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🧠 Nugget of the Week
Holiday is a great time for me to fall into existentialism and ask what the fuck am I doing here? So I return to AI and asked what Camus could say about my pain. Below is a great summary of why I love him with the help of perplexity.ai.
1. The Absurd: Camus believed that human beings live in an absurd world where there is no inherent meaning or purpose. He argued that the universe is indifferent to human existence, and that our search for meaning is ultimately futile.
2. Rebellion: Camus proposed that the only appropriate response to the absurd is to revolt against it. He believed that we must constantly fight against the circumstances of our existence and never admit defeat.
3. Suicide: Camus explored the idea of suicide as a response to the absurdity of life. He argued that suicide is a legitimate philosophical question, but ultimately rejected it as a solution. Sisyphus must be considered happy at the end of the day.
4. Morality: Camus believed that morality should guide politics. He rejected the classical Marxist view that historical material relations define morality.
5. Physical experience: Camus promoted intense, joyous, physical experience as opposed to a self-abnegating religious life. He believed that these experiences themselves are the right response to the absurd.
6. The Myth of Sisyphus: Camus likens Sisyphus' plight to our own existence. He argued that the only way to live absurdly is to continue living and searching for meaning, even though the universe will provide none.
7. Despair: Camus's existentialism is based on despair, which is caused not by the abomination of life and man but by the thought of the individual's greatness and his inability to find a connection with an indifferent world.
8. Meaning: Camus considered the idea of creating our own meaning in life. He argued that trying to impose meaning on the universe is a recipe for disaster. If there is no meaning we need to create our own.
There is a lot to learn about life and Camus, but these are the quick notes to remind ourselves of how Camus can help us along the meaningless silence of the world.
🔗 Link Bundle
1️⃣ Here is the list of AI sites that are used most frequently.
2️⃣ 25 Books to Read Before You Die: World Edition is a great list of recommendations.
My three favs:
3️⃣ Thanks grandma, these are the exact wisdom nuggets I am searching for.
There are thousands of people who live their entire lives on the default settings, never realizing they can customize everything.
The right journey is the ultimate destination. – The most prolific and beneficial experience in life is not in actually achieving something you want, but in seeking it.
The willingness to do hard things opens great windows of opportunity. – One of the most important abilities you can develop in life is the willingness to accept and grow through times of difficulty and discomfort.
Who we choose to be around matters immensely.
4️⃣ Ali Abdaal makes a good job collecting these lessons on life.
Successful people have a bias towards action.
Prioritize learning over earning, especially at the start of your career.
Evidence from Behavioral Science suggests that building a fulfilling career is more about the actions taken day-to-day rather than what job title is on your business card.
Task-centric rather than title-centric career planning is another skill that should be learned outside of school.
Success comes from being really good at one specific thing and doubling down on it.
To build a successful business, focus on being very good at doing one specific service or making one specific product. It can be super niche but if you have an unfair advantage in that space it's way easier to be successful than trying to sell everything like Amazon or Walmart.
5️⃣ If you are a manager this is somehow a foundational rule: Do not solve problems. Help others solve problems.
In other words, your role as a manager is not to solve problems. It’s to help others solve problems, themselves. Leadership is stewardship. It’s navigating your team through treacherous waters, around jagged rocks, to the desired destination, and making sure folks feel nourished and rested along the way. But you can’t be a good steward if you’re scampering around trying to paddle all the oars faster, yourself. To take the boat analogy one step further, a great manager is a coxswain, not a rower.
6️⃣ Here is a good story of someone who won the battle against the procrastination.
Sleep seven hours or more, go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.
Take naps instead of coffee when you feel a brain fog in the afternoon.
Take 3-5 minute breaks every hour and move around a bit, stretch or exercise if possible.
Walk for at least 30 minutes daily in a green place to relax your mind.
Go to a pool multiple times a week to relax your muscles, especially the back.
Maintain a quality diet free of junk and processed foods; drink water instead of sweetened beverages.
Monitor indoor CO₂ levels.
My additions:
Turn off notifications.
Simplify your work environment.
Staying hydrated is important.
Try exercise in the first hour of waking up.
Make your goals seen. E.g hang them on the wall, remind yourself of them with alarms or else.
