Book Summary: You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh

Posted on May 18, 2018May 25, 2018

You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Essence

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, distills the core Buddhist teachings and practices all in under 200 pages. Observing the presence of everything in this world is only ever truly recognized when we first become present of ourselves. Thich Nhat Hanh stresses the importance of mindfulness as the main instrument at our disposal in the art of living and provides us with techniques for cultivating mindfulness in our own lives. All the while he is able to share lessons in Metta, non-self, impermanence, and emptiness—all of which are imperative to Buddhist teachings. Simply written, this short piece is an elegant yet practical reminder of the power and relevance of Buddhist thought in each of our seemingly independent subjective realities.

You Are Here Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of You Are Here Thich Nhat Hanh. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

You can become a torch shining out enlightenment and compassion, not just on those who are near to you, but on the whole society in which you live. This reminds me of the power of intentional living. If i exemplify everything I stand for, I am more then just a change for those around me, I represent a force in the shift towards a societal adjustment towards equanimity.
The Essence of the Buddha’s Teaching
1. Impermanence
2. Non-self
3. Nirvana
‘This body is not me, I am not caught in this body. I am life without boundaries. I have never been born, and I shall never die.’
The true nature of a thing is not being born, and not dying. Birth and death are nothing more than concepts.
Do not fear death. Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey.
The idea of being and nonbeing have to be rejected. These notions do not apply to reality. We are always in a state of existence. The idea of a dualism just does not appropriately relate as a model for understanding reality as we live it.
Learning to die is a very profound practice. Far too often people are attached to the idea that deaths seal is something to fear. But Why? Is it the uncertainty? Uncertainty revolves all around us. We have no evidence that the fading of the individual identity we have created is somehow the eradication of consciousness. Embrace the mortality, once you learn to die life has no limits.
There is only manifestation and non-manifestation; existence and non-existence are just concepts. I am still learning to understand this. Yet perhaps the lesson isn’t to conceptually understand, but embrace the lesson for its paradoxical nature and accept it for what it is.
BE AWARE:
1. Of the suffering caused by the destruction of life.
2. Of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression.
3. Of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct.
4. Of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others.
5. Of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption.
Live in the present moment with full awareness; this is the only way to deal with insecurity, fear, and suffering without any regrets.
Conflict and suffering tend to be caused by a person not wanting to surrender his concepts and ideas of things. We become trapped in our mental representations of the world. It is through these static models that the world begins to not make any sense. But it is, and never was, that the world didn’t make any sense—it’s always your representation. We must begin to allow our view of the world to become fluid. For it is only through this fluidity that we can embrace the changing landscape for what it is and not want we want it to be.
“Beginning a new means being determined not to repeat the negative thing we have done in the past. When we vow to ourselves, I am determined not to behave as I did in the past, transformation occurs immediately.”

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in You Are Here.

1. A Gradual Awakening by Stephen Levine

2. The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh

3. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audiobook

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52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: The Book by Alan Watts

Posted on May 11, 2018May 25, 2018

The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts

The Essence

Alan Watts is one of the pioneers for interpreting and popularizing Eastern philosophy towards a Western audience. In The Book Watts addresses one of the core assumption in Eastern thought; that the self or ego that we create and identify as a separate being does not really exist. A mind-altering experience on every page, the illusion of separateness we attach to is identified as the problem, and a solution to our ego trip is offered. Since forcibly ignoring the self only strengthens its influence, we must embrace it, learn so much about it that our new found self-consciousness makes its influence blatant—we gain control with awareness. By accepting our condition—craving for categorization—we can begin to monitor how we create these imitation realities and modify our conscious experience to embrace our relationship with the universe—everything is interconnected, it is all one. You’ll gonna want to read Watts book a few times, an existential manual of this caliber is timeless and profoundly insightful.

The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

Our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing — with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.”
To Know IT you must understand that you cannot understand it. This sounds like epistemological modesty to me. “The universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game… there is never anything to be gained —through the zest of the game is to pretend that there is. Anyone who brags about knowing this doesn’t understand it, for he is only using the theory as a trick to maintain his illusion of separateness.”
Wiggly Universe: Everything is a big wiggle. They wiggle so much and in so many different ways that one can really make out where one wiggle begins and another ends whether it be in space or time.
No matter how much we divide, count, sort, or classify the wiggle into particular things, this is nothing more than a method for thinking about the world; Nothing Is Actually Ever Divided.
“Just as nothing or organism exists on its own, it does not act on its own. The total interrelationship between all things.
On Change: The more it changes, the more it is same. Change is in some ways an illusion, for we are always at a point of uncertainty where any future can occur.
America’s reputation for materialism is unfounded… Pleasures are not material but symbols for pleasure—attractively packaged, but inferior in content.
Wandering… the best way to discover surprise and marvels. Watts see this as the only real reason to not stay home.
“The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East.”
To define is to limit. The words we use in language are limits to the magnificence that is our preymbolic The boundaries we set on the boundless make it impossible to properly define things like the universe.
Attention: “an intentional, unapologetic discriminator”. Attention is a narrowed perception. Like a scanning mechanism, it is a flashlight in the darkroom that narrows our perception. While a narrowed perception is great for being sharp, it can only focus on one area at a time.
Life is a system of geological and biological cooperation. But man continues to separate himself, as though he is the only subject among a world of objects—such dualist thinking is a neurosis.
Two Factors are ignored:
1. Not realizing that so-called opposites are poles of the same thing. Things like light and darkness, sound and silence, solid and space cannot be without one another.
2. We are absorbed in conscious attention, convinced that this narrowed perception is the only real way of seeing the world. Further, we view the self-sensations as what makes ‘I’ a conscious being—we are hypnotized by this disjointed vision of the universe.
“The individual is separate from his universal environment only in name. When this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name. Confusing names with nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being. This is — rather literally — to be spellbound.”
Memories overtime convinces you that ‘I’ is real—they are actually one of the key parts of the ego-sensation. It gives an impression of a self, the executive, as something that remains constant as life changes—as if our conscious selves were a static mirror reflecting a fixed perception.

