10,000 Thumbs

I struggled with elocution while recording this episode. One might think that *checking* people are good to their word, would be so obvious and intuitive that it would never require a heuristic to manage. Yet we allow ourselves to be disoriented by speech and thought frequently, get taken for a ride, and usually we are vulnerable to such bamboozlement because we forget to notice how other people actually behave. A fascinating video on corporate fraud can be found here.

I would have written a shorter episode if I only had the time. The Maxims of Francois de la Rochefoucauld (hear my struggle to pronounce it) provide this weeks heuristic, which I could reword as 'if they don't care, why should you?' damn. Why didn't I think of that sooner. I would have put it in the script. Anyway, I apply it in the context of the spotlight effect - we tend to think people are paying more attention to us than they are. In accurately perceiving how little others care, we can relax ourselves.

Nothing endures but change. In this episode dedicated to NBA All-Time Great Bill Russell, I get to compare the wisdom of Russell to that of Miyamoto Musashi my number one philosophical influence. Basically the more successful a strategy or tactic is, the more likely it's going to find that brick wall to bump up against one day. Just add time to any successful strategy and it will fail. Names dropped are Bill Russell, Miyamoto Musashi, I also invoke Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, but I'm not going to link to that because I don't understand it. Efficiency Market Theory (Which kind of contradicts "Assume Inefficiency" or Episode 4) and Say's Law come up and I promised a link to a simple explainer video and here it is. Lastly, I recommend reading 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There' by Marshall Goldsmith. All in under 12 minutes!

The Sagan Standard has been lauded as expressing the basis of the scientific method, but I don't know. I really like the sound of 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' but I'm just not clear on how to qualify claims and evidence as 'extraordinary'. This is my attempt to assume the burden of clarity and get a working patch out there. Also in the spirit of eating my own cooking, in this episode I make claims about the effectiveness of propaganda, for which I proffer 'Not Born Yesterday' by Hugo Mercier, see also the Influence of Mass Media.

Life is like one of those 'Keep your hand on the car' competitions, where you haven't succeeded until you not just regain your freedom of movement, but also win the car. Gee, that's more succinct than the episode.

Another heuristic for the sad indictment club, an indictment not just of humanity, but the times too. People excelling at the useless screams "SURPLUS" so perhaps it isn't all bad news. And speaking of surpluses I drop a surplus of references in this episode, here are some links: "Chmess" Dan Dennet's research article. "The 5 Types of Bullshit Jobs" with David Graeber. "We Live in an Unreal World" excerpt from "Hypernormalization" Adam Curtis Documentary. Chesterton's Fence. Prisoner's Dilemma. Sayre's Law. Parkinson's Law of Triviality/Bike Shedding. Whew. I should make note to do an episode on 'The Opposite of Success isn't Failure. It is namedropping.'...

Such a simple rule, why is it so hard to follow? And how did I manage to speak for almost 14 minutes on the subject? Personally I wish it were longer, given how rampant unprofessional conduct has become. Also worth checking out is Sam Harris' interview with Jason Fried Episode #253 of Making Sense: Corporate Courage for a lucid argument about activism in the workplace. Especially if you disagree.

My first review of any heuristics, and this review comes in a convenient three pack. Here I hope to expound the superiority, once again of proscriptive over prescriptive. The articles I used to research 'the platinum rule' is here.