From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Whatever you are going through, could lead you to something even better. You cannot often control what happens to you- but you can control your response to it. In a way, serendipity is about taking agency over your life more!
It's ironic. You would assume that when you go in to compete in a sport like mixed martial arts, you'd want to wind yourself up, get angry, get mad, and get fired up... When you're angry, you're in a frantic state of mind, you are not the best version of yourself. When you're fighting the very best martial artists on the planet, you cannot react out of emotion. You have to be cool, calm, collected and in the moment.
the distinguishing characteristic of humanity is our awareness that death is inevitable and the disinclination to accept that fact. Very simply, Becker says that we're just like all other creatures- we want to survive- but the difference is that we're able to do it using our vast intelligence. We can imagine things that don't exist and make them real.
Have you ever read Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power? One of the laws is 'discover every man's thumbscrew,' which means that every person has something that matters deeply to them. I think you can approach this not from a negative perspective, but a positive one: to understand the 'good guys,' the 'bad guys,' and everyone in between. Why do they do what they do? As a journalist, the best way to uncover that is to listen—authentically.
The first thing we can notice is how much trouble we could cause if we act like we don't matter and cease to take care of ourselves, and the people around us.
The 'Doomers' often anthropomorphize computers by attributing human characteristics to them. Humans have evolved their competitive nature and occasional violent impulses from survival in a world marked by resource scarcity and competition. Computers, on the other hand, have emerged from a vastly different evolutionary path. Thus, to say a computer 'wants to eat your lunch' leans heavily into projecting human traits onto machines.
The measurement that we have is not derived from market or economic data. It is derived from the twitterverse- from all these individual users acting as social sensors. When I have a bad day, that has nothing to do with the market! But how I respond to that bad day may be a reflection of a general level of discomfort about how the economy is doing and so forth.
Stories help us to develop cognitive flexibility, strengthen our epistemic muscles. It is an intellectual growth but also a spiritual one. It changes us deep inside. Stories rehumanize those who have been dehumanized.
Once you land, it's total excitement, 'I'm on the Moon!' – you're bubbling with enthusiasm like a little kid on holiday.
Emotions are like the reward (or punishment) the brain gives us for getting what we need, want, or could be harmed by.
Social media was kind-of created to destroy humanity, in a literal sense. The first notion of the implications of such networks was provided by B. F. Skinner who spoke of the dangers of people who- on networks- were too free, too creative and too uncontrolled.
A particular individual trait that has piqued my interest through research is intellectual humility. Embracing the possibility of being wrong enhances