As a bonus, here's Alan Watts speaking about some of the topics discussed in his TV series (Thats right, we has insightful enoguh to give a live TV show).

Here's a link to all the episodes of Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life.

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in the book.

1. The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts

2. Be Here Now by Ram Dass

3. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audiobook

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52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: Silence by Thich Nhat Hanh

Posted on May 4, 2018

Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Essence

Prolific Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh addresses the vital procedures to monitoring and modifying our reality—it’s all about silence. Silence is undervalued. Our minds our nonstop, bouncing from thought to thought with no sign of stopping. All of this noise is constantly shaping us, drawing us into patterns of suffering. But with silence, we can being to see the space between the noises, and discover who we really are and what we aim to become. This practical guide shares the tools for rediscovering our greatest potential.

Silence Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of Silence by Thich Nhat Hanh. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

The Four Nutriments:
- Edible Food: What we eat affects how we feel. Often, we eat something not because we are hungry, but to console ourselves or to distract ourselves from uncomfortable feelings.
- Sense Impressions: What we take in with our senses and our mind. We tend to use sensory food as a way to run away from right now. In those moments we run away from ourselves and cover up the suffering inside.
- Volition: Our primary intentions and motivation. It feeds us and gives us purpose. We need space to act with intention. Volition is a tremendous source of energy. But it must come from the heart. Find meaning in things far grander than yourself, it will fuel your motivation to relieve suffering.
- Consciousness; both individual and collective: Every one of us has the capacity to love, forgive understand, and to be compassionate. Toxic elements when consumed are like the rudiment process; chewed and used later. Collectively when we surround ourselves with people who gossip, complain, and are constantly critical, we absorb these toxins. Silence and space in one’s life cannot be achieved along by no one. Be conscious of what and who you surround yourself with.
Silence is essential. “We need silence, just as much as we need air, just as much as plant need If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts; there is no space for us.”
Our need to be filled with one thing after another and another all the time is a collective disease of all human beings; let’s work to cure it.
Store Consciousness: The lower part of our mind; the basement of the house. The bulk of our mental life.
Mind Consciousness: The upper part of our mind; the living room. What comes up or arises can be thought of as the guest of our consciousness.
The seeds of our mind are stored in the basement, and whenever one is stimulated it manifests on the level of mind consciousness. Seeds of anger, fear, and distress can be planted in the basement early on in our development. When unwholesome seeds are stimulated; it can take over our living room like an unwelcomed guest. Practice what Buddhism calls The Practice of Diligence. Do not water seed of hatred or craving, be mindful: chose to instead selectively water the plants or joy, love, and compassion.
Nonstop thinking plagues us. People do not seem to be able to live without the “Sound Track.” As soon as they’re alone or even with their coworkers or their loved ones right in front of them—they try to fill up the tiniest bit of open mind space right away.
Practice deep listening. Next time someone asks you a question, don’t answer right away. Receive the question or sharing and let it penetrate you so that the speaker feels that he or she has really been listened to.
2 Dimensions of solitude:

Physically alone
Being able to be yourself and stay centered even in the midst of a group setting.

What is the most precious thing we can give to one another? Our presence. This contributes to the collective energy of mindfulness and peace.
When confronted with suffering we must:
- Recognize → Embrace→ Transform
  Reminiscent of a type of cognitive reappraisal, our suffering must be identified, accepted and modified. When modified, we either, eliminate, change, or accept the suffering.
If we NEVER suffer, there is no basis or impetus for developing understanding and compassion. Suffering is very important. We have to learn to recognize and even embrace suffering as our awareness of it helps us grow—the experience is imperative.
Goals are great. We can have wishes, hopes, and aim—none of this is counter to the Buddha’s teaching. But we shouldn’t allow it to become something that prevents us from living happily right here, right now.
Find your quiet space. Your first priority should be to find your own quiet space inside so you can learn more about yourself; broaden the understanding of your suffering.
“The island of self”: You are always with yourself; you cannot lose yourself. Be present. This place within yourself is the core of your awareness and not any of the nutriments we are aware of. Experience and observation are separate, yet connected.

Something special that I took from this book. I carry with me every day. Thank you Thich Nhat Hanh for words powerful enough to change my reality.

Kiante note card quote — "Waking up this morning I smile. Twenty-four brand- new hours are before me. I vow to live them deeply and learn to look at everything around me with the eye of compassion."

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in Silence.

1. Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

2. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn

3. Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening by Joseph Goldstein

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audiobook

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52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl | Forces of Habit

Posted on April 27, 2018

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

The Essence

An autobiographical account of the horrors of life within a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Enduring seemingly indescribable hardships, Psychologist Viktor Frankl was inhumanely beaten, degraded, and placed under insurmountable distress. But he managed to not only survive; he discovered a theory to explain the meaning of life. Lifes focus is not on seeking out pleasures or avoiding the misery. It is a meaning that makes life that matters. But this isn’t a claim to have developed a universal recipe for life’s purpose. The meaning of anyone’s life is a subjective venture. Life’s meaning varies. It is fluid, always changing with the context of the perceiver's life. What’s most important is that each and every one of us has some meaning. Without it, we leave room for stagnation, and mental pathologies become almost inevitable. Any hardship can be withstood when we have meaning. Frankel himself became living proof of the ability of meaning to save a life. When everything was lost, one freedom stood; Frankl’s attitude in his circumstance. Meaning fortified Frankl’s mind against the neurosis that began to plague the fellow prisoners as they lived day in and day out with a higher likelihood of death at any moment then anyone ever normally endures. Frankel noticed a pattern in the behavior that led to states of disillusionment and created a therapy known as Logotherapy to combat a stagnant life.

