If I could impart one lesson on politics or economics here it would be this simple one: Private monopolies are ALWAYS better than government monopolies because one is implicitly backed by a gun and the other could be taken down tomorrow by a dude with ambition.

You want praise from people who kick themselves every 15 minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves?

Or, the other translation:

The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius By Marcus Aurelius, Meric Casaubon

Credit or Influence? When it comes to the two, I’m not really sure it’s even a question. Because credit really, doesn’t mean anything. The people you’d be seeking it from–if the analogy stays true–are precisely the people who had to fight so hard to prove wrong. It seems almost comical then that the ultimate validation would be for them to finally endorse it. That doesn’t make any more right. All throughout school, I was one of the smartest kids in the room but people rarely knew it. Look at where I ended up for college. Normally, the standards or the incentives would keep me quiet. But sometimes, it’d get shown and everyone would see. And guess what? It didn’t make me feel any better and it certainly didn’t improve the quality of my work.

Normally, it just made me angry and disillusioned. It was like “Now, you’re our equal. Welcome.” What good does that do me? What good does it do anyone? Boyd is totally right. At some point, you’ll come to a crucial point in your life when you have to decide if you want to be someone that does stuff, or talk about doing stuff, if your goal is action and progress or credit and accolades. I decided a long time about which route I was going to take every time I came to that fork. It puts you at peace and it saves you from the slavery of other people. The first thing you learn when truly open your eyes and look at the world as it is, for what it is, is that the people who you seem so willing to tie your happiness or correctness too, are stupid, unexamined and hypocritical.

Source: Two really good posts on Credit vs Influence and Contrarians always losing.

I was thinking yesterday about subjects I’d like to learn about it. My thought process was if I was given a grant to study anything I wanted, what would I like to immerse myself in? And, what peculiar questions would it be cool to have answers to? These are some of the topics I came up with. If anyone has any reading on the topic, or wisdom to add, please do.

[*] The Philosopher’s Burden.

[*] It’s pretty easy to see how today the media blows things out of proportion and tends to overestimate the importance or significance of events or movements. Is history different? What are we missing? Who because they were media or social darlings got overvalued and what true mover has been ignored?

[*] The Psychology of Tattoos: What makes people get them? What separates the people who get one or two and the people who coat their body in them?

[*] Is there a fallacy about betting on people who have already been successful, even though probability would state that since success is rare, the likelihood of doing it twice is even more rare? [Sort of like the conjunction fallacy, I guess]

[*] Entrenched Player Dilemma. I know a little bit about this, but I’ve yet to find a really good write-up.

[*] From Dawkins: Was it possible to be an atheist in an informed way before 1859? Or was it just as speculative or without evidence as religion?

[*] Paternalism has disastrous results socially, economically and politically. The record of communist societies is objectively unsuccessful. What evolutionary tendency drives us to that time and time again? Why does the issue seem so clear to some people but intellectuals continue to insist optimistically that it will work?

[*] In The Gift of Fear, Gavin De Becker talks about how we subconsciously perceive threats to our safety and that if we were more in-tune with those feelings we could prevent it. What if that perspective is just the hindsight bias that we use instead of admitting how vulnerable we really are? I suspect that a lot of it is just a coping mechanism.

What would you like to learn about?