7️⃣ Here are some important thoughts for you to remember next time you are persuading somebody.
“I’ve since heard the statistic in conversations that 70 percent of buy decisions are made to avoid a loss.”
“It’s not a big leap from the above point to recognize that emotions are intertwined into all decisions. The first and biggest of the lot is fear, followed by all of its disguises (concern, unease, stress).”
“The last impression is the lasting impression.”
Try using labels like these:
“It sounds like you’ve got second thoughts.”
“It looks like the value ‘as is’ just isn’t there for you.”
“It seems like you’re not sold.”
“It feels like we need to change things here.”
8️⃣ Tried this technique it seems to work but the effects are short-lived. Maybe someday it will come handy for you.
9️⃣ Be careful on the release ratio. Consuming content is great but in order for you to feel more meaningful you need the joy of creating something out of nothing with the help of knowledge you accumulate.
Like all things worthwhile, there’s an intricate balance to consider. Being a knowledge sponge is fun, but you need the proper release to make it meaningful. Release too much without refilling, however, and you’ll be a wiry ball of fatigue.
🔟 Here is the link of best science fiction movies. I agree with the creator of this list %95 of the time about the selections.
1️⃣ 1️⃣ This is a great infographic on different philosophical perspectives on life.
Some favs:
Hedonism: Have pleasure now
Solipsism: Only you exist, other than it cannot be known.
Epicureanism: Free yourself from pain
Absurdism: There is no meaning, but it does not stop you from living to the fullest
1️⃣2️⃣ You know I love life rules and nuggets. This list will come handy.
1️⃣3️⃣ I have come across this link again by Sloww, there are great recommendations for your next visit to your local booktore visit.
1️⃣4️⃣ We are bombarded with new generative AI tools every day, McKinsey published a good overview of the impacts and potentials.
1️⃣5️⃣ I was looking for some things to try and liked this video’s suggestions. Things I have shortlisted:
Write a novel (why not?)
Improve your cooking
Work out your core values
Try yoga
1️⃣6️⃣ Here is a good study of how humans spent life.
Everyone has 24 hours in a day and spends each moment of it doing something, adding up to approximately 190 billion hours daily.
Most waking hours are spent on activities intended to achieve direct outcomes for human minds and bodies (9.4 h/d), while 3.4 h/d are spent modifying our inhabited environments and the world beyond. The remaining 2.1 h/d are devoted to organizing social processes and transportation.
9.1 hours for sleep surprised me to be honest. Where are all the gurus recommending 5-hour sleep?
1️⃣7️⃣ I’ll leave you with this short film that masterfully depicts the state of human beings.
📚 Book Summary of the Week
Currently I have been obsessed with the idea of death. Basically I keep asking the question “Why do we have to die?”
Honesty, if you are not religious or believing the life after death, death seems horrendous.
The book was interesting since it claims death death is horrible and we must do everything in our power to escape from it. It opposes the generally-accepted claim that death is good for us.
When I think about it it seems thrilling to know that I will be dead. At the same time, it gives me some relief to know that there will be an end to my suffering. Also, I need some urgency to complete whatever it is on my mind. Death gives that urgency. Death and cancer :)
Here are some ideas from the book. I do believe that death is necessary and not evil. It would be so boring to have more than 200 years, 500 years life spans. I am bored after 3 days of holiday, what would I do with a 200 years of retirement. Uf, God forbid.
Lifespans are getting longer. Is it good? What is the point of living longer? What would you do if you have 20 years more?
A child born in the United States today can expect to live for almost 80 years, nearly 30 more years than one born 100 years ago. By 2100 the United States and the rest of the developed world are expected to achieve a life expectancy at birth of 85 and by 2200 the average person in those countries is expected to reach 90. By 2300, life spans are expected to reach nearly 100.
Better nutrition, improved sanitation, and advances in medicine are the primary reasons for a longer life. Thanks science and industrial revolution.
In 1900, 63 percent of children in the world survived their first five years; today 96 percent live to see their fifth birthday.
According to the book, death is evil. What do you think?
Death is evil: this is my central claim. Death, as we will see, has many able defenders, including a star cast of philosophers and artists. We will see that they are simply wrong
We have our biological limit of 120 years. Why? Why is it not 500? Who decides that?