Man's Search for Meaning Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

Logotherapy: Founded on the belief that a human’s life purpose is a purpose in and of its self. The therapy is the pursuit of that life meaning—whatever it may be.
The categorical imperative of Logotherapy: “Live as if you were living already for the second time as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
SEEK MEANING: Mans main concern is not to gain pleasure or avoid pain. Be ready for suffering, just be sure to assign meaning to it.
Frankl attempted to create a scientific distance from himself to unbiasedly observe the psychological behaviors of the prisoners. He found that over time only men whose inner spirit deteriorated fell victim to the disillusionment that came with daily life in the concentration camp. Why? Frankl believed it had to do with retrospective thinking. If a man had nothing to look forward to because life was essentially over, he would ruminate on the past, so much so, that it would lead to his downfall due to relative deprivation. For anything that a man was before he entered the concentration camp was better than the current life circumstances.
When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves.
Man can pressure a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW. - Friedrich Nietzsche
In the same way fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise, a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes. This is the idea of paradoxical intentions. Frankl believed that forcing an aversion via affirmation one way or another could actually set a man free from it. Likewise, that meant that dreading a certain outcome would only increase its inevitability.
Be worthy of your suffering… Our last inner freedom cannot be lost. Beware of suffering for it is an achievement.
The meaning of life always changes.
We need humor. If you cannot develop a sense of humor, life can become a somber experience.
We can discover meaning in 3 different ways:

By creating a work or doing a deed; achievement or accomplishment
By experiencing something or encountering someone: love, or goodness, truth, and beauty
By the Attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering; suffering will cease to be so when we find meaning

LOVE is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.
Stop asking what is life? Life questions you:

“The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day, from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be to the question posed to a chess champion: "Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?" There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it. As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Frankl loses the lot. Everything is taken, nothing is left. Yet he is able to live. Empathically this real-life story taught me gratitude for my own life. It marks yet another reason materialism is now trivial to me. These men lived with nothing when the terror crept in. Stuff is only a placeholder, and filling my life with it before was only a way to distract myself from my own mortality, uncertainty, and impermanence. When death finally seems certain, I need not hold on to anything in this world. Having finished reading this book, I had even less of a reason to hold sustained value to the perks of mass consumerism that I was blinded by for so long. Thank you to Frankl for enduring. People like me are able to learn a valuable lesson about the meaning of life.
Here is an inspiring lecture from Frankl after his experience talking about the human's search for meaning. The ideal man, and his search for meaning.

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in Man's Search for Meaning

1. The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy by Viktor Frankl

2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

3. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audiobook

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52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Forces of Habit

Posted on April 20, 2018April 23, 2018

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Essence

Building on concepts from his previous books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb provides us with a solution to the problems of uncertainty and volatility—embrace the antifragile. Antifragility is what gains from volatility and uncertainty—systems that thrive under shock. We need more antifragility and less complacency in our own lives. The intellectual powerhouse warns against the naive rationalist—Fragilista’s—and their attempts to fragilize the world with no skin in how their decisions change the game. Attempting to remove risk in its entirety only leaves us in a state highly susceptible to the unforeseeable. So instead, take advantage of the stressors and embrace what is unknown by incorporating the various methods of antifragility. Antifragile is truly the modern stoic’s technical guide towards developing an adaptive and resilient perspective for the modern world.

Antifragile Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

NOTE: Antifragile was by far the most challenging book I had read up to this point. That considered this review is from my first time reading the book over one week and is not representative of the crucial terms discussed. I have much respect for this book and have scheduled it for another read to share with myself and the world the powerful messages hidden in this text.

