The joy of reading old books

We are tempted to only read new books. Books on the NY Times best seller list, if you are American.

But consider reading old books. Books that have been around for some time. That have proven their value and are still being recommended.

Not necessarily Greek Philosophers, but also books like Moby Dick (from 1851), One Hundred years of Solitude (1967), Catcher in the Rye (1945), Catch-22 (1961), Alice in Wonderland (1862), The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Meditations (ok that’s old – 170-180 AD), Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979), On Writing (2000), Maus (written 1980-1991), Antifragile (2012).

On Antifragile, the approach to read old books probably much aligns with Nassim Taleb’s conviction to prefer grandmother’s wisdom over the opinions of self-appointed intelligentia. And also take the Lindy effect into account, and you are ensured you can enjoy the read much longer.

Thought of humility for modern day “geniuses” (video)

… genius isn’t the result of the great men that Carlyle proposed. Instead, the genius stands atop the shoulders of those that came before, whose small incremental advances led to the genius’ breakthrough.

…

It’s not brilliance, it’s simply progress “obtained naturally and cumulatively as a consequence of hard work, directed by intuition, literature, and a bit of luck.”

Thought of humility for modern day “geniuses”

… genius isn’t the result of the great men that Carlyle proposed. Instead, the genius stands atop the shoulders of those that came before, whose small incremental advances led to the genius’ breakthrough.

…

It’s not brilliance, it’s simply progress “obtained naturally and cumulatively as a consequence of hard work, directed by intuition, literature, and a bit of luck.”

Taylor Pearson’s illegible margin

Taylor Pearson wrote a great article on the limits and dangers of rationalizing complex phenomena, and the opportunities of illegible ‘fat tail’ margins.

Some other gold nuggets in the article:

  • The joy of reading (and logic of preferring) old books.
  • Follow fingerspitzelgefühl – grandmother’s wisdom, Nassim Taleb, would say instead of modernist rationalizations.
  • A tinkering budget (low downside, high upside) for the things we are exploring that are hard to see.

Push

Reminder to self. Push this one thing, every day. At least once every day. Do this year after year. Long form, short form, that does not matter. It is the consistency that builds the thing.

Pronoia

Pronoia, just learned about this word.

… a person suffering from paranoia feels that persons or entities are conspiring against them, a person experiencing pronoia feels that the world around them conspires to do them good.

Happy suffering.

Kevin Kelly: eight uncopyable values

From Kevin Kelly’s essay in Change This: Better Than Free, eight things that are better than free, eight uncopyable values. Kelly calls these “generatives”, qualities that must grow through cultivation.

Immediacy

Personalization

Interpretation

Authenticity

Accessibility

Embodiment (music is free, a performance expensive)

Patronage (audiences want to pay creators)

Findability (creators need aggregators, which is why publishers, studios, and labels (psL) will never disappear; not for distribution, but for finding audiences and refine attention).

In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

Save time

Free after Seth Godin:

Don’t watch television

Don’t go to meetings

Instead:

Look at the blank space beween you and the future.

What is high leverage work.

(versus what crappy task is there only to keep you from doing the real work).

How to change a habit

Not mine, but from James Clear:

Start (very) small)

Increase in very small ways – 1% better every step

Break habits into chunks

When you slip, get back on track immediately (don’t let the slippage become a habit). Don’t Miss Twice.

Be patient. Stick to your pace. It is not the last sentence that finished the novel.

To think you have to be two persons

To think you have to be two persons (or more) at the same time. And you have to disagree with yourself (make sure the one person thinks up ways to justify the opinion of the second person). You have to tolerate conflict, negotiate, compromise. Adjust your thinking.

More importantly, you must not only question your own opinion, but you have to ignore the public opinion.

(After Jordan Peterson)