And there are some creatures that simply do not die. Hydras for example, have no biological upper limit.
They see the human life span, like the life span of any species, as nothing but the result of our evolutionary history and, as such, entirely contingent. Conditions being slightly different, we could have had a life span of no more than 50 years, like the mountain gorilla; as much as 200 years, like giant tortoises; or 500 years, like the Greenland shark; or even longer. Recently, it has been discovered that some creatures, such as the immortal jellyfish, hydras, and maybe even ordinary lobsters may have no biological upper limit; they will just keep going as long as no accidents befall them.
We believe that there were around 117 billion people have lived on Earth. However the miniscule part of them could get to see life after 50 years.
One explanation for why nature settled on our upper limit of about 120 years is that so few humans survived beyond their youth. Natural selection had no opportunity to remove the genes that cause problems for us as we age
The probability of me existing at all comes out to 1 in 102,685,000 — yes, that's a 10 followed by 2,685,000 zeroes! So it is basically zero. However death is certain. Why do always bad win?
As unlikely as coming into existence is, nothing could be more certain than ceasing to exist. We can sometimes stave death off for a while, but there is no avoiding it entirely. Every (multicellular) organism that comes to be also ceases to be. We are doomed from the start.
Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived various concentration camps, including Auschwitz, asserts that we need meaning. It is subjective but it must fill your heart with purpose. You need a why to handle every how.
While the conditions of concentration camp inmates were extreme, he affirms the more general point that “the striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.”
If you want to live longer, try some calorie restriction. We know this from Japanese philosophies also. Never fully fill your stomach. It is my biggest dilemma. I love eating, I live for eating and I am aware that this shortens my lifespan. Current happy me or future long-lived Ratip? I think current one is winning since I am writing this from a restaurant. Forgive me my lifespan.
There are already several known ways to significantly prolong the life span of nonhuman organisms. One of these ways is caloric restriction. Mice given less than their normal calorie intake live 20 to 40 percent longer and are also healthier and more active until they die, an increase that corresponds to adding decades of quality life to a human being. Caloric restriction has also worked for yeasts, worms, rats, cats, dogs, cows, and, most interestingly, for primates. A longitudinal study of 76 rhesus monkeys begun in 1989 by the Wisconsin Primate Research Center shows that monkeys on a 30 percent caloric restriction age slower and have a reduced mortality rate compared to a control group.
People generally do not want to live longer. It is interesting to see that we want to die early. I think we accepted this natural limit around us.
Writer David Ewing Duncan has traveled the United States giving talks on biotechnology and life extension. At each venue, he asked people there if they would want to live 80 years, 120 years, 150 years, or forever. 8 People were allowed to imagine breakthroughs in antiaging medicine. He estimates that out of 30,000 people, 60 percent responded by saying 80 years, 30 percent said 120 years, nearly 10 percent said 150 years, and less than 1 percent said forever. His results were similar to those of a 2013 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center about Americans’ opinions on death. When asked how long they would want to live, 69 percent gave a number between 78 and 100. The average ideal life span turned out to be about 90. Only 8 percent said that they would want to live beyond 100, and only 4 percent said they would want to live beyond 120.
Old brains liked death, accepted it to say that there is no meaning in the fight against it. You might disagree. I try to disagree but need some further proofs that I might be happier if I live longer.
Socrates likened earthly existence to a punishment and an illness and understood death to be a relief, something to look forward to. The Buddha similarly taught that life is suffering and saw our final and absolute extinction as the highest good. Stoic philosophers from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius implored us not only to accept death, but to love it as a part of the cosmically just iron laws of nature. The sixteenth-century thinker Montaigne, under the influence of Plato and the Stoics, goes so far as to identify philosophical wisdom with the acceptance of death in the famous title of one of his essays, “To Study Philosophy is to Learn How to Die.”
We need death for our humane values Kass says and I agree. To be interested and engaged, to get serious on something, to aspire for something and to love, we need some sort of a deadline. What is the point otherwise? Sorry for my narrow-minded.
Kass thinks that four broad categories of human values and interests would be lost if we conquered death: 1. interest and engagement; 2. seriousness and aspirations; 3. virtue and moral excellence; and 4. beauty and love.
