Do you want a better life? The book Predictably Irrational is a great entry point to one, and to my philosophy. It’s also a great book in its own right — informative and well-written. From my perspective it’s a great gateway to how to live a better life. Its title describes its two-part thesis. First, humans react irrationally to many things. Using “irrational” this way presupposes a definition the book[…] Keep reading →

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 →

(copying my post to another board where I learned about the movie, slightly out of context) I saw the movie Gasland about fracking last night at Cooper Union and heard Josh Fox, the guy who created it, speak. I don’t recommend many movies, but I recommend this one. If you can talk to Josh Fox, all the better. I’ve since watched and read other web pages and videos. I don’t[…] 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 →

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 →