Some things I’ve learned from real or fictional people I admire.
From Arnold Schwarzenegger I learned the virtue of hard work and positive self-belief; that you can achieve your goals as long as you can visualize the path towards them clearly enough and apply consistent and intelligent effort in that direction.
From Richard Feynman: the joy of finding things out, to try to understand the truth about a thing and not to settle merely for its surface attributes.
From Carl Sagan: to look to the stars and from that vantage point, to look back at us on this pale blue dot; to be humbled in the face of our insignificance, yet inspired by the fact that we can give meaning to the universe.
From Warren Buffet: that you shouldn't invest in things you don't understand.
From Steven Pinker: that human progress is real, that the world is a better place than most people presume, and that we can learn what drives that progress.
From Sam Harris: what it means to be rational, the evils of dogma whether ideological or religious. That you can meditate and contemplate your existence without believing in anything supernatural. That we don’t have free will, and that this insight should make us more ethical, not less.
From Benjamin Franklin: what it means to be a true polymath, how to be serious in your pursuits but retain your curiosity, childishness, and quirkiness.
From Elon Musk: to reason from first principles and to think big; that fun is a good enough reason to do something, and that you can accomplish very hard things as long as it excites you.
From Jean Luc Picard (Star Trek): what it means to be a good leader; that you can be humble yet steadfast, flexible yet principled, visionary yet practical.
From Steve Jobs: the power of a clear vision of what you want to create, and the transcendent impact of stories. That you can stretch the definition of what is possible if you push yourself and your teammates and set a high bar of achievement.
From Christopher Hitchens: the virtue of thinking and writing clearly, to call out bullshit when you see it, and that the grave holds plenty time for silence.
From Peter Thiel: that if you want to build something valuable you need to discover a secret about the world that few people believe in right now; that there's often something insightful to gathered from an unconventional narrative, but that it's not enough to be contrarian, you must also be contrarian and right.
From Spiderman (Marvel): that it's always possible to do the right thing, that you can make a difference just helping one person at a time.
From Jocko Willink: to take (extreme) ownership of your mistakes, that every good leadership trait is dichotomous. The virtues of getting up early, and that when you think you can't take it anymore you always have a little left in the tank.
From Tyrion Lannister (Game of Thrones): that small people can have a big impact on the world, the power of humor and wits, the pleasures of good wine and good conversation.
From Paul Graham: how to write simply, how to work hard, how to choose the right ideas and work on the right things.
From Tyler Cowen: what it means to be truly well-read on a wide range of topics.
From Marcus Aurelius: to worry about what you can control and let go of the things that you can't. To keep your ego in check given that in the large scheme of things, no one will probably remember who you are a few decades or centuries from now. But that this is also a cause for relief since it should lead you to take your problems less seriously, and enjoy the things that you can.
The Shape of our History
Summarizing world history into a 250-page book is not an easy feat, yet that's what Scott Powell tries to do in his book “The history of Now”. He approaches the subject through a "present-centric" method, meaning that he starts with what the world looks like today and then tries to map out the major world events that have lead to this current moment (the book was published in 2018). The book fits into the category of so-called "big history". It's a different take on the subject, and I think it's a useful and interesting approach. Compared to more narrow history books, its lessons enable you to shine a new light on current world events and their deeper causes.
At a sophisticated level of awareness, historical knowledge can be a powerful tool. The most important outcomes history makes possible are: philosophical reasoning and historical prediction. To reason about human life as such requires a broad range of examples from different contexts from which one can induce general truths and to which one can refer in the validation of one’s thinking. The lessons of history are among the most powerful building blocks in this type of reasoning. In addition, when one understands history, one can plot its trajectory, both in general, and in specific cases.
Starting with how the world looks like today means starting with the fact of the supremacy of the United States of America in world affairs. So how did the world come to be this way? What caused America to take this position and what's now causing it to recede more and more from its "Americanistic" style of world policing, and perhaps more pertinently, what will the be consequences of this?
In order to paint a picture of our history - literally - Powell uses various line diagrams that visualize key events in world history starting from a few thousand years BC until the present. To avoid getting bogged down in largely insignificant events or inconsequential tracks of history, he's chosen to outline the progression of the major world powers or regions: the US, Europe, Russia, Middle East, and China. That's really all that matters in terms of world history if you're trying to understand why the world looks like it does today. The timelines look something like this:
Although he builds a larger and more complex map of our shared history throughout the book, connecting various regions and countries together over time as their histories intertwine, the starting point has a few key dates for each of the historical tracks:
The founding of the United States in 1776, which is a result of the "discovery" of the Americas in 1492 by Columbus. Columbus, of course, was a European.
The birth of Europe (and its collection of disjointed nation-states) happened in 476 AD with the invasion of Rome by the Germanic ruler Odavacar, deposing the last Roman emperor Romulus Agustus.
But European and western history has its roots in Ancient Greece starting in ~508 BC with the birth of democracy in Athens by a legislator called Cleisthenes.
Modern Russian history can be said to have started in ~862 AD with the founding of a nation called the Kievan Rus, by a Viking conqueror named Rurik, whose descendants merged with the Slavs. Russia is partly European but also quite distinct from it, most notably due to its long isolation from other European peoples until just a few hundred years ago.
The "modern" Middle East had its start after the founding of Islam by the prophet Muhammed in ~622 AD and spread aggressively throughout the region, all the way to eastern Europe and Southeast Asia during the next decades to hundreds of years.
Yet the Middle East and the pre-Islamic nations sometimes called the "cradle of civilizations" can be traced back to the birth of Ancient Egypt by a semi-mythical emperor called Menes (or Narmer) ~3000 BC.
