.@chrysb and I talk about longevity.
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“If we extend lifespan, the greatest challenge is going to be boredom because the pattern seems to be that when you're young, you're amused by very short-term games. You're amused by playing soap bubbles or Legos that are right in front of you and have no longer-term meaning.
And then you go into video games and board games that might last you for days or weeks. And then you go into playing social games that might last you for months or even years.
And you go into college and work and you play building company and career games and you play mating games that might last you a decade. And then you have children.
You play the children game and that might last you several decades. And then you play the meditation and spirituality game and that might last you for many, many decades until you die.
But if you have a lifespan measured in the hundreds and thousands of years, you're going to have to play really long-term games to hold your interest. And I'm not even sure what those games look like.
Obviously, they're open-ended. Obviously, they're infinite and non-existent.
But if you have a lifespan measured in the hundreds and thousands of years, but almost any game becomes boring. So the challenge for any creature sufficiently long-lived is what game to play that I haven't yet seen through and that will last me till the end of days.”
“Every time people talk about longevity, I think about this. Not as well articulated as you just laid everything out, but I think that sums it about right.
Eventually I'm like, well, what am I gonna do? You know, you're aging.
You will age out of trends. You will age out of your friends.
They might pass away if you're living longer than everybody. So, I think longevity is just a path to loneliness in the end.
So rather than trying to live longer, why not try to live more and put more in the years that you have? After my daughter was born recently, it was the first time I felt like I actually did want to live longer because I wanted to see her grow.
And I want to see her grow into a mature adult, and I don't want to leave the world too early to see that. But that's really the only thing that's got me motivated to stay alive longer now.”
“I wouldn't want you to take what I said as an argument against longevity. Longevity and health span are good goals, and everybody wants to live longer and healthier. It's always going to be your choice of how you want to spend that time.
And yeah, eventually you may end up just a Buddhist monk meditating, or you may end up loving and enjoying every moment, or you might just take on longer and longer term goals. I just think the nature of the game that you're playing will change towards much more infinite games than finite games, to use James Carse’s terminology. And it should just be your choice.
So I'm very, very pro-longevity. I'm just pointing out that there are these looping games that we play in life, and as you live longer and longer, the nature of these games are going to change, and you're going to get tired of certain games, until perhaps you see through the game entirely. But even then, I'll take the choice of health and lifespan over old age and death.”
Keanu Reeves once said:
"I’m at the stage in life where I stay out of arguments. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun."
Here are 9 things I learned from him:
This is Matthew Walker.
He’s the best sleep scientist of the 21st century.
His message? The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.
Here's his evidence-backed protocol for getting high-quality sleep every single night:
That's because this dude doesn't know what education is.
He speaks of growing wheat, herding sheep, riding a horse, and so on, but in the era of these skills, this was the kind of education given to slaves.
Only a slave, a person who was owned as property, and used as a machine for a task, could be expected to do one task for his whole life.
A gentleman, or even a freeman of the lower classes, was not a machine for labor, but a person who could be expected to act in his own interests, and thus would need to do many different things throughout his life, depending on what served his goals at the time.
And he would need to be able to independently learn these tasks, rather than needing to be taught them in childhood.
Therefore if a boy was to formally educated, that might include some of gentleman's skills (riding, fighting with a sword, the management of finances), but his education was centered around what education really meant:
A fundamental grounding in how to live and thrive as an independent and free-willed person.
Thus, he was taught the seven liberal arts of classical antiquity:
- Arithmetic
- Geometry
- Music
- Astronomy
- Grammar
- Logic
- Rhetoric
These were not trade skills in the sense that they did not enable the performance of any particular trade or task, but that wasn't the point.
The point was that they taught the young gentleman how to think and learn.
By contrast, modern government schools were founded to train clerks and factory workers at public expense... a servant class with the specific skills necessary to be useful workers, but not the general education to be independent or question their betters?
Have you noticed which two of these arts are utterly absent from a modern government-school "education"?
That's right, logic and rhetoric. Logic is how to arrive at true conclusions from known facts. Rhetoric is how to persuade.
A servant educated in logic might notice that the things he is being told are false. A servant educated in rhetoric might notice the techniques that are being used to persuade him to act in the rulers' interests instead of his own.
If you conceive of your children's education as training in career skills, whether that be growing rice or programming a computer, you are preparing them to be slaves, not free men.
If you properly prepare them to be free men, what skills will be lucrative or useful twenty years from now is irrelevant, because they will be prepared to learn them.
In my opinion, the seven liberal arts of the modern world are:
- Logic: how to derive truth from known facts
- Statistics: how to understand the implications of data
- Rhetoric: how to persuade, and spot persuasion tactics
- Research: how to gather information on an unknown subject
- (Practical) Psychology: how to discern and understand the true motives of others
- Investment: how to manage and grow existing assets
- Agency: how to make decisions about what course to pursue, and proactively take action to pursue it.
Notice that you didn't learn any of these things in school, even if you went to a so-called "liberal arts" college. Instead, they taught you things about mitochondria and calculus and symbolism in Jon Steinbeck novels where a boy has a dog, and the dog dies.
That's because liberal arts, whether you define them as I have, or slightly differently, are the arts of the master, the arts that make one a master, and therefore not be taught in a school for slaves.
Worry less about which "career skills" AI will take over, and more about whether you are training to be, and training your kids to be, high-agency, perceptive, self-motivated people who can navigate an unknowable future with an adaptable mind.
Equality under the law turned into equality of opportunity, which turned into equality of outcome, which is turning into eliminating equality under the law.
Charlie Munger spent a lifetime studying why humans make horrible decisions.
The result?
A list of 25 of the most powerful psychological tendencies known to man.
If you want to avoid bad decisions, here are 25 nuggets worth your time 🧵
In 6 years of YouTube, the most common question I still get from my viewers is “how are you so productive?”
So here’s a thread of 15 actionable tips that help me do more of the things that matter to me, without burning out.
My conversation with Professor David Deutsch.
His work combines the theories of knowledge, computation, evolution, and physics, to form the deepest current explanation of humans and their unique role in the universe.
https://t.co/C4JvvmhP02
https://t.co/MO59iYEEBU
Either create wealth or a passive income, or become a monk, or do what you love more than money.
What remains is taming the mind and the body, seeking truth, creating love and art.
The world has nothing to offer you.
And you are free.