The Last Commandment

A story is told of a Buddhist monk who wouldn’t drift from his meditation. The Mephistophelean figure who was disturbing him tried every trick in the book. He threatened him with terrible death and tried to cajole him by promising him riches but this monk wouldn’t move an inch. The devil then had a clever […]

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell

There are several themes in this book that are similar to those put forward in Black Rednecks and White Liberals by the same Thomas Sowell. I was tempted to discuss the two books together but I decided against it in the end as some points I will be considering will be more specific to this […]

THE NECESSITY OF DATA

Have you ever waited on someone for what you thought were hours till he reminded you that you have only been waiting for fifteen minutes ? This is why having a way of checking what you believe is important. We can be fooled into unnecessary exaggeration, and in other times underestimation. I propose that the […]

THE LOVE OF BUREAUCRACY

This is an observation I have made. People love bureaucracy. Most people like complicated things. They want to talk about nothing. I don’t mean small talk. I find no problem with small talk where we are all being silly, are happy and have a conversation with no clear goal. Rather, I am saying that people […]

THE GOOD BOY MENTALITY

I am uncomfortable about this title. I will be talking about a character trait I share. What does good boy even mean? I don’t like to think of myself as a good person, because thinking thus is proud, and one can never be humble enough. The second problem is connected with Cato’s position that he […]

BENEFITTING FROM EVERYTHING

I don’t want to be right; I want to win. I will explain. In Jim Paul’s book, What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, he talks about this commodity trader who was very successful with trades in green lumber. The trader, who was successful, thought that green lumber was lumber painted green, instead of freshly […]

THE SILVER RULE

The Silver Rule is a more robust version of the Golden Rule. As the Golden Rule says do unto others what you want others to do unto you, the Silver Rule states, do not do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you. These two rules are very similar, but different. How […]

How to be Virtuous but Non Boring

“It takes a lot of skills to be virtuous without being boring.”- Nicholas Nassim Taleb. I first came across this quote when I read Taleb’s book of Aphorisms, Bed of Procrustes. He has four other non-boring books he jointly calls the Incerto. You should check them out when you can. He is one of my […]