Something weird has happened on Twitter. It used to be that there were very unreasonable corners of Twitter, but the bulk of my feed was people poking fun at them for this. Now I’m hard pressed to find any reasonable quarters of Twitter at all. And anyone poking fun is in danger of some serious social censure. It’s disconcerting.
Author: Isaac Morehouse
Isaac Morehouse is the founder and CEO of Praxis, an awesome startup apprenticeship program. He is dedicated to the relentless pursuit of freedom. He’s written some books, done some podcasting, and is always experimenting with self-directed living and learning. When he’s not with his wife and kids or building his company, he can be found smoking cigars, playing guitars, singing, reading, writing, getting angry watching sports teams from his home state of Michigan, or enjoying the beach.
Politics is Still Stupid
The combination of Public Choice theory, which explains how politics works and why it doesn’t, and understanding social change, plus lived experience of working in politics, policy, education, and finally entrepreneurship have made it abundantly clear to me that politics is at best a ridiculous spectator sport. At worst a terrible addiction that makes you an asshole and a moron all at once.
Is Nature Delicate or Resilient?
At any one snapshot of time, the balance is complex and apparently precarious. Big change can result from small changes. But when you unpause the scene and observe through time, the self-correcting and adaptive nature of the systems turns out to be a more powerful force than any insurgence at any single moment.
Fads and Phases
Here’s a little rule of thumb I use to navigate all the trends, buzzwords, advice, and expertise in the world: If it seems dumb or boring, ignore it.
Preemptive Wealth Management
Most people have trouble with financial management at the paycheck to paycheck level. More money doesn’t magically solve that. The problems just get bigger and the stakes higher.
The Source of Decisions vs. the Sequence of Decisions
In reality, only individuals can ever decide. Only individuals act. Individuals decide to listen to other individuals or ignore them. You can’t change this. To say, “Let the experts/government/market decide” is just a less clear way of saying, “Let individuals decide”. The thing that changes are the consequences and incentives for those individuals. What is really being debated is what happens after an individual decides.
Why Don’t We Spend More Time Preparing for Death?
Death denial is widespread. Not just stuff like preparing a will or getting life insurance or creating succession plans. Many people (though not as many as would seem prudent) do these. They kind of check them off the list then try to never think about it again. Like maybe if we don’t confront it, it won’t happen? But it will.
Playing Chess with the Market
I just talked to an entrepreneur friend of mine and he had a great phrase for what building a company is like.
The Benefits of My Evangelical Upbringing
I often wonder how people go about their lives acting on important core ideas and assumptions without seeming to have any interest in or feel any necessity to examine, define, and make logical sense of those ideas and assumptions. Being wrong is one thing. Being uninterested in examining tacit truth claims is another.
Crazy People Work on the Most Interesting Stuff
We know so very little about reality. We don’t even know what we don’t know, or whether what we know is actually true. And the most fundamental stuff – the nature and origin of the universe, our planet, our species, the basic rules of the physical strata, consciousness, death and beyond – is the stuff most of us spend the least time on. Except the crazy people. They live there.