could be plenty of examples to emerge successfully. Sometimes that keeps me going.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|5 years ago|reply
This strikes me as the problem with most "news" organizations these days: They give facts about something that happened, but they place it in the context of their (the news organization's) narrative. This is true both of Fox and of CNN. And so they tell true things, but they don't tell the truth. Instead, they use true things to tell their story.
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themodelplumber|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdonis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watwut|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aliceryhl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexpetralia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexTWithBeard|5 years ago|reply
Seems to be an answer to a lot of social issues.