Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Carl Sagan’s timeless and humbling Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, based on the photograph above. Here’s an excerpt: Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it …
How can we bring our knowledge to bear on a problem? Does this resemble how we accumulate knowledge in the first place? A thoughtful passage by David Gelernter in Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox…How …
“People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don’t look.” *** Pop art luminary Andy Warhol had a lot to say about love and sex. As found in the wonderful pseudo memoir The Philosophy of Andy …
In her acceptance speech for the National Book Foundation’s 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Ursula K. Le Guin offered this soul-touching look at humanity. I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting …
In his pseudo-memoir, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), which is more a collection of his thoughts on various subjects, Andy Warhol writes about the paradox of getting what you don’t want. I had an incredible …
John Keats coined the term negative capability to describe the willingness to embrace uncertainty, mysteries and doubts. The first and only time Keats used the phrase was in a letter on 21 December 1817 to his brothers in reference to his …
Around 10:00 pm one night when I was 16 my cell phone rang with a panicked voice on the other side. My best friend was barely able to remain calm enough to get words out of his mouth. After a bit of time, I figured out that he was at his …
“No mind, however dull, can escape the brightness that comes from steady application.” *** In several of his speeches, Charlie Munger has referred to Sir William Osler, the Canadian physician, and co-founder of Johns Hopkins …
“In many ways, the work of a critic is very easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment.” *** On the role of a critic, Theodore Roosevelt once famously …
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as …
“Grit is passion and perseverance for extremely long intervals.” *** Last month I hi-lighted the research of Angela Duckworth on why grit can matter more than IQ in determining success in life. But that doesn’t help us …
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Atul Gawande. A reader recently pointed out that I hadn’t covered his most recent book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. I had only covered an interesting subset of …
While we can learn a lot from what successful people do in the mornings, as Nassim Taleb points out, we can learn a lot from what failed people do before breakfast too. Inversion is actually one of the most powerful mental models in our …
The “last lecture” is common with a lot of professors on college campuses. Professors are asked to consider what matters most to them. If you’ve ever sat in the audience for one of these lectures you can’t help but …
In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, we find a list of thirteen virtues that Franklin thought were necessary or desirable. Virtues are character traits considered morally good and valued for their ability to promote individual and …
Why do partnerships work well? That’s the question Michael Eisner explores in Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed. Some of the most successful and accomplished people are really teams: Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, …
Immediately to lash out in retaliation, however, and neither to listen nor be listened to, but to speak while being spoken to, is scandalous; on the other hand anyone who has acquired the ability to listen in a self-controlled and …
Scott Adams, the famous creator of Dilbert, has made a very good living by understanding and revealing human psychology. In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Adams shares “the strategy he has used since he was a teen …
From Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania (now at Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management), has taken up the economic …
“Failures of ignorance we can forgive. If the knowledge of the best thing to do in a given situation does not exist, we are happy to have people simply make their best effort. But if the knowledge exists and is not applied correctly, …
Empty suits share three things in common. First, they are blind to the limits of their own knowledge. Second, they oversimplify the problem. Finally, they never utter the phrase “I don’t know.” Empty suits are toxic and …
“Geniuses … were believed to possess rare and special powers: the power to create, redeem, and destroy; the power to penetrate the fabric of the universe; the power to see into the future, or to see into our souls.” The …
Following, beauty, and honors, the final part of Canadian filmmaker Reid Gower’s trilogy on Richard Feynman, covers curiosity. The world is strange. The whole universe is very strange, but you see when you look at the details that the …
“There can be no great genius without a touch of madness.” — Seneca This is a beautiful passage from Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone on the conflict between reason and nature. Reason is the enemy of all greatness: reason is the …