“Antifragility is a property of systems that increase in capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.”
Avoid becoming blind to the natural antifragility of systems, they can take care of themselves. Yet when we intervene we do not give the systems a chance to grow for the unexpected shocks.
Time is our ultimate guide for idea salience. We must allow for time to lead us through the reality of years prior; the ancient provides valuable lessons. He who does not have a past has no future
Neomiania: the love of the modern for its own sake.
READ VORACIOUSLY: humanities, math, science, and then, history.
What is the modern stoic sage look like? It is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Progress comes from the young. Our relative freedom from the system and the courage to take action decrease over time as the old become trapped by life situation. Our goal is to stay ambitious. Keep our beginner's mind and avoid static patterns of thought.
Mitigating what is fragile is not an option, it is required.
Being giving something to study in school is easily forgotten, yet what we decide to read on our own will be remembered.
Exposure modification: The most important lessons we can learn are about what to avoid—not what to take on. Reduce most of your exposure to personal risk down to a small number of measures and maximize risk in those areas.
Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali: the good is mostly in the absence of bad. -Ennius
Technology is best when it is invisible. Yet our tendency is to notice what varies and changes more then what has played a large role but hasn't changed. Example: Water v. the cellphone. We all anxiously wait for the latest iPhone but never appreciate the orthodoxy of waters influence.
Stressors are how we grow and deprivation is the ultimate stressor. “Necessity is the mother of inventions…Poverty makes for experience.”
“Books have a secret mission and ability to multiply as everyone who has wall-to-wall bookshelves knows well." This is the result our desire to satisfy the addictiveness of curiosity.
Want innovation? Start saying no. There is pride in not doing. Imagine the stress that comes from a limited amount of resources to draw from.
“Mother Nature is rigorous until proven otherwise: what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise." The systems of nature have survived time—the ultimate stress test for antifragility—while man's theories are a fragile conception of our reality, having had little to stress to prove them wholly viable.
Society grows from those who take risks. An increase in risk takers is an increase in growth. They are iconoclastic. The ‘crazy’ humans who have ideas of their own, and use imagination and courage to make these ideas happen.
Give weight to what has survived over time. To understand what is to come, you must:
- Respect the past
- Be curious about the historical record
- Have a hunger for the wisdom of elders
- Understand the notion of heuristics
Ideas do not evolve by competing with one another. An idea is sustained through the systems and humans that hold them. No idea survives due to its own merits, but rather, it is that the humans who hold such ideas have survived.
READ as little as possible from the last twenty years—with the exception of history books that are not about the last fifty years. Read Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Hayek. TIMELESS TEXTS ARE POWERFUL!
Disorder breeds education of the senses, the formation of character, foundation of personality, and the acquisition of true knowledge. Embrace disorder.
Big and Fast are Abominations
“Do not confuse the purist of happiness with the avoidance if unhappiness; they are not equivalent.”
Fraudulent opinions are born when people fit their beliefs to their actions rather than fit their actions to their beliefs.
Barbell strategy. Becoming simultaneously conservative and aggressively risky. Have enough safety that you can take very large risks and not be ruined—this is taking advantage of the antifragile.
Stoicism is a domestication of emotion, not an elimination. In the same way, the barbell is the domestication of uncertainty, not the elimination.
“There is this error of thinking that things always have a reason that is accessible to us—that we can comprehend easily.”
How our society deems those worthy of recognition is cruel and unfair; stay out of the game.
Fooled by Randomness effect: mistaking the merely associative for the causal. This is discussed at great length in his first book.
Epiphenomena: the byproduct of a process may not casually be related to the process. It may be that it said process arises in such a way that we may assume that it is causal.
“Lecturing a bird on flying”: not taking the epiphenomenal into consideration. It reasons that theoretical knowledge yields practical application in the same way the practical application can build theoretical knowledge. Models aren't good representations of reality and cause great harm when they disregard the practical for parsimony of the normative. “Theory came later in a lame way, to satisfy the intellectual bean counter.”
The characteristics of a loser. After a mistake they…
- Don’t introspect
- Don’t exploit it
- Feel embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information
- Try to explain why they made the mistake rather than move on
- Consider themselves a ‘victim’
Decision effects supersede logic. Theoretical knowledge aims to explain the structure of the world. But that means little to the function of your actions. We aim for the most payoff as possible, and for much of intellectual history does not focus on payoff over theory (decision over logic).
The hedonic treadmill of techno dissatisfaction: Our tendency is to notice the differences and not the commonalities. So when the new version of the technology is released, we justify of demand by acknowledging only what is different.

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in Antifragile

1. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

2. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

3. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Dan Gardner and Philip E. Tetlock

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audiobook

52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: Moral Man and Immoral Society by Reinhold Niebuhr | Forces of Habit

Posted on April 13, 2018

Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr

The Essence

Theologian and public figure Reinhold Niebuhr refutes social idealism as he refutes the collective’s ability to be governed by ethics. Groups cannot be held to the same standards of moral and social uprightness as individuals. We as individuals can overcome our predispositions towards sin. Yet the tools we use to liberate ourselves are insufficient when dealing with the collective ego of a given group. The collective’s vices cannot be eliminated, they may only be subdued by the brutal nature of other groups seeking to assimilate the larger collective.

Moral Man and Immoral Society Summary Journal Entry

This is my book summary of Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

“A Sharp distinction must be drawn between moral and social behavior of individuals and groups.”
Reason v. Fanaticism. I took this to describe the relationship between his own Christen realism and the idealistic causes of those in power—the ideal can only go so far.
Humans are better off recognizing the limitations of our imaginations when it comes to the future of a society. We have tons of ideas about how to change society for the better. But society is not governed by the same rules that our human experience would assume it to be and therefore cannot be controlled by similar means as we do for the individual.
“spiritual wickedness in high places”
Economic circumstances ultimately influence, perhaps even determine, the social and ethical outlooks of their members.
Man is a brutal ego driven creature—Niebuhr would probably call this the innate sin of man. Man will justify his needs above others and attempt to take more then what is needed. Therefore what is altruistic is of the highest morality.
As a social power grows, so does its propensity to develop social inequality. “No impartial society determines the rewards. The man of power who control society grant these prerequisites to themselves.”
Our herd tendencies are one of our greatest enemies when prescribing absolute ideals. The power of the group has shown to become a very dangerous asset to leaders whose intention do harm to large sects of people. Niebuhr saw WWII as an example of human nature falling prey to the dynamic power of herding.
Society is the product of our wants and government of our wickedness” -Thomas Pain
We are a bundle of our most preciously held illusions. When redeeming ourselves from egoism. Those who are most effective are able and willing to sacrifice the illusions of the past and substitute them with the more accurately postulated.
What is our most important illusion? “The collective life of mankind can achieve perfect justice.”
Niebuhr knows of one way to increase the purity of social morality. It’s through the efforts of the psychological sciences. Science can aid man in becoming increasingly more aware of his motives as well as what pretenses his true desires.
The human mind is a slave to the passions—emotions rule us. “One is never certain to what degree the fears of the privileged classes of anarchy and revolution are honest fears which may be explained in terms of their imperfect perspective upon social facts; and to what degree they are dishonest attempts to put the advancing classes at a disadvantage.” Those in power may not realize that by way of passion, they have reasoned to strip the opposing classes of dignity. And they choose to justify such actions though seemingly rational fears. Yet can we determine if these are acts of protection or an attempt to eclectically assemble more then what is minimally needed?
No power hold more claim over human associations than that of the modern nation.
“Only history can answer…”. One of my favorite quotes from the book. To me, it represents an admittance to the uncertainty of what is to come. Hindsight is 20/20—or at least our perception of ‘truth’ can be justified
Violence and revolution are not intrinsically immoral. Niebuhr cites two misconceptions as to why someone would believe otherwise:
1. How we categorize violence. The belief that violence is a natural expression of ill-will, and non-violence of good-will. And citing violence as therefore being intrinsically evil and non-violence as intrinsically good.
2. Values that do not match to orthodox are immoral. We uncritically identify the traditionalized instrumental values with intrinsic moral values.
“No society has ever achieved peace without incorporating injustice into its harmony”

