“Love, love, love.”
Inductive thinking doesn’t have to be a road to ruin, though. In fact, you can make a fortune with it by sending a few e-mails. Here’s how: Put together two stock market forecasts—-one predicting that prices will rise next month and one warning of a drop. Send the first mail to fifty thousand people and the second mail to a different fifty thousand. Suppose that after one month, the indices have fallen. Now you can send another e-mail, but this time only to the fifty thousand people who received a correct prediction. These fifty thousand you divide into two groups: the first half learns that prices will increase next month, and the second half discovers they will fall. Continue doing this. After ten months, around a hundred people will remain, all of whom you have advised impeccably. From their perspective, you are a genius. You have proven that you are truly in possession of prophetic powers. Some of these people will trust you with their money. Take it and start a new life in Brazil.
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| — | Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly |
Motivated by the stories of countless guitar heroes, Rick starts a band. Will he make it big? The probability lies a fraction above zero. Like so many others, he will most likely end up in the graveyard of failed musicians. This burial ground houses ten thousand times more musicians than the stage does, but no journalist is interested in failures—-with the exception of fallen superstars. This makes the cemetery invisible to outsiders.
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Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly (via afgurri) I haven’t read the book, so maybe this is addressed later, but technically Rick is a failed superstar in this parable. He remains a successful musician as long as he continues to play music. (via stephenharred) Semantics aside, I think it is important to make people understand how small a chance they have of not just becoming a rock star, but simply making a living, or even supplementing their income to any meaningful degree, by going into music or any creative work. I absolutely agree that one can successfully devote oneself to a craft without making a penny from it (how many hundreds of thousands of words have I written on blogs and elsewhere over the years?). But the first step to doing this is to calibrate your expectations appropriately so you will not be disappointed, and risk losing your drive in that disappointment. (via afgurri) I don’t believe the decision to chase after superstardom is made through any rational thought process. The level of risk involved is such that I’m convinced it’s the equivalent of gambling addiction, so prohibition of rock stars may be more effective than education. And if you’re worried about discouraged artists, I ask you “are we discouraging them enough?” In all seriousness, I think doing a thing for it’s own sake is truest path to fulfillment and chasing fame and fortune the surest path to failure, but I’m just not able to grant the full premise of this argument. (via stephenharred) Absolutely agree with all this, but I also think there’s a significant part of the population that really just does not know how absolutely improbable it is to make even a bump in their income from pursuing these activities. And I don’t think it hurts to point it out. (via afgurri) Why are you trying to crush my dreams of superstardom, Powerlaw Meme? (via stephenharred) It’s my only power. |
Motivated by the stories of countless guitar heroes, Rick starts a band. Will he make it big? The probability lies a fraction above zero. Like so many others, he will most likely end up in the graveyard of failed musicians. This burial ground houses ten thousand times more musicians than the stage does, but no journalist is interested in failures—-with the exception of fallen superstars. This makes the cemetery invisible to outsiders.
“
| — |
Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly (via afgurri) I haven’t read the book, so maybe this is addressed later, but technically Rick is a failed superstar in this parable. He remains a successful musician as long as he continues to play music. (via stephenharred) Semantics aside, I think it is important to make people understand how small a chance they have of not just becoming a rock star, but simply making a living, or even supplementing their income to any meaningful degree, by going into music or any creative work. I absolutely agree that one can successfully devote oneself to a craft without making a penny from it (how many hundreds of thousands of words have I written on blogs and elsewhere over the years?). But the first step to doing this is to calibrate your expectations appropriately so you will not be disappointed, and risk losing your drive in that disappointment. (via afgurri) I don’t believe the decision to chase after superstardom is made through any rational thought process. The level of risk involved is such that I’m convinced it’s the equivalent of gambling addiction, so prohibition of rock stars may be more effective than education. And if you’re worried about discouraged artists, I ask you “are we discouraging them enough?” In all seriousness, I think doing a thing for it’s own sake is truest path to fulfillment and chasing fame and fortune the surest path to failure, but I’m just not able to grant the full premise of this argument. (via stephenharred) Absolutely agree with all this, but I also think there’s a significant part of the population that really just does not know how absolutely improbable it is to make even a bump in their income from pursuing these activities. And I don’t think it hurts to point it out. |
Motivated by the stories of countless guitar heroes, Rick starts a band. Will he make it big? The probability lies a fraction above zero. Like so many others, he will most likely end up in the graveyard of failed musicians. This burial ground houses ten thousand times more musicians than the stage does, but no journalist is interested in failures—-with the exception of fallen superstars. This makes the cemetery invisible to outsiders.
“
| — |
Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly (via afgurri) I haven’t read the book, so maybe this is addressed later, but technically Rick is a failed superstar in this parable. He remains a successful musician as long as he continues to play music. (via stephenharred) Semantics aside, I think it is important to make people understand how small a chance they have of not just becoming a rock star, but simply making a living, or even supplementing their income to any meaningful degree, by going into music or any creative work. I absolutely agree that one can successfully devote oneself to a craft without making a penny from it (how many hundreds of thousands of words have I written on blogs and elsewhere over the years?). But the first step to doing this is to calibrate your expectations appropriately so you will not be disappointed, and risk losing your drive in that disappointment. |
Celebrity Photoshop of the Day: Classic Paintings Recreated with Modern Celebrities
Look at these winning submissions fromWorth 1000’s “Modern Renaissance” contest!
Contestant BrunoSousa took both first and second place for recreating Rogier van der Weyden’s “Portrait of a Lady” with the face of actress Angelina Jolie (shown above, top) and Jacques-Louis David’s “Portrait of Doctor Alphonse Leroy” with actor Hugh Laurie’s face (shown above, middle). Contestant Fichtenbrenner came in at third with François-Xavier Fabre’s “Portrait of Edward Fox Fitzgerald” featuring the face of Steve Carrell from The Office (shown above, bottom).
In sheer numbers, these microbes and their genes dwarf us. It turns out that we are only 10 percent human: for every human cell that is intrinsic to our body, there are about 10 resident microbes.
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| — | Michael Pollan: Say Hello to the 100 Trillion Bacteria That Make Up Your Microbiome - NYTimes.com (via thisistheverge) |
