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It was literally true that my mother had taught her children that emotion should play a major role in making decisions. That generally meant identifying wants a
by 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
It was literally true that my mother had taught her children that emotion should play a major role in making decisions. That generally meant identifying wants and then pursuing them, regardless of whether we should.
I led my life with that approach until I had an epiphany about 10 years ago. It was inspired by my exposure to 2 people[0].
Between 2009 and 2012, I encountered several people who were very smart, but expressed their intelligence in a different way than I was familiar with. One I met personally, the other through media (YouTube, etc.) I realized at one point that what they had in common was this: their explanations and reasoning were precisely sufficient. They expressed themselves with exactly the right amount of evidence, logical flow and correct reasoning such that virtually everything they claimed was unassailable. I found myself strongly attracted to this type of thinking and in a short time, started second guessing all of my analysis and decision making and discarding any points that were not clear thought. It wasn't just emotional wants that were discarded, but in many cases, incorrectness as well.
One area that benefited quite a bit from this was in my investments. The best performing investments I've made were executed since that epiphany.
[0] (I prefer not to name them, lest I be disregarded as a fanboy, but the clues are in the comment)
- hackingthenews 6y agoI honestly can't tell who you are talking about. And I really want to know...
- benjohnson 6y agoOne of the people he's referencing has become a political Rorschach test - people see what they want to see and don't actually look at what the picture is trying to convey.
- hackingthenews 6y agoNow I am even more interested, but still have no idea.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoBah. Don't fall for this kind of bullshit manipulation. > [0] (I prefer not to name them, lest I be disregarded as a fanboy, but the clues are in the comment) Cite your sources mate. If they had such a profound affect on you, surely you can link to something they've said or written as an example. But I'll bite: is it Eliezer Yudkowsky and Warren Buffett? Elon Musk and Steve Jobs? I want to get progressively more psychotic and unhinged as my guesses progress. Is it Slavoj Žižek and Donald Trump? Paul Graham and Richard Stallman? I don't believe in personalities. Wisdom is perishable.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoPaul Graham, Elon Musk. Buffett qualifies, not Jobs. It's not about personalities, take them or leave them. It's the way they convey their thinking when solving problems. YMMV.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoCouldn’t you have just said their names in the first instance? Are you now also going to point us to some examples of why you think these two are good candidates?
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoI don't have time to find the better examples, but this is one Musk has talked about for many years: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/why-elon-musk-wants-his-employees-to-use-a-strategy-called-first-principles.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/why-elon-musk-wants-his-empl... What's interesting, and I didn't know this until I scanned this article, is that Reed Hastings also uses a First Principles approach. I mentioned my stock picks got better. I bought TSLA in 2012 and NFLX in 2013. For Paul Graham, his body of essays is a great source for how he thinks through problem solving in general, and he takes on more than just science or tech related topics: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html Since you mentioned Warren Buffet, any of his annual shareholder letters is a good source: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html He's a sample from 2009: "From the start, Charlie and I have believed in having a rational and unbending standard for measuring what we have – or have not – accomplished. That keeps us from the temptation of seeing where the arrow of performance lands and then painting the bull’s eye around it."
- toyg 6y agoOne is likely Jordan Peterson.