Same as Ever - By Morgan Housel
Change captures our attention because it's surprising and exciting. But the behaviors that never change are history's most powerful lessons, because they preview what to expect in the future.
Notes
Change captures our attention because it's surprising and exciting. But the behaviours that never change are history's most powerful lessons, because they preview what to expect in the future
It reminds me of The Lessons of History:
- Throughout history the nature of man has barely changed. The only difference is men have now more means to achieve their ends
- The minority with superior ability and power shaped the society and created the history as it is. The majority of those who lived or living simply act as the audience and followers.
- The silent majority, however, serve the purpose to maintain the order and stability of society and only allow the new ideas that are really thriving can be implemented.
If you know where we've been, you realize we have no idea where we're going
It is always the compounding effects from the trillions of events that lead to the chaos of prediction. It echoes the importance of having flexibility to deal with risk, but also the quote from The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life: "I don't know where we are going, but I know exactly how to get there". The first rule of a happy life is low expectations
See Arthur Brooks's From Strength to Strength and the similar point has been mentioned by Derek Sivers too. Our happiness can be considered as what we have divided by what we want. The higher the expectations, the higher we need to have to maintain our happiness.People who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you won't like
The most classic example is Elon Musk, who's incredibly good at innovation and product implementation, but also notoriously controversial in his daily speech and behaviours Stories are always more powerful than statistics
I think there are many interesting view points raised about the importance of telling a story well. On the other hand it will be a good reminder to ourselves to look at the facts instead of merely the framework/story: Some of the most important questions to ask yourself are: Who has the right answer, but I ignore because they're inarticulate? And what do I believe is true but is actually just good marketing?
A constant truth you see throughout history is that the biggest changes and the most important innovations don't happen when everyone is happy and things are going well. They tend to occur during, and after, a terrible event...
There's a wonderful story from Sum, which illustrates a world where people have succeeded in preventing dying:
Your fantasies have cursed your realities.
The end of death is the death of motivation.
Too much life, it turns out, is the opiate of the masses.
There is a noticeable decline in accomplishment.
People take more naps. There's no great rush.
A big thing to know about how people think is that progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist
I think the two forces of innovation and conservation - pushing and pulling - drive the world forward, but only the optimism powerful enough can overwhelm the pessimism (or conservation to maintain the status quo) and achieve its intended changes.So species rarely evolve to become perfect at anything because perfecting one skill comes at the expense of another skill that will eventually be critical to survival
Civil engineers always insist on having redundancies in different aspects of the construction, be it design or material or workmanship. The so called redundancy or lack of optimization provide a cushion for risks.Everything worth pursuing comes with a little pain. The trick is not minding that it hurts
As written in Meditations: The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.
I reckon that one of the unmentioned supernatural ability in most of the RPG games is that all the protagonists can take up any pain coming from events or training without hesitation or complaints (despite the scripts asking them to complain verbally). The ability to accept the price to be paid for success is not appreciated enough.There are no points awarded for difficulty
But it gives a disguise of control, effort and thoughtfulness. This is especially true for Chinese people as we value endurance and the ability to deal with hardship. Bill Gates says he "will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it", and he has a point. If we don't buy a bread for 100 dollars to make it more delicious, why do we have to pass the finishing line with a stunt? An important component of human behaviour is that people who've had different experiences than you will think differently than you do. They'll have different goals, outlooks, wishes, and values. So most debates are not actual disagreements; they're people with different experiences talking over each other.
This may be a bit irrelevant, but I read a tweet few years back by @yishan (https://x.com/yishan/status/1348550436215689218) on how systems are developed in a path-dependent manner. Everyone has his/her/its own history and we will have to take this into account to understand our differences.