Ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Stephen Goforth
Some professors argue that they don’t want to hear their students talk about a subject because they don’t know enough… But I always think of piano teachers; they would never keep their students away from the keyboard simply because those pupils couldn’t yet play Mozart. Sure they have to endure a lot of bad notes, but they would never push someone off the bench and refuse to let them play until they somehow became better.
Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do
What is to give light must endure burning. -Viktor Frankl
My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour. -John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace” born August 4, 1725
"Although trust in science has important societal benefits, it is not a panacea that will protect people against misinformation. Spreaders of misinformation commonly reference science. Science communication cannot simply urge people to trust anything that references science, and instead should encourage people to learn about scientific methods and ways to critically engage with issues that involve scientific content." - study lead author Thomas O'Brien
From the abstract:
We identify two critical determinants of vulnerability to pseudoscience. First, participants who trust science are more likely to believe and disseminate false claims that contain scientific references than false claims that do not. Second, reminding participants of the value of critical evaluation reduces belief in false claims, whereas reminders of the value of trusting science do not. We conclude that trust in science, although desirable in many ways, makes people vulnerable to pseudoscience.
Read the study is here
The fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.
When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.
And who knows what might happen to you then?
Jonathan Franzen
Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we take our eyes off our goal. -Henry Ford (Born: July 30, 1863)
People give their own memories and experiences more credence than they deserve, making it hard to accept new ideas and theories. Psychologists call this quirk the availability bias. It’s a useful built-in shortcut when you need to make quick decisions and don’t have time to critically analyze lots of data, but it messes with your fact-checking skills.
Marc Zimmer writing in The Conversation
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. -Zig Ziglar
When polls have faltered in predicting the outcome of elections, we hear calls for more and better data. But, if more data isn’t always the answer, maybe we need instead to reassess our relationship with predictions—to accept that there are inevitable limits on what numbers can offer, and to stop expecting mathematical models on their own to carry us through times of uncertainty.
To recognize the limitations of a data-driven view of reality is not to downplay its might. It’s possible for two things to be true: for numbers to come up short before the nuances of reality, while also being the most powerful instrument we have when it comes to understanding that reality.
Hannah Fry writing in The New Yorker
Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. -Carl Jung (born July 26, 1875)
What gods were to the ancients at war, ideas are to us. –Lionel Trilling
Imagine you are offered a deal with your bank, where your money doubles every three days. If you invest just $1 today, roughly how long will it take for you to become a millionaire? Would it be a year? Six months? 100 days? The precise answer is 60 days from your initial investment, when your balance would be exactly $1,048,576. Within a further 30 days, you’d have earnt more than a billion. And by the end of the year, you’d have more than $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – an “undecillion” dollars.
If your estimates were way out, you are not alone. Many people consistently underestimate how fast the value increases – a mistake known as the “exponential growth bias.”
David Robson writing for the BBC
Never confuse motion with action. -Ernest Hemingway (born July 21, 1899)
When avoiding failure is a primary focus, the work isn’t just more stressful; it’s a lot harder to do. And over the long run, that mental strain takes a toll, resulting in less innovation and the experience of burnout. Ironically, allowing for mistakes to happen can elevate the quality of our performance. It’s true even within roles that don’t require creativity.
Ron Friedman, The Best Place to Work
When we force our truths and stories into hiding, secrets can become their own trauma, their own prison. -Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger
What people say about themselves does not matter; people will say anything. Look at what they have done; deeds do not lie. You must apply this logic to yourself. -Robert Greene
You have become acquainted with disappointments, broken dreams, and disillusionment. Crisis seems to be your closest companion. Like a ten-pound sledge, your heartache has been pounding you dangerously near desperation. Unless I miss my guess, negativism and cynicism have crept in. You see little hope around the corner. As one wag put it, "The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train." You are nodding in agreement, but probably not smiling. Life has become terribly unfunny.
Tired, stumbling, beaten, discouraged friend, taken heart! The Lord God can and will lift you up. No pit is so deep that he is not deeper still. No valley so dark that the light of His truth cannot penetrate.
Charles Swindoll, Encourage Me
We're hardwired to make blunders and avoiding them requires nearly superhuman discipline. Four tendencies conspire to sabotage our decisions at critical moments:
OVERCONFIDENCE.
We think we're smarter than we are, so we think the stocks we've chosen will deliver even when the market doesn't. When evidence contradicts us, we're blinded by...
CONFIRMATION BIAS.
We seek information that supports our actions and avoid information that doesn't. We interpret ambiguous evidence in our favor. We can cite an article that confirms our view but can't recall one that challenges it. Even when troubling evidence becomes unavoidable, we come up against...
STATUS QUO BIAS.
We like leaving things the way they are, even when doing so is objectively not the best course. Plenty of theories attempt to explain why, but the phenomenon is beyond dispute. And supposing we could somehow fight past these crippling biases, we'd still face the mother of all irrationalities in behavioral finance...
LOSS AVERSION (and its cousin, regret avoidance)
We hate losing more than we like winning, and we're terrified of doing something we'll regret. So we don't buy and sell when we should because maybe we'll realize a loss or miss out on a gain.
These tendencies are so deep-rooted that knowing all about them isn't nearly enough to extinguish them. The best we can do is wage lifelong war against them and hope to gain some ground.
Geoff Colvin writing in Fortune Magazine
Critical Race Theory defined—along with a brief introduction to its history and implications: Read it here.
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