Friday, November 8, 2019

Politicians and dogs

Politicians are well-trained dogs. Our dog trainer once said that “dogs only do what they want to do.” By providing an attractive stimulus they will behave in ways that you want them to behave. Dogs like treats. Politicians like power and money. Politicians will only perform tricks for power or money. Want politicians to do something? Reach into your training pouch and bring out some power and money.

Patience

From “Bodhisattvacharyavatara” (A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life) by Shantideva. More on the guide

Whatever wholesome deeds, // Such as venerating the Buddhas, and generosity, // That have been amassed over a thousand aeons //Will all be destroyed in one moment of anger.

There is no evil like hatred, // And no fortitude like patience. // Thus I should strive in various ways // To meditate on patience.

The Wisdom of crowds. The Madness of crowds

Internet

One of the favourite mantras of the techno-optimist is that “the wisdom of crowds will save us.” That with a million collective inputs, we will find solutions that make the world a better place.

Is this true?

Why is it that wisdom and not madness is the state of crowds? There are too many examples of foolishness in crowds. I don’t think we can have the wisdom of crowds without their madness.

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Just this week, Facebook conferred trusted status on Breitbart, the Nazi lie-peddling rag. Facebook gladly accepts ad revenue from politicians like Trump and friends who purposely lie to pander to ignoramuses in their base. As Silverman points out, there is no longer any neutrality.
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Monthly report 2019-10-31

Habits

This month I worked very hard on re-establishing some important habits, including habit-tracking, that had lapsed after some setbacks. The stats are a little odd because I didn’t start tracking everything until sometime well into the month.

Habits

Russian

In an effort to complete the 10,000 word Brown Russian vocabulary list by the end of May 2020, I need to do at least 15 words a day. This month, I logged 395 new Russian words in Anki. These words are often, but not always accompanied by example sentences that I study in a separate deck. This month, I added an additional 348 new sentences and 83 new grammar cards.

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Rules of Self-Governance

Self-Improvement

I’m a big fan of David Cain’s raptitude.com. A post from 2017 entitled Wise people have rules for themselves is one that a come back to frequently.

In short, he makes the point that productive and consistent people don’t leave important (or even some trivial) aspects of their lives to chance. They create rules for themselves around certain behaviours and tasks. He also makes the point that others often attempt to undermine or discredit those who create rules for their own self-governance by labelling them as joyless, rigid, or overly competitive. Cain likens this to the “tall-poppy syndrome.” I had to look up that one.

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