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Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
We’ve written quite a bit about the marvelous British naturalist Charles Darwin, who with his Origin of Species created perhaps the most intense intellectual debate in human history, one which …
“Biological thinking and physics thinking are distinct, and often complementary, approaches to the world, and ones that are appropriate for different kinds of systems.” *** How should we …
“What it needs is for the air to be made right. If you want a bee to make honey, you do not issue protocols on solar navigation or carbohydrate chemistry, you put him together with other bees …
The three most fundamental sources of knowledge are physics, math, and human history. They offer us endless learning and mental models. Here’s how mastering the three buckets of knowledge can give you …
“It is important to understand that none of these replicating entities is consciously interested in getting itself duplicated. But it will just happen that the world becomes filled with …
Most of us periodically struggle to manage our relationships, whether we’re trying to manage a company, a team, a marriage, or a friendship. The problem is that we’re often fighting, …
Yuval Noah Harari‘s Sapiens is one of those uniquely breathtaking books that comes along very rarely. It’s broad, yet scientific. It’s written for a popular audience but never feels …
In his 1986 speech at the commencement of Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles (found in Poor Charlie’s Almanack) Charlie Munger gave a short Johnny Carson-like speech on the things to avoid …
* “Be not deceived,” Epictetus writes in The Discourses, “every animal is attached to nothing so much as to its own interest.” Few things are more in our nature than our …
The biologist E.O. Wilson, now of Harvard University, made his first and largest splash by releasing his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which made the controversial claim (at the time) that …
How is it that some people come back from crushing defeats while others simply give in? Why does adversity make some people and teams stronger and render others ineffective? These are the questions …
In Stronger: Develop the Resilience You Need to Succeed there is a section on the Biological Bases of Human Resilience that is fascinating. It turns out the key to developing resilience at the …
Isaac Newton’s third law states that, without exception, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” What most people don’t know is that Newton’s law is …
Human history is a fragment of biological history. If we are to learn enduring lessons it is best to go back in time Our view of the world is fairly shallow. We look backward but rarely to a time …
Earlier this year, a prominent friend of mine was tasked with coming up with a list of behavioral economics book recommendations for the military leaders of a G7 country and I was on the limited email …
Right now the front of your brain is firing signals about what you’re reading and how much of it you soak up has a lot to do with whether there is a proper balance of neurochemicals and growth factors …