Ideas that keep coming back

“...and when their loved ones died, a believer would arise beside the grave to be the Speaker for the Dead, and say what the dead one would have said, but with full candor, hiding no faults and pretending no virtues … A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate ... there were many who decided that their life was worthwhile enough, despite their errors, that when they died a Speaker should tell the truth for them.” – Speaking for the dead by

Orson Scott Card

You don’t have a brain with a body, you have a body with a brain – via conversation of

Andrew Huberman

and

Ido Portal

I want to be as publicly vulnerable as possible, because I want to broadcast acceptance towards others. –

Aella

As in, one of the first times I felt deep acceptance from someone else was when I watched them name an unflattering thing about themselves with openness and grace.

Don’t look what people are saying. Look what people are doing.

We seem to be so important that it breaks our minds and makes us wonder if the universe is real – Michael Vassar

Let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you –

Paul Graham

Ours is the era of inadequate AI alignment theory. Any other facts about this era are relatively unimportant –

Eliezer Yudkowsky

The truth doesn’t lie in the middle, truth lies where it lies (original in Polish: Prawda nie leży pośrodku, prawda leży tam, gdzie leży”) – Władysław Bartoszewski

You’re like the Catholics who are trying to get into heaven by being good enough

Start where you are –

Pema Chödrön

Locate an animal, mimic its expression and movement for two minutes. If there are no other lives around, observe an object and be it for two minutes. Do it regularly –

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

via

Hans Urlich Obrist

After all, the future is quite meaningless and unimportant unless sooner or later, it is going to become present. Thus to plan for future which is not going to become present is hardly more absurd than to plan for future which, when it comes to me, will find me “absent”, looking fixedly over its shoulder instead of its face –

Allan Watts

The world can never own a man who wants nothing – Wu Hsin via

Naval Ravikant

Trusted third parties are security holes – Nick Szabo in crypto context

Life's work is like building castles from the sand or painting pictures on the water –

Naval Ravikant

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I’ve also come to believe in the complete and utter insignificance of the self, and I think that helps a lot. For example, if you thought you were the most important thing in the universe, then you would have to bend the entire universe to your will ...

However, if you view yourself as a bacteria or an amoeba or if you view all of your works as writing on water or building castles in the sand, then you have no expectation from how life should actually be. Life is just the way it is. Then you accept that and you have no cause to be happy or unhappy. Those things almost don’t apply.

What you’re left with in that neutral state is not neutrality ... This is the existence that little children live. If you look at little children, on balance, they’re generally pretty happy because they are really immersed into the environment and the moment without any thought of how it should be given their personal preferences and desires. ... One can be very happy as long as one isn’t too caught up in their own heads.

Take part –

Paweł Althamer

If you hesitate become a participant

You are something the whole universe is doing –

Allan Watts

I suspend judgement – Montaigne via

Anthony Bourdain

In times of interpersonal conflict, make the choice that will leave you more equanimous (internally calm) –

Naval Ravikant

A secret of getting ahead is getting started.

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting 🏅 –

A. J. Jacobs

Don't focus on outputs. Focus on inputs. And then score will take care of itself – Bill Walsh

Everything is on the spectrum of love. Everything can be explained by identifying where it lies on the spectrum of love

Love is the most important force in the universe –

Michael Pollan

Michael came to this realization on one of his psychedelic trips. Can love be the most foundational force that organizes our reality? One thing is to realize how cliche this sounds, another is to actually feel that this might be true. Pollan says that we are all guarding ourselves with irony and are trying to sound smart. His psychedelic trip helped him drop all of this and be able to realize the love principle in a clearer way. Anyway, there where a lot of songs, poems that were stating the same sentiment for centuries.

It's a lot harder to create something constructive than destructive. First was dynamite then was a combustion engine. First was the atomic bomb, then was a nuclear electricity plant. In order to make something constructive one need to make it safe, control many moving parts, sync a variety of processes together. 🏅 ~

Naval Ravikant

via

Rob Reid Show

Three Buddhist marks of existence: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, suffering – via

Sam Harris

If fixing or saving and trying to rescue [other people] is futile, radical self-care is quantum and it radiates out from you into the atmosphere. Like a little fresh air. It’s a huge gift to the world. One people say: isn’t she full of herself? – just smile obliquely like Monalisa and make both of you a nice cup of tea. Being full of affection to self-goofy, self-centered, cranky, annoying self is home. Is where world piece begins –

Anne Lamott

, Bird by Bird

Why the Internet startup can compete with a huge companies? It’s analogous to charter plane going into the cloud. A pilot cannot see anything. It’s not that they have a radar. It's just the space is so vast that the crash with other plane is highly unlikely. 🏅 ~

Paul Graham

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand – Jim Kwik on

Kevin Rose Show

It’s more important not to improve how you play on a good day, but to find a way to play slightly better on a bad day ~ Alex Ferguson, a highly successful coach of Manchester United

What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days –

Kevin Kelly

If for you cannot do what you asked yourself to do for a long time you are probably not a good kindergarten teacher to yourself. Our brain is ancient. It's sub–divided in many ancient, animalistic parts. In order to be a functional human being you need treat yourself like a kindergarten teacher controlling a group of children. 🏅🏅🏅 –

Tim Urban

, via message on Patreon

We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are 🏅🏅🏅 – Anaïs Nin

I wake up every day thinking that I don’t understand. How to live in a world that I don’t understand? 🏅🏅 ~

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

99% of all effort is wasted. Focus on 1% 🏅 –

Naval Ravikant

from Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

Wisdom is just covering blind spots in one's mental model map of knowledge 🏅🏅 ~

Charlie Munger

Eighty or ninety important mental models will carry about 90 percent of the freight in making you a worldly wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight. 🏅🏅 ~

Charlie Munger

Find source of the discipline, study for the rest of your life –

Naval Ravikant

Focus on important, neglected, and tractable – Open Philanthropy project

We see and hear alerts about grilling, cooking, frying, baking. Those who are alerting, are quoting studies done on rats and mice ... People started cooking at least a million years ago ... People tolerate foods, that animal don’t. Animals in their natural habitats didn't eat grilled food, and therefore it is harmful to them 🏅 – Udo Polmer link

We live in a society where incentives are such, that large companies spend vast fortunes basically manipulating you to believe that it is really important to buy crap that you don’t need and that isn’t actually benefiting you … Children act often much more compassionate, and are much more likely to think: Wow! There are children just like me on the other side of the world that we can easily help! And it’s crucial that we do that ... We don’t realize that because advertising distorts so significantly what we think good life consists of 🏅 –

Will MacAskill

on Sam Harris's podcast

In primatology, when we talk about primates, almost everything is viewed through a perspective of a hierarchy in the group. In social sciences, when we talk about humans, hierarchy is rarely ever mentioned🏅🏅🏅 ~

Frans de Wall

The more you know, the easier is to know more 🏅

Muscle radiation. When you tighten your fist your forearm gets tightened. When you do it stronger your bicep gets tightened. When you do it as strongest as you can, you arm, parts of back and neck get tightened. ~ Charles Poliquin, on

Tim Ferriss Show