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- Your best attempt at realism (113)
Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter - Friday Edition.
In this email:
Your best attempt at realism
Forcing content
Quote on keeping an open mind
Your best attempt at realism
What approach should you take regarding your worldly outlook?
Being a pessimist will leave you unhappy and, taken to extremes, force your actions into short-term preferences. If you believe the future will be worse than the present, why save your money? Spend it now while you can enjoy it.
Optimism is a better option than pessimism. This allows you to make your decisions based on longer-time preferences. It will leave you blindsided when bad or unexpected things happen, but you believe the future will bring progress. Next year might not be better than this one, but on average, in 10 years, things will be better across the board. I believe most humans get up in the morning and work on improving society, and for this reason alone I am more of an optimist than a pessimist.
However, the best approach but also the hardest one, is to be a realist. It is difficult because instead of blindly believing something will be better or worse, or basing your opinions on feelings, you now have to figure out wtf is really going on. You are now responsible for forming and holding nuanced opinions. You have to do your best to figure out the truth. Still, there are far too many ideas, concepts, topics, and conflicting opinions in the world for you to figure it all out 100%. And you may never get to 100% certainty on anything. When you are not sure about something, do some research and form an opinion. Think for yourself.
All that you can do is give it your best shot. Anything else seems insane.
Forcing content
While browsing the Enumerated blog by Nick Szabo, I came upon this review:
"Like most blogs worth my attention, this blog is updated only infrequently. That is because the authors of blogs worth my attention only post when they have something to say that is true, relevant and not already known by their audience. Most of the human race does not have the skill to know when an idea has these three properties. The skill is particularly rare in the fields of politics and economics, which is why this blog is such a rare and valuable thing."
Now I am questioning the frequency, length, topics, and delivery of this newsletter. Writing and publishing 2 newsletters a week, often covering 3 subjects, may be watering down the content. I release two a week to keep myself accountable and to push myself to always be learning and discovering new topics. Sometimes, this leads me to select mediocre or obvious ideas. Or I don’t give myself enough time with each topic to really discover and deliver my own personal angle. I am pondering, and slowly formulating a plan to make this newsletter more potent, while still having a consistent weekly release schedule. I also want to encourage more discussion around the topics presented here and build more of a community.
Any ideas are appreciated, as always. Simply respond to this email, I read every response.
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.”
Keep an open mind. When was the last time you changed your mind on something?
Thanks for reading!
Lucas