Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
We’ve all been there. At the bookstore looking for a book to read. On one side of the store is the safe bet. The best-selling books that everyone else is reading. These are (generally) mediocre …
A lot of wisdom in this excerpt from Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics: … if there is one thing we know about the sentiments of crowds, it is …
Some more timeless wisdom from Rudyard Kipling: If … If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But …
Born as a slave in a wealthy household nearly 2,000 years ago in Hierapolis, Epictetus caught a lucky break when his “owner” Epaphroditus, let him study liberal arts. Through the Stoic …
Jeff Bezos recently stopped by the office of 37 Signals. After talking product strategy he answered some questions. In his answer to one question he shared some thoughts on people who were …
Once you’ve formed a belief, adding exceptions and justifications becomes easier than updating it. Ryan Holiday writes about this in Trust Me, I’m Lying: Once the mind has accepted a …
William Deresiewicz with an insightful article in The American Scholar arguing that we’ve fallen into the trap of scientism: the belief that science is the only valid form of knowledge. Reading …
Robert Gula in Nonsense: A Handbook of Logical Fallacies: Let’s not call them laws; and, since they’re not particularly original, I won’t attach my name to them. They are merely a …
In The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Christopher Maurer translates this gem from Baltasar Gracián y Morales: Know how to sell your wares, intrinsic quality isn’t enough. Not everyone bites at substance …
“Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people …
James Gleick, author of The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, says: We’re in the habit of associating value with scarcity, but the digital world unlinks them. You can be the sole owner of a …
At the recommendation of Warren Buffett’s Biographer, Alice Schroeder, I’ve been reading The Craft of Interviewing. Schroeder seems pretty crafty at knowing when, what, and how to ask …
The long chains of reasonings, simple and easy, by which geometricians are wont to achieve their most complex proofs, had led me to suppose that all things, the knowledge of which man may achieve, are …