This thought experiment is so good:
If the human life span were increased even by only twenty years, would the pleasures of life increase proportionately? Would professional tennis players really enjoy playing 25% more games of tennis? Would the Don Juan’s of our world feel better for having seduced 1,250 women rather than 1,000? … Likewise, those whose satisfaction comes from climbing the career ladder might well ask what there would be to do for fifteen years after one had been CEO of Microsoft, a member of Congress, or the President of Harvard for a quarter of a century? Even less clear are the additions to personal happiness from more of the same of the less pleasant and less fulfilling activities in which so many of us are engaged so much of the time.
But again there might be some point to live longer, remember all the books you would like to read?
For the lifelong reader there will still be many old books not read, and a constant stream of new books to be read. For the painter, there will be an infinite number of further possibilities, as there will be for one who enjoys investing in the stock market, understanding nature, watching scientific and other knowledge being discovered, growing a garden, observing the sunset, enjoying music, and taking walks. In that sense, however, life’s possibilities, will never be exhausted; death at any time, at age 90, or 100, or 110, will frustrate those further possibilities, which are endless and likely never to be satisfied for one who has remained lively and inquiring.
This is one of the most important learning from the book. Psychologist Steven Reiss asserted that 16 life motives:
1. The need for food and water and other basic necessities
2. the need to be appreciated
3. curiosity, the need to gain knowledge
4. romance, the need for mating or sex
5. family, the need to take care of one’s offspring
6. honor, the need to be faithful to the customary values of an individual’s ethnic group, community, family, or clan
7. idealism, the need for social justice
8. independence, the need to be distinct and self-reliant
9. order, the need for prepared, established, and conventional environments
10. physical activity, the need for physical exercise
11. power, the need for control of will
12. saving, the need to accumulate something;
13. social contact, the need for relationships with others
14. social status, the need for social significance
15. tranquility, the need to be secure and protected
16. vengeance, the need to strike back against another person
If you are not motivated to live, or feel depressed, take a good look at above points. Which one of these motives is lacking?
There are a lot of good arguments in the book, author try to convince us that we dot need death to make our lives matter. Or we are not be populated if our lives are prolonged.
I strongly suggest you to grab a copy of the book and read it. You need to understand death better in order to die better :)
🦉 Stoic Lesson #5
“If you want your children and wife and friends to live forever, you’re a fool, because you’re wanting things that aren’t within your power to be within your power, and things that aren’t your own to be your own. And likewise, if you want your slave-boy never to commit a fault, you’re an idiot, because you’re wanting badness not to be badness, but something else. If you make it your wish, however, not to fail in your desires, that lies within your power. So exercise yourself in that which you can achieve.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion, 14.3
Epictetus asserts that it is unwise to have aspirations for things that are beyond our reach, such as the eternal life of our loved ones or the impeccable conduct of a slave. Such desires are futile, as they are not within our power to fulfill, and only lead to disillusionment and disappointment. Instead, he recommends that we concentrate on what we have control over, which is our own intentions and wishes. We can work towards achieving our own goals by developing our character, ethics, and values, and aligning them with our objectives. In this way, we can pursue a meaningful and fulfilling life, without becoming too attached to things that are outside our influence.
🦋 Poem of the Post
NOSTOS
There was an apple tree in the yard —this would have beenforty years ago—behind,only meadow. Drifts of crocus in the damp grass. I stood at that window:late April. Spring flowers in the neighbor’s yard. How many times, really, did the tree flower on my birthday, the exact day, not before, not after? Substitution of the immutable for the shifting, the evolving.Substitution of the image for relentless earth. What do I know of this place, the role of the tree for decades taken by a bonsai, voices rising from the tennis courts—Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut. As one expects of a lyric poet. We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory. -Louise Glück
The rest is memory… Chills.
🎞️ Films of the Post
Here are 4 of the best films I have watched since the last post I have shared with you.
Yeah, it's like they've got this feeling, and they don't have any skill, and they don't want skill, because it's really interesting what happens when your passion is bigger than the tools you have to deal with it. It creates this energy that's raw. Isn't it great?
Men always feel that they have to fix things for women, but they're not doing anything. Some things just can't be fixed. Just be there, somehow that's hard for all of you.
Guys in long-term relationships become so lame. They end up as under-stimulated, bourgeois retards.