Essays
We give advice all the time. And when we’re not busy dishing out our very own seemingly sweet words of wisdom, we search for it in gurus, friends, family, books, and religion. Advice-giving is not just a multi-billion dollar business either. It’s impact permeates everything from simple day-to-day
Excerpts
Here’s a message I sent to my private mailing list today. I haven’t blogged in a while so I thought I’d share something. If you like it, you can join over 100 other people (or 144 to be exact) who receive an email from me once a
Essays
In 1942 Howard Hughes set out to build the world’s largest aircraft, the Hughes H-4 Hercules. With a wingspan close to 100 meters and a weight of 180,000 kilograms, it was questionable whether the gigantic bird would ever take off. The Hughes H-4 Hercules – 2 Nov 1947 What’
Excerpts
“But the problem is that most things look trivial if we look at them the wrong (or perhaps right) way, and everything is ephemeral. It’s vanity, for instance, to think that having a best-selling book or winning a literary prize is not ephemeral. Given the fickleness of taste and
Excerpts
In 2015 I took on the challenge of reading 53 books (roughly one title a week). After completing the marathon, I came to appreciate a few points about the process: 1. Each book is a catalyst for growth: you can learn something new, challenge old beliefs, and perhaps even, dare
Short
I fell into writing accidentally. In fact I never really started reading books seriously until age 20 or so (though I ordered my first non-fiction on book on Amazon aged 18 – it was Plato). From age 20, I started reading books on a range of non-fiction on topics. Here’s
Wisdom
Plato and Aristotle (source) Reductio ad absurdum is Latin for ‘reduction to absurdity’ – a method of reasoning that originates from classical Greek philosophy. Its use is common in debates, philosophy, and in formal mathematics (where it is referred to as proof by contradiction). Consider the examples below: Example 1: Is
Excerpts
Predictably Irrational “In 210 BC, a Chinese commander named Xiang Yu led his troops across the Yangtze River to attack the army of the Qin (Ch’in) dynasty. Pausing on the banks of the river for the night, his troops awakened in the morning to find, to their horror, that
Wisdom
Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream – New York, New York (photo credit: Martin Adolfsson) In statistics, confounding is when things are mixed up to the point of confusion, such that it is difficult to determine what causes what. Why is this a concept you should care about? Consider the following textbook
Excerpts
After receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, Max Planck went on tour across Germany. Wherever he was invited, he delivered the same lecture on new quantum mechanics. Over time, his chauffeur grew to know it by heart: “It has to be boring giving the same speech each time,
Excerpts
“But just as the human body didn’t evolve to deal well with today’s easy access to abundant fat and sugars, and will crave an extra cheeseburger when it shouldn’t, the human mind, apparently, didn’t evolve to deal with excess money, and will desire more long after
Excerpts
“Indeed, while experiences and information can be good teachers, there are many times in life where we simply cannot afford to learn on the job. You don’t want to have to go through multiple marriages to learn how to be a good spouse. Or wait until your last child