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in Moral Man and Immoral Society

1. Letters from a Stoic by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

2. The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City by Alan Ehrenhalt

3. The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon

Find the book on Amazon: Print

52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: Iconoclast by Gregory Berns | Forces of Habit

Posted on April 6, 2018

Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently by Gregory Berns

The Essence

An Iconoclast is an innovator. Someone who achieves what the majority saw as unfeasible. Neuroscientist Gregory Berns has isolated the three mental barriers that separate most people from being an iconoclast—perception, fear response, and social intelligence. Iconoclasts have used these neuro advantages to escape conventional thinking, reaching never before seen heights of creativity and nonconformity. But recent findings in neuroscience have allowed us to notice a rate of neural plasticity far greater than ever assumed. Because of this, Bern believes we can train our minds to mirror the iconoclastic. The mindset that sets the few apart is available to all of us, the question is now who is willing to equip themselves with the tools that have best served the radical thinkers of our species.

Iconoclast Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of Iconoclast by Gregory Berns. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

“Iconoclast | Noun | \ ī-ˈkä-nə-ˌklast \ A person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc. As being based on error or superstition.”
Some examples of Iconoclasts: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Richard Feynman, and Martian Luther King Jr.
“We take for granted that our perceptions of the world are real, but they are really specters of our imagination, nothing more than biological and electrical rumblings that we believe to be real.
The iconoclast’s brain sees things differently than other people’s brains. The literal reality that an Iconoclast perceives daily differs so much that it may yield riskier decision making.
The iconoclastic brain differs in three main functions.
1. Perception: seeing differently than others
2. Fear Response: the ability to tame stress responses
3. Social Intelligence: connecting with others
When we use our imagination we are simulating reality. It is a tool that attempts to see the world differently than the categories we are currently using to perceive it. But for our imagination to be most effective we need novel experiences. Without them, the brain crystalizes the categories it has available thereby limiting its ability to simulate novel thought via imagination.
When we create we are also destroying. Creativity can be thought of as an unorthodox combination of what already exists. So when we create, we are essentially destroying what stood before, and rebuilding with the pieces.
Test with the intention to fail, because with failure we come closer to the truth—this is the beauty of trial and error.
Predictive coding: The brain makes predictions about what it is sensing and alters these predictions when it realizes it has made an error. This realization may not be conscious, nor does the error have to fit into our subjective preferences for how we ought to live.
All fear steam from only 3 things:
1. The unknown; Ambiguity Aversion
2. Failure
3. Looking stupid
“Do not be paralyzed by risk.” Our species is founded on risk. We either take risks or falter as a species. By becoming too risk aversive, you are taking part in the destruction of manmade breakthroughs.
Everett Rogers 5 Attributions to Innovation:
1. Advantage over other ideas.
2. Compatible with current values and norms.
3. Complexity is inversely related to adoption rates—more complex, less adoption.
4. Triable with little cost to the potential users.
5. Visible results; users can judge the idea without even trying it.
"Attention Changes Perception"
Cognitive Reappraisal: Reinterpreting information provided through affect or thought in such a way that its effect becomes diminished. This is our strongest weapon in the war against our passions. Fear, in a way, is only our biological dispositions to react in a specific way. So by reinterpreting the signals, we can remove the power of fear. This does not mean we ought to remove all fear—fear is good, it saves our lives in moments when conscious awareness is not quick enough to act.
“An absence of fear of the future and of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.” - Henry Ford
Fear can be compared to alcohol: while under its influence, your ability to make decisions is impaired. You don’t make long-term decisions drunk, so don’t do it under duress either.
The brain is lazy: time is energy. The brain does not like to work hard, which is why it is constantly rewiring itself to create stronger connections for what works and weaker for what doesn’t. Once comfortably set in its ways, remodeling takes some effort.
Novelty v. Familiarity: this plays on the lazy brain idea. When we are young we're constantly seeking out new ideas, experiences, and so on. But with age, people are said to become ‘set in their ways’ why is that? It’s in part due to how the brain sifts through information during our lives. During youth, the brain is seeking out models that work to strengthen synaptic connections, while as we age, the brain has winded down enough of the noise to settle into a pattern of connections that have worked the longest—the lazy brain in action. Meaning that any incoming novel stimuli during old age make the brain work hard to understand. So rather than approach, experience makes us aversive to creating new channels.
Taking the perspective of the brain, it isn’t what is more familiar is more pleasurable or rewarding; it’s just that the unfamiliar things tend to be those that are alarming or dangerous.
The fear response system in the brain is called the Amygdala. As we become more familiar with something, it inhibits a response that may normally cause the amygdala to stimulate bodily arousal and conscious reasoning.
Repetition Suppression: As we are exposed to specific stimuli over time, our brains learn to respond with less robustness—this is how habit forms. When we intentionally do something every day, whatever excitations that may have been preventing us from engaging in the behavior prior disappear over time.
Beware of herd behavior. As social animals, we tend to see things how others have seen them on the basis that others have seen them—social proof.
A group’s opinion has the ability to alter our perceptions before we are able to become aware that we have been influenced. It is important that we intentionally aim to think differently than the consensus option—especially when we agree with the majority opinion.
The commonplace fits directly into the perceptual model the brain loves; a lazy one. It takes little energy to process perception when its categories are well entrenched into a culture. Taking the perspective of the brain, ideological alignment is the most efficient way to perceive the world because it takes the least amount of energy to discern the categories of the model due to all the incoming data from those around you most frequently—its like planning to build a house but the shingles are already installed.

