The Modern Fable

  The article is aimed at understanding how information impacts us as is evident from the line ‘Information, as such, may be morally neutral but it is certainly not inactive.’ This article also signifies how we protect ourselves from information that may oppose our beliefs and how we tend to exclude alien perceptions. Through the characters in J.K. Huysmans’ Against Nature, we see Des Esseintes who only surrounds himself with things that reaffirm his beliefs. He wished to remove himself from seeing humans toiling in Paris between four walls or trying to scrounge for money. He populated his new habitation with things he admired. His style of living was conserved but at the expense of losing contact with the outside world. This is just an example of how people eclipse certain aspects of the chaotic universe to generate moments of calm in an otherwise confused existence. This tendency is manifested in certain disorders such as sensory aphasia, amnesia neuroses and schizophrenia. At ...

Key Takeaways from https://open.spotify.com/episode/4gPwo9WxbqrbVd1cp422La 1. Perfectionism comes in the way when there is no higher goal than the result. 2. When charge into the fear, it gets smaller. When we avoid the fear, it gets bigger. When unsure on how to make a decision, try dynamic evaluation of your weaknesses and work to minimize them. Dynamic evaluation: work on your weaknesses to keep moving forward. It will signal you to the person you want to become.  Two paths to success: Meritorious: traveled by many, gives the illusion of certainty, mediocrity, highly competitive Power system: undefined path that pushes you to work outside the lines. When we're young, sometimes we can get the intuition that an unlikely path would lead to our personal success. That is the path we should undertake. Driven by instincts, taking risks. Get in the habit of systematically taking risks. Don't seek permission.  Try to interview different types of people to expand your horizon. T...

Takeaways from Talk with Yuval Noah Harari at Google 1. The future cannot be predicted but to have a fruitful education, we need to focus on emotional intelligence and mental stability as throughout our careers, we will have to reinvent ourselves. 2. Why is democracy at risk? Randomness and probability is not free will. Our choices are free but our will depends on biological, social and cultural factors. So our choices are not independent but are dependent on a million other factors. Corporations have access to what is happening inside us, better than we understand ourselves using the technology merging artificial intelligence and biotechnology. We don't necessarily give them permission, yet they can still access that information. AI would not be as revolutionary if biology hadn't existed. A self-driving car is useful only when there are humans it needs to assess psychologically.  Although, there is a dystopian negative view surrounding AI, it has tremendous opportunities in se...

Takeaways from The Knowledge Podcast with Naval Ravikant Buying books is not an expense but an investment, as they can change your life in a meaningful way. It might be better to read blogs than self-help which are centred around a central idea. Books can be treated as a blog archive and you can jump around to which section you need to know rather than read the whole thing. Best things to read are the books, articles and threads you're excited to read. Don't read for social approval. Returns in life come from being out of the herd. Our moods, depression levels and lifestyle are a result of our habits. They don't define us. We can ask ourselves, 'is this habit making me happy? Is taking me where I want to go?' Habits can be broken. Puberty is the age of desire. This is when we start thinking about what we want and our ego comes into play. We start to separate ourselves from living in the moment to attaching ourselves to mental images of our identity in the world. ...

Here are a few takeaways from the8 Interview with Pippa Grange, on the Dare to Lead podcast by Brenè Brown : 1. We need to learn to surrender to the journey to truly enjoy it, instead of learning to control it. 2. Two fears are highlighted in our lives: fear of death and fear of abandonment: which is translated as fear of rejection and not being good enough.  3. Instead of human beings performing, we have become performative which means that we don't know how to not perform. The nagging pressure to perform takes away from who we are. It produces anxiety as our lives are commodified.  4. Fear of not being good enough has its upsides: it may drive you and keep you focused but its down sides are quite significant: the anxiety it produces makes us lose our mindfulness, conviction and courage. Its a lazy tool for motivation. 5. Failure is hard to get over when our performance is tied with our self-worth. Your results are just an outcome, they are not who you are.  6. Shallow w...