Thoughts of The Week #52

Thoughts of the Week is a review of the most interesting thoughts I encountered on Twitter and on other mediums during the last week.

1/5: Freedom

“Most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it.” – Paul Graham (link)

Optionality has value, but some of us sacrifice a great deal for it – delaying the construction of stable relationships, for example. A lesson I learned too late: optionality is best when paid in cash rather than in relationships.

“When the story of the modern research university transformation is finally told, it will become clear that almost everyone with “academic freedom” refused to use it. ” – Eric Weinstein (link)

“You say you want freedom, but who is imprisoning you?” – Zen_FI (link)

Paraphrasing Seth Godin, we are birds in search of a cage.

2/5: News

“News has been replaced with views on news.” – The Scorpion Philosopher, via Naval Ravikant (link)

The first cause is the move of newspapers to the internet – they need polarizing views to convince people to subscribe.

The second cause is the availability of data points – the more data points, the more regressions (aka narratives) can be fitted.

The third cause is, I believe, the asymmetry of feedback visibility. People post a tweet and an essay. Those who like it a lot like / retweet / subscribe. Those who are indifferent do nothing. And of those who don’t like it, most have “invisible” reactions such as ignoring or unfollowing. The result: a reinforcement of polarized views.

3/5: Opportunities

“Take advantage of opportunities, NEVER of people.” – Ase Deliri (link)

There are many reasons to do that, but the most important one is probably that it will get you to work with people rather than against them. You get to compound both on opportunities and on relationships.

4/5: Unhappiness

“If you “know” why you are unhappy, and yet you remain unhappy, perhaps you ought to examine whether or not you truly know.” – James Pierce (link)

I don’t think this is fully true – something, we know what has to be done, we just don’t have enough positive emotional associations with it to take action – but in a lot of cases, it is true. At least it’s worth giving it a thought.

5/5: Personality

“Most people are good when they are among the good. Observe them in the company of scoundrels and you will find out if they are moral or merely conformist.” – @TheStoicEmperor (link)

Values are downstream incentives, I used to say, but also downstream local culture.

Sometimes, values determine what we do; other times, what we do determines our values. It goes both ways.

CORONAVIRUS:

During the last week, I wrote three essays, two of them related to the Coronavirus. Here they are:

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(Here is my general disclaimer.)

Quotes are edited for punctuation and grammar. Eventual formatting is mine. Also text outside of italicized quotation marks is mine. The inclusion of quotes does not imply my endorsement; merely, that they gave me food for thought. I did not optimize this review for clarity, but for its ability to spark thoughts in the reader.