Golf: an activity that was banned in Sparta for “mollifying” its practitioners.
Category: The Bed of Procrustes
An observation that people who live permanently in an adoptive country tend to progressively generalize the bad and particularize the good, that is, attribute the bad traits in people they encounter to the national trait of the natives, and the good things to the individual. This holds equally well for French people living in the U.S. as it does for Americans living in France.
Watching soccer (football) is punishingly boring unless you root for one side. *** (Without an emotional draw it is literally impossible to follow the game.)
“Never debate the ignorant in front of the uninformed: the crowd can’t tell who won the argument”. Syrian Proverb (It makes so much sense but I wish I was aware of it before engaging Larry Summers.) (This is the first aphorism here that is not mine.)
The most important aspect of fasting is that you feel deep undirected gratitude when you break the fast. — Every human should learn to read, write, respect the weak, disrespect the strong when warranted, and fast.
People are natural skeptics, but speak in shortcuts that seem categorical but are not; when they say “bureaucrats don’t have courage” they mean “a high percentage of bureaucrats don’t have courage”, which is why proverbs and aphorisms are heuristic and economical, held to be imperfect approximations. On the other hand, when an academic writes the overly hedged statement “it appears that under some conditions, there have been historically a high percentage of bureaucrats who did not prove have courage”, he generally truly believes that “all bureaucrats don’t have courage”. —- I am writing this because Aaron Haspel and I noticed that when I write the aphorism “most bureaucrats don’t have courage” it is transmitted and repreated in its shorter version: “bureaucrats don’t have courage”. Many of the nitpickers on the web are after the straw man of “generalization” when a heuristic is not categorical.
The Four Bs: Brain, Balls, Brawn, and Business Sense. — You can have 4 out of 4 (Thales), 3 out of 4 (Plato, who had poor practical sense), 2 out of 4 (most great scientists and great businesspersons), 1 out of 4 (the typical “incremental” modern academics, or people you tend to find in jail), or 0 out of 4 (journalists). (Exception for journalists who take personal risks, of course. Also the “balls” tends to be present in women at least as often as in men)
Real life (vita beata) is when your choices correspond to your duties and vice versa. — Question: Mr. Taleb, while you advocate “Less is More “, you also suggest”insert redundancies (excessive inventory, extra time) into one’s life”. How could the idea not contradict each other? Answer: Excellent question. We need to simplify the model (or theories/heuristics) and have more redundancies, rather than complicate the model (or theories/heuristics) and have more so-called “efficiencies”. Clear? #Facebook
Do not socialize with people much richer than you; but if you do, do it in your own territory (restaurants you can afford, wine, etc.) Nassim Nicholas Taleb The reason I am saying that is because I know of a few ultrarich people and avoid them. ALL of them lack the common sense to avoid discussing their private plane with me. — (Corollary) If you socialize with someone with a smaller bank account than yours, you are obligated to converse exactly as if you had the same means, eat in the places where he normally eats, at no point in time show the pictures of your vacation in Provence or anything that hints at the differential in means. #Facebook
Two very practical heuristics I picked up from Danny Kahneman 1. When positive, show net, when negative, show details. 2. Manipulate anchor to what did not happen rather than to what did happen.