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in Iconoclast.

1. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge

2. How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker

3. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Find the book on Amazon: Print

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52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by Russ Roberts | Forces of Habit

Posted on March 30, 2018

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness by Russ Roberts

The Essence

Russ’ spin on a classic. Taking experts from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Russ reignites the lesson from a timeless piece which prescribes how to live with respect for others and oneself. How humans morally treat one another is based on the actions each of us takes in our daily lives. We all have a role in developing the culture of the time. How we act forms the bases for the system humanity unconsciously agrees upon. Meaning our moral senses are created through the consensual behavior of the species. We create them, but not in the regular sense of the word—through us they are created. Adam Smith’s economic theories may have been popular, yet with the help of Russ, Smiths work shows us that humans are far more complex than the classical economic models' detail.

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by Russ Roberts. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

“If you want to make good choices you, you have to understand yourself and those around you.”
Impartial Spectator: An imaginary figure whom we converse—in some virtual sense. It is the imaginary little guy on your shoulder who comes when something is astray. He sees the intention of our actions clearer then we can. It is the figure you answer to during moral deliberation; what we consider morally right or wrong.
Iron Law of You: You think more about yourself than you think about another. This does not mean you are not altruistic, it is just describing the self-referential nature of thought. Thought almost obsessively things about the self. And from this subjective state, it can make sense of the world around each of us—thought it would be tough to say that it was a clear picture.
“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, be to be lovely”.
What Adam Smith means is we all want to be respected; we desire the attention of our peers. Whether it be to appreciate, admire, or cherish, a desire for loveliness means seeking the approval of the public.
Moral sense is relative, depending on where you grow up and how you are raised. Or is it? Moral sense to me is a bit more than this. I believe humans all have a universal predisposition for moral senses. Which exactly that is may be is up to debate, but morality itself is held by all of us. I cannot believe that the frequency of moral sense is up to the environment. We all have been dealt temperaments that vary tremendously and are constructed from a collection of our prior experiences and genes.
Emergent or Spontaneous order: organization out of chaos. It is unintentional creation through a seemingly meaningful arrangement. Through a combination of factors, a force is brought to life and its life is so vibrant that it looks to be governed by a larger system. Examples include language, the economy, internet, and the evolution of our spices. We can learn a lot by accepting the spontaneous nature of many of life’s mysteries. Recently I have been using an emergent model to think about my own brain. It is far too complex to ever put a nail down on what really makes up my last choice in its totality. So instead I can stop seeking some universal order and start looking for more practical models that can help explain the parts.
To get the most of life we ought to make choices wisely.
That means we ought to keep in mind two things.
1. Being aware of how choosing one road closes another
2. Being aware of the impact of my choices on other and more subtle interactions
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” - George Eliot
We are prone to self-deception. Consider us all drunk, looking for our keys under a lamppost, are key are never found, but not because we aren’t looking, we are only looking where the light is.
“The sea gets deeper as you go further into it.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb: As we learn more, it becomes clearer how much we really do not know. Stop pretending to know everything, it only shows others that you really do not know much or anything. Admit to ignorance, here you’ll find bliss.
Look around you. So many aspects of our lives look orderly but are under no one’s control. They are the result of human action, but not of our conscious design. Together we create the illusion of order through our collective action, but no one solely can plan or intend the resulting outcome.
All of us have an impact, it just so happens that only together do our choices determine the collective outcome. The underlying social fabric that dictates acceptable behavior collectively draws from how you and I choose to interact with our peers.
Adam Smith’s thoughts concerning special circumstances: “When once we begin to give way to such refinements, there is no enormity so gross of which we may not be capable.” If you give a little towards your impulses, you can gradually notice how it cascades. The example I like to think of is the petty thief who starts with small crimes. Over time, what he considers a small crime changes, and as he commits them more and more the petty thief is now a full-blown criminal. Do not justify breaking your small rules, soon what is excusable will be what was formally intolerable.
Propriety: The ability to act and behave while conforming to the expectations of those around you and they, in turn, conform to your expectation. It is acting and requesting action under the guides of your given social fabric. You don't ask too much of others, nor do you behave in a way that would cause others to act out.
To be good:
- Prudence: Taking care of yourself. Wise and judicious care of your health, your money, and your reputation.
- Justice: Not hurting others. Precise, accurate and indispensable.
- Beneficence: Being good to others. Loose, vague, and indeterminate.
Justice is like grammar. While Beneficence is like writing well.
Like grammar not harming others is bound to a set of practical rules to follow. It is easy to not harm others because it is set in stone what is consider harm. Yet doing good is less clear. Just as we can acknowledge good writing when we see it, we can point out acts of beneficence.
“The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine.” -Adam Smith
Adam Smith on the prudent man: “His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which others people so frequently thrust themselves unto public notice and reputation.”
The unexpected beauty of strangers: Spend more time with them.
Strangers affect us differently than those close to us. Because we have no attachments or presumptions of intent, they act as an emotion cool down—they help us regain our emotional equilibrium. Even with good friends, we have systems of thought that claim our interactions. The calmness of a stranger allows us to reflect on how differently we act towards our peers.
Pay attention to the channels you use to pursue loveliness. Wealth, power, and fame may work, but wisdom and goodness work better.
On Sympathy; Adam Smith finds that when it comes to sympathy small joys and great sorrows are what we lean towards. Emotional responses are asymmetric when it comes to joy and sorry. We love joy and are not too fond of sorrow. That explains why it takes a great sorrow, but only a small joy us to resonate.

