What does philosophy teach us about life?
Education
Lessons and Philosophy from a few people: Naval Ravikant, Richard P. Feynman, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Elon Musk, Charlie Munger, Cristiano Ronaldo, Viktor Frankl
Integrity – Be true to yourself. You must not fool yourself; you are the easiest person to fool. Change yourself before changing the world and you will change the world. Nobody can compete with me.
Knowledge – These are of two types:
- Codified knowledge which can become taught and
- Tacit knowledge which comes to one from one’s own perspectives and experiences. Knowledge grows by subtraction rather than by addition. Given what we know today might be wrong but what we know to be wrong cannot turn out to be right easily. You keep learning and learning, and soon you will learn something no one has learned before.
Idea and experiment – Successful theories come from curiosity, concentration, perseverance, and self-criticism that is destruction of one’s own ideas, but you are most afraid to contradict yourself. It’s not bringing in new ideas that’s so hard. It’s getting rid of the old ones. A good idea never goes away and if you are lucky, you’ll have a few before we all fade away into obscurity. Logic without statistics is valid but statistics without logic is not. Significance can only be revealed through practice.
Exposure is more important than knowledge as decision effects supersede logic.
There is a possibility that something is not necessarily theoretical but found by trial and error, what works cannot be irrational, but one needs to be rational in not making trial and error completely random. In the process, especially when money is on the line, fail fast and continue this loop until concrete results. Evolution proceeds by undirected, convex bricolage or tinkering, inherently robust, i.e., with the achievement of potential stochastic gains thanks to continuous, repetitive, small, localized mistakes.
How to get a task done? – Impatience with work and patience with the results. When stuck with something it is crucial to look at problems with different perspectives. That is when breaks such as coffee, walk or sleep help. Lastly, opportunity cost and incentives are super power for one who has hope to get the right answer.
Envy – The world is not driven by greed by envy. When you envy a certain aspect of another person just think of it in terms of the whole package. When is that one aspect set aside? Would you want the whole package? And the answer is generally no.
Creativity – As a creative one uncovers the darkness and gives it life by dreaming it as a reality. It is interesting to note that most mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and astrophysicists do what we consider their best work when they are young. It is not that they don’t do good work in their old age but what we value most is often what they did early. On the other hand, in music, politics and literature. Often what we consider their best work was done late.
Purpose – Everyone has their own purposes at different phases of the times. It always changes but never ceases to be. If there was one purpose for all would just end up bringing down each
other to get it. The question is how one can find purpose? It is the numbers game, therefore try doing variety. A person can be passionate about a lot on the journey to find one purpose and it is possible that due to laziness, boredom, and the toughness of the problem one does not find it exciting anymore and so, it is important to stick to it long enough. Being unimaginative is only a problem when you are easily bored. Avoidance of boredom is the only worthy mode of action. Everything is interesting if you go deeply enough, and luck favors a prepared mind. If something means to you it will never leave your mind. You pursue it or it will haunt you for the rest of life.
What does money buy? – Distance from people (examples – bigger apartments/houses, hotel suites, number of cars, first class/private airplane, private beach). Money also buys comfort. It is vital to be rich and comfortable sooner than later if possible. Only after accomplishing that can a person really concentrate on real purpose.
Existential vacuum – Disorientation between the past that has already been fulfilled, present that is fulfilling and future that will be fulfilled. This may lead to seeking pleasure which will turn into misery due to ingesting chemicals to alter mood, envy, and resentment. This can be overcome by respect to work, experiences/encounters. And attitude towards unavoidable suffering or by paradoxical intention that is engaging in feared behavior.
Happiness – Happiness is controlling your time and opinion by owning freedom. It means nothing is missing and absence of desire because desire is a contract you make with yourself until you get what you want.
Death and Religion – A good person has no reason to fear death because there will be a better afterlife if religion exists, and you are a good person and if religion does not then the pain of life will end. Science and Statistics is based on certainties. Think of religion as an open channel then. A scientist who believes in religion will have another perspective than religious people and religious people are just blind to what scientists clearly see.
Soul and Enlightenment – From the perspective of soul, everything you see is non-living and everything you do not see is living. In terms of soul, consider it as a single player game but with two systems, one system you can control and other you cannot. Therefore, it is more important to be conscious than Intelligent. Enlightenment can be a space between thoughts. When enlightenment is thought in terms of science. It is improving the understanding of the forces at work in the world with which we interact.
Freedom – Self-directed scholarship has an aesthetic dimension. Only the autodidacts are free. ‘Self-owned’ becomes a state of mind. Where one is free who owns his own opinion and is not free if not master of their self. This way happiness and freedom become connected.
Lastly, the eternal mystery of this universe is in comprehensibility.
What does philosophy teach us about life?
