A young friend of mine had this to say a while back, when I suggested he use gender neutral pronouns in his writing. the gender thing. I thought a lot about it and came to the conclusion that it is okay to be biased in your writing. Me being a male, it is only natural for me to use ‘he’ more often than ‘she’. But the idea of flipping the roles1 seems interesting :) I’d keep that in mind. ...
Then be willing to look like an idiot. (Claude) Shannon had courage. Who else but a man with almost infinite courage would ever think of averaging over all random codes and expect the average code would be good? He knew what he was doing was important and pursued it intensely. Courage, or confidence, is a property to develop in yourself. Look at your successes, and pay less attention to failures than you are usually advised to do in the expression, “Learn from your mistakes”. While playing chess Shannon would often advance his queen boldly into the fray and say, “I ain’t scaird of nothing”. I learned to repeat it to myself when stuck, and at times it has enabled me to go on to a success. I deliberately copied a part of the style of a great scientist. The courage to continue is essential since great research often has long periods with no success and many discouragements. ...
Tim Cook’s entire commencement address to the MIT class of 2017 is lovely (with enough fluff), but this is the part that struck a nerve: Technology is capable of doing great things. But it doesn’t want to do great things. It doesn’t want anything. That part takes all of us. It takes our values and our commitment to our families and our neighbors and our communities. Our love of beauty and belief that all of our faiths are interconnected. Our decency. Our kindness. ...
Jeremy Andenberg, on the importance of Reading Plans: Creates room for mastery of a subject. This is perhaps my favorite part of having a reading plan. We’ve made the case multiple times here on Art of Manliness that everyone should strive to be “T-shaped”; that is, you should have a breadth of general knowledge, but also mastery in a single topic or subject or skill. Such mastery provides satisfaction and self-confidence in spades. ...
Like I wrote at the other place, I’ve been hugged and kissed and kicked, and taught and influenced and befriended and loved by so many of you! I would not be me, if it weren’t for you! It’s only grown truer with time. Even more love and gratitude!
“I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” — Charlie Munger That quote opens Shane’s post on the work required to hold an opinion, which remains one of the mental models I use most often. Which is why I had my ears and my mind open, when Shane began one of his latest posts with, “Trying to be perfect is a waste of time.” ...