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life.

1. The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

2. The Road to Character by David Brooks

3. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audiobook

52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: Mindfire by Scott Berkun | Forces of Habit

Posted on March 23, 2018

Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds by Scott Berkun

The Essence

A collection of various tidbits about life. After years of experience as a writer and public influencer, Scott address the questions we ponder in our everyday lives. Mindfire is a collection of Scott’s best digitally published works, made to challenge our conventionally driven minds to start thinking the ‘right’ way. And the right way is to reevaluate how you spend and think about the concepts of time, creativity, and criticism. Become intentional with your time, set limits on yourself to foster creativity, and take all the criticism you can get.

Mindfire Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of Mindfire by Scott Berkun. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

“Hate is easy.” When we choose to hate something, we are refusing to be compassionate to someone else's cause. Instead of hate, try to change your perspective on an issue. See it from another person viewpoints. You will find the one you disagree with is not so crazy under different guiding premises; this is the better way for understanding someone's cause.
A desire for something has little bearing on the desired outcome occurring. You need to understand that a hope in itself does not yield results. To misplace your beliefs in this way will not lead you to wisdom.
Looking for passion? Just pick something. Do it. And do it wholeheartedly. If you are having trouble keeping your heart in it, do another thing. We must repeat this process until our last day; that is how we continue to live intentionally.
“An idea is a combination of other ideas.” Innovation steams from a mesh of the conventional wisdom of the past.
We always have time. You are not too busy for anything. You simply do not want to allocate the 24 hours you are given to that specific task. “If you can’t do something, it’s not about the quantity of time. It’s really about how important the task is to you.”
You are the only one who can reinforce what matters to you in the entire universe.
Stop confusing popularity with goodness. Popularity is pricey: you accept what is bland, predictable, and meaningless, in exchange for what is interesting surprising and meaningful.
When you confine your mind to a single way of thinking you are harming yourself. Depledge your allegiance to any ideas, and put faith in your ability to learn.
Minimize worrying by:

Understanding some choices really aren’t that deep—they matter less then you value them.
Keep in mind what worrying does. You will not make better decisions just because you have decided to worry about them—in fact, you’ll probably make worse.
Confer with others if need be. A second opinion concerning your worry can be liberating just as long as you are honestly assessing the situation. You will notice how needless the worry is after you explain it to someone.

“A small idea, applied consistently, can have disproportionately large effects.”
Wise people love mistakes and aren’t afraid to share them with others. Most of the best lessons, if not all, stem from learning valuable lessons through mistakes. They will accelerate your progress in any endeavor.
Try the PNP Sandwich: PNP stands for positive negative positive and is used when giving constructive criticism. By starting with something nice, the person you are critiquing will open up to what you are saying. Use the opening as an opportunity to give the bad news. Finish up by saying something positive again. You do not want to break someone’s spirits or cause them to believe you are just complaining, so you say something nice to offset the positive-negative-positive ratio.
Feedback is the key to developing ideas. Without it, we are having a never-ending conversation with our preconceived notions—improvement becomes unattainable.
Be Bold. Boldness gets people’s attention.
Good criticism serves one purpose: it gives the creator of the work more perspective. A newfound perspective then functions as a priceless tool for making the next set of choices.
Misconception: The bigger the idea, the bigger the value.
What tends to actually hold people back from achievement is not these big ideas, but the small things. When we consistently overlook the tiny stuff, we miss out on the compounding effects of the seemingly insignificant.

Learn to appreciate effort. With enough effort, you can always outwork someone better than Always.
STOP READING, START DOING! This is a recent lesson for me. Part of the reason I now write these book summaries is due to my eclectic reading habits. I read and read, but what is the use of constantly taking in more information if I was not going to put it to good use.
Fight for your right to think things over. Do not be pressured to make quick decisions that will impact you in the long term.
Law of lost attention: the value of something you spend attention on is dependent on how much attention you spend on it. Single Task. When you are executing a task or engaging in an activity, be with that and only that. By doing this you give it the attention it deserves. Even the most tedious things can become quite intimate when you give them the entirety of your attention.
If you want to be creative start be changing your assumptions on what it creativity encompasses. “Creativity has more to do with being fearless then intelligent or any other adjective superficially associated with it.”
A sure-fire way to spark creativity is to set constraints. With limits, humans tend to look at whatever they have at their disposal and use it in strange new ways. It is in part due to our natural tendency to adapt.
To learn from our mistakes, we need 3 things

Putting yourself in situations where you can make a range of unique mistakes.
Have the self-confidence to admit to the mistakes.
Being bold enough to make the necessary changes.

