Category: Uncategorized

Remember this Martin: the conclusion of Walden is Stoic

I ran across this quote from Walden yesterday. It is the last line in the book:

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard times. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.”

Most people remember Walden for the escape to the woods, throw away busy life theme. But after two years on the pond his conclusion is you are where you are so love it. Don’t escape. Love it as it is. That is very stoic and fits with my experience.

Remember Martin: Ask open-ended questions

Read this in a blog today: “Asking open-ended questions encourages the person you’re conversing with to think critically and therefore to be more engaging because open-ended questions allow the respondent, not the asker, to control the response.” In my experience, I agree.

My favorite Open Ended questions:

“How did you…”

“In what ways…”

“Tell me about…”

“What’s it like…”

I used some of these on my 4 year old during facetime today. Instead of “how was school?” which tends to get a one word “good” or “bad”. I asked “Tell me about school today?” and got a very long story with drawing, lunch, snacks, dancing, etc.

DO THIS: read “A calendar of daily wisdom” from Tolstoy

Ryan Holiday recently mentioned an all but forgotten book from Tolstoy which the author claimed was really his culminating life’s work. A Calendar of Daily Wisdom is Tolstoys attempt to summarize the best advice he had read over his lifetime into a daily inspirational work that could share his version of how to live a good life from authors and thinkers around the world. He quotes from the likes of Kant, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, the Bible, the Koran, and event the Talmud. It is wide ranging and refreshing in how much similarity there are in the core ideas across cultures and time. While a bit heavy on the religious themes and invocation of faith in a higher power, it is clear that the goal of all philosophy and religion is to give is insight to live a good life NOW. I have added reading the days inspiration. From this to my morning routine and I recommend you do too.

Some selected quotes:

One of the key questions we face is whether our lives end after death. Whether we believe in eternity or not determines our actions. Therefore, it is crucial that we determine what is mortal in us, and what is eternal, and that we cherish those things eternal. Most people do exactly the opposite.—After BLAISE PASCAL

It is not the place we occupy which is important, but the direction in which we move.—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this knowledge is open to everyone. Leo Tolstoy

Answer the moral machine honestly

I just answered the Moral Machine self driving car scenarios and i did it honestly unlike it seems most respondents. This is one of the artifacts of surveys like this. The issue comes down to what reference point are you applying to your answer? When asked “moral dilemmas” most people try to answer what they think others want to hear, they take the “what if my answer were published in the New York Times?” Approach, typically choosing whatever is politically popular today. That is why in this survey the average respondent to the “protect passengers” questions are exactly in the middle. Indifferent. Yet is everyone really indifferent?

To combat this bias I took the purposeful approach of answering the question not as if were some theoretical car with theoretical people. I decided to answer as if it were my car with my family in it and I didn’t know the animals or pedestrians. That is the 99.9% real life scenario. When I buy a self driving car I want it to have variables that I can configure on these kinds of things. And I for one will set it to always protect me and my family. When researchers ask the question this way (your family in the car) they in fact find that there is a significant preference to protect the passengers.

When reading these kinds of survey results. Always ask yourself it the designers considered the frame of reference correctly and if you were in the car with your children would you answer differently

Martin talks to TA McCann about how to live to 200

My friend TA McCann just started a new podcast, How to Live to 200.  I was one of his first guests.  We talk about how I got sucked into the Biohacking world, some of the quantified ways I have gotten younger over the last year, and a few peeks into the crystal ball on upgrades coming down the pipe for the rest of us.