The pandemic offers a moment ripe for “creative destruction."
Tag: future
Network Privacy, Future Self & Procrastination, Saving Money, and Your Children (28m) – Episode 030
Episode 030 looks at being careful with what you send and do on your workplace computer; doing favors now for your future self; avoiding procrastination by committing to giving the task just 10 minutes, and seeing where that goes; the importance of saving money; spending minimalistically versus lavishly; and why it’s a good idea to love our kids for who they are instead of what we want them to do.
Show Your Qualities & The Dimension of “Should” (17m) – Episode 029
Episode 029 looks at two Stoic topics: the first from Marcus Aurelius who wrote, “People aren’t in awe of your sharp mind? So be it. But you have many other qualities you can’t claim to have been deprived of at birth. Display then those qualities in your own power: honesty, dignity, endurance, chastity, contentment, frugality, kindness, freedom, persistence, avoiding gossip, and magnanimity.”; and the second from r/Stoicism, a post by mussel_bouy who started off with, “There is a dimension. A dimension not of sight or sound but of mind. It is both in the future and past but never the present. It has no physical location but for many of us, we live there. It is ‘the dimension of should’.”
Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty, Part Six (25m) – Episode 385
Episode 385 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following aphorisms written by Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski: “A fool believes that the market makes profits corrupting. A person of reason knows that it makes corruption unprofitable.”; “A democratic state is a device for feeding off society by pitting it against itself.”; “A fool finds intolerable the inequality of wealth between the capitalist and the laborer. A person of reason finds intolerable the inequality of rights between the state and the individual.”; “Happiness is the ability to stay intrinsically motivated to exist.”; “Aesthetic maturity is the ability to deliberately ignore the fashionable without turning it into a fashion statement.”; “A successful prediction is a mental journey to the least impossible of the future worlds.”
Back-To-School 2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Parents face a mixed bag of innovation, regulation, and tyrannical invasions.
Public Choice: The Normative Core
The economic analysis of politics goes by many names: political economy, rational choice theory, formal political theory, social choice, economics of governance, endogenous policy theory, and public choice. Each of these labels picks out a subtly different intellectual tradition. Each tradition expands our understanding of the world. My favorite, though, remains public choice.
Dangerous Followers
I don’t need a president, so I don’t support presidential candidates. However, from observation, I have a suspicion about the future based on how I expect the followers of those candidates to behave in case of a loss. Or a “win”.
China’s Dark Turn
A country that was once making strides toward freedom slides further into oppression and authoritarianism.
The Right To Opt Out of “Progress”
In order for “progress” to be worthwhile, it must meet some requirements. One of those requirements is testability – there must be a control group against which to test the claims of progress. Another is consent – it shouldn’t have to rely on forced adoption.
Let’s Adapt to Something Positive
Humans are adaptable. More so than any creature other than, possibly, cockroaches. It’s our greatest strength. We have adapted to living almost everywhere on the planet and, soon, with the right technology — an adaptation we’ve created — off-planet, too. We’ve adapted to a different diet than our ancestors ate. In some cases, we probably…