Ask more questions. Period. Do not take information at face value no matter the source. Investigate every assumption. Over time, you may come to realize that fact of the matter is still subjective.
It takes hard work to free our minds. “Being free has never been easy, which explains why so few, despite what they say, truly are.” Do you remember the last time you were truly free? Our lives are saturated with categorized systems that rule our minds. Take a step out of the glass box and begin to observe and listen to what reality has to offer.

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in Mindfire.

1. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

2. The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

3. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

Find the book on Amazon: Print

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52 in 52 Book Summaries

Book Summary: The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Forces of Habit

Posted on March 16, 2018March 16, 2018

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Essence

Using his experience as a day-trader and qualitative analyst, Nassim Taleb urges us to stop using the observable past as an indicator of the future. Humanity as a species have used data about the past to justify the narratives of the up and coming; this is inherently flawed and seeded in our predisposition for the sensational. Taleb pinpoints a variety of cases, showing that nothing we know or understand about the world at that time of a rare occurrence could have indicated nor predicted such an event; these are the Black Swans. By observing the nature of highly unpredictable events, we can come to appreciate a newfound caution in our application of systems and models of the world used to predict the future.

The Black Swan Summary Journal Entry:

This is my book summary of The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. The Journal write up also includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

“Humans are great at self-delusion.”
A Black Swan is:
1. An outlier; Rarity.
2. Carries an extreme impact.
3. Retrospective Predictability.
“Making a naïve observation of the past as something definitive or representative of the future is the one and only cause of our inability to understand the Black Swan.”
We tend to learn the precise, not the general. This stems from our excessive focus on what we know for ‘certain’. Yet nothing is truly ever known for certain.
Platonicity: “The desire to cut reality into crisp shapes.” Our tendency to mistake the map for the territory. We tend to focus more on what is clearly defined and allow it to blend into on conceptions for various generalizations. For example, how we use utopias, nationalities, and even abstract notions of shapes to dictate how we then come to conclusions about reality.
Triplet of Opacity: The human mind has become diluted by three notions. Due to how humanity has operated with history our judgment is clouded by:
A) the illusion of understanding
the world is far too complex for anyone to understand what is actually going on. We have ignored this. We think we know what is going on when in reality we cannot ever understand what is happening.
B) the retrospective distortion
Our propensity to use hindsight bias to explain phenomena. We believe things can be accessed "as if they were in a rearview mirror."
C) the overvaluation of factual information and the handicap of authoritative and learned people
Using Platonicity. Our categories for generalizing are shrewd, and inept at predicting future outcomes. The learned people use the categories they create to justify actions to the public, as though through the models they are granted foresight.
We as humans are categorizing machines. It becomes pathological however if the categories created are thought of as being absolute—as we tend to make them. By accepting a category as law, it removes the cynicism surrounding it. And without space left open for new interpretations, we strip the category of its true complexity.
“Uncertainty is our discipline, and that understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit” -Karl Popper
“In a primitive environment, the relevant is the sensational.” Yet, in our current environment, “the relevant is often boring, nonsensational.”
Platonic Fold: The place where the platonic representation enters into contact with the reality and you can see the side effects of the models. It’s the place where you notice your models aren’t making total sense.
We Don’t Learn that We Don’t Learn.
Mediocristan: Dominated by the mediocre with few extreme successes or failures. No single observation can meaningfully affect the aggregate. “when your sample is large no single instance will significantly change to aggregate or total.”
The bell curve is grounded in Mediocristan. Examples include physical matters like height and weight.
Extremistan: Where the total can be conceivably impacted by a single observation. “Inequalities are such that one single observation can disproportionately impact the aggregate, or the total.”
Almost all social matters reside in Extremistan. Examples include social matters like wealth and academic publication.
Bleed>Blow up: When we “bleed” we lose over time, for a long time, gradually taking little loses that yield a disproportionately large gain due to the risk tolerance on the investment.
When working with uncertainty. Experimentation will yield sounder results then storytelling.
No matter how brilliant the model, abstract statistical information has little weight to us relieve to an anecdote.
Ludic Fallacy: The manifestation of the Platonic fallacy within the study of uncertainty. When we attempt an analysis of chance based on the narrow world of games and dice, we are committing the ludic fallacy. Platonic randomness has an additional layer of uncertainty concerning the rules of the game in real life. Said differently, the attributes of the uncertainty we face in real life have little connection to the sterilized ones we encounter in exams and games—like the methods we are taught in the classroom.
Those who study vigorously in school have a tendency to become fools to the ludic fallacy.
Domain Specificity: The reaction, mode of thinking, or intuition, depends on the context in which the matter is presented, what evolutionary psychologist call the “domain” of the object or the event. We process information using not only logic—if any logic at all—but the environmental framework that surrounds colors the information. So how we approach a problem in one domain may not mirror another.

Taleb is prolific. And with so much material, his terms can easily be misconstrued. Check out this brief video of Nassim Nicholas Taleb explaining what a Black Swan is. I also encourage you to check out his other publications for further clarification regarding his ideological footing in all matters concerning uncertainty.

Reading Recommendations

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what discussed in The Black Swan.

1. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock, & Dan Gardner

2. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

3. Irrational Exuberance by Robert Shiller

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audiobook

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You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Essence

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The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts

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Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise by Thich Nhat Hanh

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Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr

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Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently by Gregory Berns

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How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness by Russ Roberts

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