Advice on choosing between two difficult choices, from Overcoming Bias.
Well… if you can’t decide between them, they must be around equally appealing, right? Equally balanced pros and cons? So the choice must matter very little - you may as well flip a coin. The alternative is that the pros and cons aren’t equally balanced, in which case the decision should be simple.
This is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, obviously - more appropriate for choosing from a restaurant menu than choosing a major in college.
This is the principal quote:
I do think there’s something to be said for agonizing over important decisions, but only so long as the agonization process is currently going somewhere, not stuck.
Ryan Holiday asks, What is the ‘classic’ book of the 80s and 90s? Ryan starts by listing the classics from previous eras and decades…
The Scarlet Letter (colonial America)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (slavery)
The Red Badge of Courage (sometimes for civil war)
The Jungle (turn of the century)
All Quiet on the Western Front (WWI)
The Great Gatsby (20s)
Of Mice and Men (30s)
Catcher in the Rye (50s and 60s)
Fahrenheit 451 (Cold War)
…and goes on to suggest that the classic 80s book is American Psycho and Fight Club for the 90s.
I cannot disagree with American Psycho; the book satires perfectly the 80s yuppie culture which embodies everything the 80s was about. The 90s, however, is a different story: Fight Club is a good and very valid choice, but I would argue that Trainspotting is on par with it for representing 90s UK culture.
Like My Life in Books, I can only suggest The Corrections for the current decade.
Other contenders were:
Scott Adams—the author famous for his Dilbert comic—has an interesting take on ambition:
I think ambition is a genetic defect. You can’t have ambition unless you think there is something wrong with the way you are. Ambition is a state of feeling perpetually flawed.
Phillip Toledano documents his struggle dealing with his father’s dementia following the death of his mother in his touching and beautifully crafted photo-series, Days with My Father. This quote from Shape and Colour says what I’m thinking more eloquently than I ever could.
It takes a real artist to know when something is special enough to simply be documented, and not necessarily explored or extrapolated on. To give something room to breathe and hold it’s own based only on the fact that you’ve found the strength to share it. I don’t take it lightly when artists take their most personal moments and reveal them to me, trusting that hopefully the cycle of creator and receiver will nurture us both. There’s something delicate and tenuous in the act of letting your story go in the desire that it will mean as much to a stranger as it does to you.
via Kottke
Every year The Philosopher’s Annual attempts to pick the ten best philosophy articles of the year. This year’s results are now out and I’ll soon be delving into the archives to peruse the previous 26 volumes.
via Mind Hacks