Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter.

In this email:

• Political labels and trust in the government

• Introducing Randomness

• Quote to go

Political labels and trust in the government

I think the message of this quote is twofold. One, labels are irrelevant. No one can agree with the entire message of either political party. Simply by saying “I’m a liberal/democrat/republican/etc…”, you are agreeing to a swath of opinions, many of which you may not even be aware of. Better to stray from common, sweeping labels. Your opinions should be like a buffet, pick what you like and leave the rest.

Also, it is logical to become more right-wing as the group size increases. There is an inverse correlation between the size of a group and trust among the members of the group. This is only natural. I trust my family the most. I trust my friends a lot as well, but not as much as my family. I would not trust random people on the bus with my personal belongings, but I would trust their opinions on the infrastructure in the city we all live in. I trust the federal government very little to act in my interests. There are far too many shareholders as we move up the chain of command for my personal values to be reflected accurately at the top. For this reason, I largely agree with the quote above.

Introducing randomness

How long do you spend deciding where to go out for dinner, what movie to watch, what chore to do next, or which route to take on your daily walk? I’ve spent entire evenings watching previews for movies instead of picking one to watch.

I listened to a podcast with Cyan Banister, a fascinating woman who sometimes uses dice to make decisions for her. For example, to pick a restaurant she will decide on a cuisine, go on OpenTable, roll the dice, and then count down the list. No matter how good or bad the reviews are she commits to eating there. She trusts the dice, they have never led her astray.

I was inspired to implement randomness into my daily life. So far I have used it with chore order on a Sunday afternoon, and to pick a movie to watch. The randomness of rolling the dice is fun in itself, so even if the outcome sucks, it was still an enjoyable experience and will make for a cool story! However, I see the real use case for the dice is when travelling in places you are not familiar with. Randomly deciding where to go and what to do leaves room for the magic of chance to creep in.

Quote to go

Thanks for reading!

Lucas