Continuing this post that our access to reality is limited by our senses and our minds can’t comprehend it all, what then do we have in our minds? We form beliefs or mental models. What is a model? A model is a simplified representation of reality for a purpose. That previous post dealt with the ramifications of models being simplified — that they are all flawed. If they are all[…] Keep reading →
The following statement has become a personal guideline since I first came up with it. It’s served me well. Don’t look for blame but take responsibility for making things better to the extent you can. You can always find someone to blame if you want. Blame is fundamentally about the past, which you can’t change, and judgmental, which repels people. But the main issue is that when you blame someone[…] Keep reading →
Want a liberating concept? Our brains and senses are limited. Our ancestors didn’t evolve minds to understand everything or senses to sense everything. They evolved them to navigate their environments enough to propagate their genes. That’s it. The ones that could had children eventually resulting in us. The ones that couldn’t didn’t. Limited senses mean we have limited access to the universe. The observable universe stretches for tens of billions[…] Keep reading →
When you think of deciding, do you think of going toward the choice you decide on? I tend to and I think most others do too. But if deciding is about going toward something we like, why can it be so hard? The –cide in decide is the same -cide as in pesticide, homicide, and suicide — from Latin, meaning cut or kill. However much we think about deciding as[…] Keep reading →
Everyone has something to say about the environment, the economy, and ecology. People believe in human caused global warming or they don’t, but they have something to say about it. They believe improving the environment will ruin the economy or save it or something. Everyone has something to say. One major trend I see is based on the interests of the source. If the person speaking comes from the business[…] Keep reading →
An incredibly useful perspective in some half-baked notes to a friend. I’ll develop them more in future posts. Feedback and criticism appreciated. — You wrote about lying as an example of a “bad trait”. I’d like to suggest another perspective (generalizable from just lying to other aspects of apparent lack of empathy): that the reason people communicate is not to convey truths. Evaluating people according to truths and lies holds[…] Keep reading →