Tying all these four major blocks of the world together, of course, is the birth of Jesus Christ and Christianity in 4 AD (he probably wasn't born in year 1).
Separate from the rest of the world but still very consequential is Chinese history, which as you can see from the thick line in the diagram, has a long united history of emperors and dynasties starting ~2200 BC with the Xia dynasty (or perhaps even earlier).
With these starting points, he then tries to explain the various regions' current predicament. The rise of the West and America, and the rest of the world's "subordinacy to the West" and the natural opposition to this subordinacy.
"Post-communist Russia"; why did Russia not integrate with the rest of the world/the West after the fall of the Soviet Union? "Post-Maoist China"; how is it that China has reemerged as a strong power after decades of poverty and even centuries of relative obscurity? "Supranationalist Europe"; why did Europe with its long history of inter-national warfare and conflict manage to come together under a common union (which had been attempted and failed many times since the fall of the Roman Empire)? "Islamic Culture in the America-centric age"; how is it that these two cultures collided so violently in the past few decades? (Hint: it's not because the US tried to "take all their oil.")
So where do South America, India, and other cultures/nations of the world fit into this picture? It's not that they are uninteresting or unimportant, but that when you're trying to understand the current state of the world (and America's supremacy in it), these other histories are just not very consequential. In other words, the history of these nations as separate tracks of history don't have a lot of explanatory power or don't add enough detail to the overall history of the 5 major powers or blocks, that isn't already accounted for therein.
Nevertheless, I doubt a Chinese historian would ever write a book on world history like this. And I can't help but assume that there's some sort of natural bias that creeps in throughout Powell's analysis. Perhaps this is more of an American-centric history than a present-centric history? In any case, I find his general arguments convincing and helpful in understanding the larger trends of world history.
Another reviewer of the book said that this is like the 80/20 approach to history, which is exactly right. There are so many different kinds of stories, events, and narratives that make up human history from the past ~5000 years, but in reality, only a handful of cultures have made a really broad and consistent impact on the history leading up to the present. Understanding these broad trends and memorizing a few key anchor dates of history (2200 BC, 508 BC, 476 AD, 622 AD, 1492 AD, 1776 AD, etc) is a very useful way of making sense of the world.
People don't panic, leaders do
It's commonly assumed that information that could lead people to become fearful must be withheld from the public during disaster scenarios in order to prevent widespread panic. The thinking is that people just "can't handle the truth". But this idea is almost entirely a myth. In fact, the opposite is probably true, which is evident from decades of both research and careful observation.
In disaster scenarios, shared fear and suffering create “an intimate group solidarity among the survivors.” When the world suddenly falls apart, people do not grow more selfish, violent, or irrational, but more altruistic, caring, and calm.
Many governments around the world attempted to play down the risk of the pandemic in early 2020. And when it was undoubtedly upon us, they tried to convince everyone that masks don't work, even though there was plenty of good reasons to assume that they do. All this in the name of avoiding panic, “bank runs”, and similar social contagions. To be sure, these phenomena are real, but they're rarely as disastrous and long-lived as leaders and "elites" assume. Instead, a distrust of the public and even going so far as to lie to them only breeds an equal or stronger distrust back at the elites, which is the real problem.
One reason this myth has persisted despite decades of evidence to the contrary is that narratives of panic are a useful crutch for leaders under pressure. By projecting their own insecurities onto the masses they lead, elites find a ready scapegoat for their own failings. A leader who does not measure up to the demands of disaster will find it easier to blame the crowd for panic than accept the crowd’s harsh judgments on his own performance.
What would have happened if the people in power and the media admitted to the gravity of the situation, the dangers involved, but also trusted that people would largely come together to deal with the problem if only they were given the right information at the right time?
As the world discovered in 2020, perception management only goes so far. If disaster blooms into catastrophe, governing elites focused on panic prevention find their disaster response effort suddenly dependent on the very public they are frightened of. What is needed then is honesty and leadership. Leaders then have no choice but to rely on, assist, and lead the uncoordinated, self-directed efforts of the masses. What these efforts need to succeed is information and good strategy—and the trust that they will use this information well.
Maybe it's not that bad
Speaking of lessons from history. Our current times are often portrayed as a time of economic stagnation and a pessimistic future outlook, but looking at that broader trend of history we can see how recent economic down-turns are really just small hiccups within a much stronger and longer-lasting upwards growth trend. Let's hope it continues.
Autonomous cars are much safer than you think
How China’s economy works
The Chinese economic growth spurt of the recent decades is often portrayed as somewhat of a miracle. But as Professor Chenggang Xu explains, China started from such a low level of prosperity (and extreme poverty) that its recent growth is more like a fast catch-up than an economic miracle. Nevertheless, China has created a system where local governments essentially compete in what’s best described as a tournament in which every county, city, or province try to produce the highest GDP, and get rewarded based on their achievements. This means that although China is totalitarian, its governance is also administratively decentralized in the sense that local governments have a lot of impact on their own economic development (which was not the case in Soviet Russia).
You can build muscle even as you age
Getting older doesn’t mean you can’t build or retain any muscle. The research clearly shows that we can keep building muscle well into old age, up into our 80s. In this podcast, fitness coach Tom MacCormick answers the following questions:
Why do we lose muscle and strength as we age?
That this rate of decay in physical capacity is not inevitable.
How you can keep gaining strength and muscle mass up to your 60s.
Here’s another good article on the topic by researcher Menno Henselmans.
Drake - Started from the bottom
Per aspera, ad astra.
/Phil