My recent thoughts
Reading is gathering raw material, thinking is building
- Like building a house, to create new ideas, you need a) raw material and b) effort to craft something new.
- When coming up with new ideas, you can get raw material by reading (such as this newsletter, articles (e.g., Things Many People Find Too Obvious To Have Told You Already), and books (e.g., Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality).
- To craft new ideas, you then need to evaluate those ideas on your own. This is not an automatic process.
- I have fallen into the trap before of absorbing information without adding anything new.
- This can happen when you read a lot, but don't actually think about the ideas that you have read. As Schopenhauer said, "When we read someone else thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process".
- I have noticed this mindless absorption in the past when I have described an idea that I have read to a friend, and the friend has immediately pointed out an obvious problem. If I had actually thought about the idea on my own, rather than regurgitating it, I would have seen the obvious problem.
- My normal approaches in this crafting process are, in descending order of effectiveness: to write about those ideas, to talk with others, or to think alone without distraction.
- Principle: To come up with new ideas, a) expose yourself to new information, b) consciously think about that information.
Here is the full quote from Schopenhauer about reading. Somewhat ironically, I think reading it is very worthwhile:
When we read someone else thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process .… Accordingly, in reading, we are for the most part absolved of the work of thinking….
Just as a coiled spring finally loses its elasticity through the sustained pressure of a foreign body, so too the mind loses power by the constant force of other people’s thoughts.
Avoid being cynical, even if you are right most of the time.
Sturgeon’s law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap."
- Regarding new ideas, the investor variant of Sturgeon’s Law says that 90% of new things will fail.
- This means that if you predict every new thing will fail, you will be right 90% of the time.
- But, being cynical means you will miss the 10% of new ideas that succeed, and which might be very important.
- Principle: Avoid cynicism. When someone suggests a new idea, think how the idea could work, rather than how the idea could fail.
Lost social networks
- I deleted my social networks at around 21. I am glad that I did this.1 But deleting social networks severed many connections with people that I met throughout my childhood and teenagehood.
- A social network's connective benefits are great. Having an active connection to someone makes it so much easier to speak. Like with this newsletter, anyone can message me anytime with less worry about reaching out to someone who you haven’t spoken to for a long time.
- So, imagine if you had a simple social network - a sort of online phone book - that allowed you to speak easily to anyone that you had ever met. Maybe this would be something similar to Telegram.
- This new social network would focus on encouraging conversations, rather than creating a personal brand with pictures, or eating your time with an infinite news feed.
Outro
"The point of elections isn’t to produce the one best leader, it’s to keep politicians scared enough of the voters that they don’t go completely evil" (Quote from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality)
- I finished reading 'Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality' yesterday. It is an epic (1,980 pages) that I read feverishly over the past two weeks. My multiple 6+ hour reading sessions show how engaging I found it. It is funny, has a good story, and contains lessons on how to think more clearly throughout. You might love it.
- I hope that you are having a super week :)
Tom
Besides being very distracting, the current global social networks (primarily Facebook and Instagram) harm you. They create social norms and expectations, and implant those expectations into you. Facebook's own research shows that Instagram harms teenagers’ minds.
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