ZeV > Recent Status Updates

"The sacrifice is not just a way to convince your lover that you are serious; it is also a way to convince yourself that you are really in love."

"If you suffer because of your belief in God or in the nation, that does not prove that your beliefs are true. Maybe you are just paying the price of your gullibility. However, most people don't like to admit that they are fools. Consequently, the more they sacrifice for a particular belief, the stronger their faith becomes."

"If you want to make people really believe in some fiction, entice them to make a sacrifice on its behalf. Once you suffer for a story, it is usually enough to convince you that the story is real. If you fast because God commanded you to do so, the tangible feeling of hunger makes God present more than any statue or icon."

"Perhaps nobody understood the political importance of rituals better than Confucius, who saw the strict observance of rites (*li*) as the key to social harmony and political stability. ... It is perhaps no coincidence that Confucian cultures--first and foremost in China, but also in neighboring Korea, Vietnam, and Japan--produced extremely long-lasting social and political structures."

"It's obvious *why* humans want to believe the story, but *how* do they actually believe? How do we make the story *feel* real? Priests and shamans discovered the answer to this question thousands of years ago: rituals."

"not only are our personal identities built on the story, but so are our collective institutions. Consequently, it is extremely frightening to doubt the story. In many societies, anyone who tries to do so is ostracized or persecuted. Even if not, it takes strong nerves to question the very fabric of society. For if indeed the story is false, then the entire world as we know it makes no sense."

"So why do people believe in these fictions? One reason is that their personal identity is built on the story. People are taught to believe in the story from early childhood. ... By the time their intellect matures, they are so heavily invested in the story that they are far more likely to use their intellect to rationalize it than to doubt it."

"For those who don't trust great chains, future legacies, or collective epics, perhaps the safest and most parsimonious story they can turn to is romance. ... if you believe in the romantic story but you are not in love, you at least know what the aim of your life is: to find true love."

"A wise old man was asked what he learned about the meaning of life. "Well," he answered, "I have learned that I am here on earth in order to help other people. What I still haven't figured out is why the other people are here."

"Though some stories go to the trouble of encompassing the entirety of space and time, the ability to control attention allows many other successful stories to remain far more modest in scope. A crucial law of storytelling is that once a story manages to extend beyond the audience's horizon, its ultimate scope matters little."

"Most successful stories remain open-ended. They never need to explain where meaning comes from, because they are so good at capturing people's attention and keeping it inside a safe zone."

"All stories are incomplete. Yet in order to construct a viable identity for myself and give meaning to my life, I don't really need a complete story devoid of blind spots and internal contradictions. To give meaning to my life, a story needs to satisfy just two conditions. First it must give *me* some role to play. ... Second, (it) embed(ding) me within something bigger than myself."

Tactical empathy. Empathizing is not agreeing; it is understanding the counterpart. Label the counterpart's issues and diffuse yourself.

Three voice tones: (1) the late-night FM DJ voice; (2) positive, playful voice (default); (3) direct, assertive (use rarely).

(1) Use the late-night FM DJ voice; (2) Start with "I'm sorry"; (3) Mirror; (4) Silence, at least four seconds to let the mirror work the magic on the counterpart; (5) Repeat.

Negotiation via rationality (System 2) vs. empathy (System 1). The study started out with the former, but the latter has been more effective.

"If, however, you want to retain some control over your personal existence and the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don't take much baggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy."

"Technology isn't bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don't know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aiims for you and take control of your life. Especially as technology gets better at understanding humans, you might increasingly find yourself serving it, instead of it serving you."

"So the best advice I can give a fifteen-year-old stuck in an outdated school somewhere in Mexico, India, or Alabama is: don't rely on the adults too much. Most of them mean well, but they just don't understand the world. In the past it was a relatively safe bet to follow the adults, because they know the world quite well, and the world changed slowly. But the twenty-first century is going to be different."

"To survive and flourish in such a world, ou will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and learn to feel at home with the unknown."

"Though the adult brain is more flexible and volatile than was once tthought, it is still less maleable than the teenage brain. Reconnecting neutrons and rewiring synapses is hard work. But in the twenty-first century, you can't afford stability."

"Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching "the four C's"--critical thinkinng, communication, collaboration, and creativity. More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations."

"the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and abve all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world."

e.g., secondmarket.com for the amount of outstanding shares.

Pre-excercise option for tax advantage.

"every round's lead investor usually sets the valuation of the company. The reality is that the internal valuation (as expressed by the stock option prices that new employees get) is usually set at 1/10th of the price that the previous lead investors got. The reason is that investors typically get preferred stock, while employees get common stock."