I Frequently Hear The Same Yearning Expressed In My Consulting Room – The Wish For The World To Disappear,

Glengarry Glen Ross is on Netflix, you should watch it a lot.  The easy "critique of capitalism" is that "second prize is a set of steak knives" because that's how little it costs to motivate you to work harder for them, and if that doesn't work there's always "third prize is you're fired."   But the real wisdom which is not about capitalism but which is about narcissism comes from understanding that first prize isn't a Cadillac Eldorado, you think Alec Baldwin needs a car?   There is no first prize.  Real closers don't want the prize, they want to be the best, that's why they will practice practice practice and don't play the lottery.  The car is a temptation only for people who do not know their own value, the value of their own work, who won't lift a finger to advance themselves, who are motivated only by threats or by rewards, who would rather have the appearance of success than actual success. "I got an article in the Times!"  celebrates the person whose brain is broken.  "Alec Baldwin's character is a raging narcissist!" Jesus are you stupid, Alec's name is MacGuffin, that's why he's in Act I and never again yet propels the story forward.  It is irrelevant whether Alec Baldwin has metal testicles or pathological grandiosity, what matters is that after years of C minus work, what finally gets those dummies fired up is First Prize or Third Prize, left to themselves they meander in mediocrity while deluding themselves that they are more than what they do. "I was number one in '87!"  So was Alf.

The Last Psychiatrist

The Appetizer for Fuzzy

"Bart Kosko, the leading proponent of fuzzy thinking, has degrees in philosophy, economics, mathematics and electrical engineering but even in his book there is a clear-cut thesis that ties all this complex thinking together: to explore the paradigm shift from black and white to gray, from bivalence and binary (either/or) thinking to multivalence, a less simplistic but more accurate way of thinking that responds to life in matters of degree, integrating probability and ambiguity in all modes of operation. (Kosko, Bart. Fuzzy Thinking. New York: Hyperion Press, 1993.)

Fuzzy thinking demands that you increase your options. What are all the possible things or events or conditions that could occur as you explore something? You must use your imagination much more actively than usual. Fuzzy thinking comes from fuzzy math sets in which endless possibilites have been explored. So to unite fuzzy thinking with traditional logic, you need to know more, feel more and think more exhaustively.

Perhaps the word "fuzzy" is misleading for undergraduates. Gratuitous ambiguity due to laziness is not the goal, but rather an inclusion of degree, probability and ambiguity in the formulation of structures that respond to phenomena. In other words it is harder and more intellectually demanding to engage in fuzzy thinking. Kosko has a thorough understanding of traditional logic and its fallacies as well as all the specific scientific applications of fuzzy thinking.

Traditional logic, with all its artificiality, is based on language, but the irony is that the flesh of language is our bodily experience, the cries and sighs and gurgles of needs and wants that slowly grow into more complex sounds that usually connote more than they denote. Nature constantly speaks a language that is homospatial and homotemporal, layered and nonlinear in space and time, and this language still resides in our subconscious world of dreams. While expository writing necessitates so-called logical, grammatically correct sentences that grow into coherent, well-developed paragraphs integrated by a thesis, this type of writing should not exclude the multivalent nature of experience, of our bodies, our dreams and our environments. Clarity in expository writing is important so you must redefine words in the context in which you are using them but it's okay to struggle with solutions, to end with answers and to obfuscate a cause-effect relationship with a provocative "what if?" "

- Julia L. Keefer

The main response by the authors in defense is that genetic diversity is a ‘proxy variable.’ This is a common assertion, but I find it really infuriating. I happen to drink coffee most days, which correlates with my happiness. So coffee consumption is a ‘proxy’ for my happiness. Therefore, I can put it in a regression and predict the relationship between my happiness and the amount of times I go to the bathroom. Ergo universal conclusions: ‘Relieving yourself improves mental well-being.’ New policy— you should relieve yourself at least two times per day in order to maintain high levels of emotional well-being.

Kyle Peyton Regarding this controversy.

You'll never read the following obituary: "Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He finished life in 186th place."

Charles Wheelan (or anybody, really)

The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.

Roald Dahl

It is not possible deliberately to create ideas or to control their creation. When a difficulty stimulates the mind, suggested solutions just automatically spring into the consciousness. The variety and quality of the suggestions are functions of how well prepared our mind is by past experience and education pertinent to the particular problem. What we can do deliberately is to prepare our minds in this way, voluntarily direct our thoughts to a certain problem, hold attention on that problem and appraise the various suggestions thrown up by the subconscious mind. The intellectual element in thinking is, Dewey says, what we do with the suggestions after they arise. Other things being equal, the greater our store of knowledge, the more likely it is that significant combinations will be thrown up. Furthermore, original combinations are more likely to come into being if there is available a breadth of knowledge extending into related or even distant branches of knowledge.

- W.I.B. Beveridge 

What I really object to... is that there is a rhetoric out there of trying to convince people that they’re insufficient and that everything should be the private property of a small number of people for this reason when in fact, if it was really the case that those few people were so important, and great, and powerful, they wouldn’t need to have all this rhetoric to convince other people of it. People would just see it, they would get it. If there were really a few X-Men floating around, it would be manifest to everyone. In fact, those X-Men wouldn’t even need everyone else. They would do the Atlas Shrugged thing like go off, do whatever you want, and have no connection to the outside world. If you’re really that great, just do it, and stop bitching, and trying to convince everybody else that they’re inadequate, and stupid, and useless, and that you’re the elite. Fine. That doesn’t bother anyone if you want to go do that, but don’t take as private property all the stuff that was produced in this society that we created. Go off on your own with nothing into the forest and build this great Atlantis that you’re capable of doing, and that no one else can do. Great. Honestly, if there were a bunch of X-Men, they would do that. They wouldn’t bother with everyone else. They’d just go off into outer space and do their own thing. That’s not what’s actually going on. What’s actually going on is that there’s this elite of people who’s trying to use rhetoric to dominate others, and to take the collective work that others have done, and expropriate it to themselves. I think that’s nonsense.

Glen Weyl Radical Institutional Rerforms Podcast on 80,000 Hours

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