Re: [silk] What You Learn in Your 40s
And I learnt that chocolate spread is the result of an unholy nexus between capitalism and my children to get them to eat chocolate for breakfast. Just now. a moment back. When my 6 yr old asked for another slice of toast expanding his stomach size by 2. Am only trying to live no. 6 in Thaths mail, if you found my learning too silly for your liking. I am a lurker, but have empathised with this chain so much its brought tears to my eyes. And I am not 40 yet (that doesn't tell you much I know). Thanks everyone. Dinesh On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 7:15 AM, Sudhakar Chandra tha...@gmail.com wrote: What I've learned so far in my 40's: 1. This too shall pass. 2. Underneath our egos, fashion, persona, achievements, ideas and goals we are all wet, naked, shivering, starving babies wanting to be hugged. 3. Don't believe every thought you have. 4. When seen from the frame of reference of the heat death of the universe, almost everything is less serious than your mind makes it out to be. 5. It is almost universally better to have a nice walk than to argue with somebody who disagrees with you on the internet. 6. The past is over. The future has not arrived yet. All you have is this. very. moment. Try and live in it as much as you can. Thaths On Wed May 21 2014 at 3:00:46 PM, Danese Cooper dan...@gmail.com wrote: Okay...here's my wisdom (at the age of 55). Re-reading before I hit send, I realize some of this sounds relentlessly cheerful or optimistic and I want to preface by saying I have also suffered setbacks in my life that might have left me embittered (but wiser), but for whatever reason I am wired to minimize the troughs and revel in the peaks of life. I really do believe that the journey is the reward and that I profit more from taking a long view than chafing at short-term issues. Its all illusion anyway, invented to instruct my soul. If you got past this (and I'm sure there are some on this list who are already rolling their eyes) then read ahead... 1. Its been said before, but Don't sweat the small stuff and It's nearly all small stuff saved me from despair more than once along the road. Well I remember the day (at Sun Microsystems) when in a heated debate it suddenly came to me that we were arguing with a passion we could better put to use solving REAL problems. Since then my work motto has been It's only software. Likewise in my family life I try not to get too emotionally triggered when loved ones push my buttons. I can only control myself after all, and for myself I choose to be happy. 2. Use what you've been given. In the Game of Life, I believe there is no shame in exploiting your own talents to the best possible effect (within your own moral framework, of course). So I am untroubled as a feminist by the fact that my first three real jobs were absolutely given to me because the hiring manager fancied me ... I didn't feel I owed them any special attention as a result and was clear about that. I know this point will upset some of my friends. I was also graced with the ability to learn many things very quickly. I am therefore untroubled in accepting work where I don't know 100% of the skills required. This nuance may be lost on male readers (we are told most men will apply for a job if they have 60% of the skills described listed as required in a job posting, but most women will only apply if they have 100% of those skills ... I fall in the male camp here). 3. Never Stop Learning. To the previous point ... the goal isn't to become accomplished enough to gain some level of mastery and then coast until you die. The goal is to stay open, flexible and learn all you can. To this end, take risks and challenge yourself to keep learning. Use It or Lose It isn't just about your body, it also applies to cognition, capacity for joy, empathy, compassion and a host of other elements of being an embodied soul. 4. Take a How Hard Can It Be? approach to everything. Often you can get further than you even dreamed if you forge ahead despite predictions that you will fail ... and often the goal you were shooting for turns out to be incidental to the experience you gain. A companion to this advice is It's always better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. The roll-up to both of these guidelines is that risk-takers may lose a given skirmish, but at least they do so from an active self. 5. Sleep Is NOT For Sissies. Your body will carry you further if you moderate all things (food, exercise, recreation and sleep). Your adrenals will crash if you burn the candle at both ends for too long, and it can be a long road back to functional health if that happens. Take care of your body. Its the only one you'll be given this time around. On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 8:07 PM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: This is a fun list. Please add your own
Re: [silk] What You Learn in Your 40s
On May 19, 2014 4:50 PM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: - 8 hours of sleep is not just one of life's great pleasures, it's a necessity for which I am willing to give up job offers, and many other things. - The only true evil is boredom. Human needs are merely two, physical and psychological. The purpose of life is to _provide_ for the former and _eliminate_ the latter. Physical needs are sleep, food, water, shelter from the elements and so on. This was largely solved a few centuries ago - people have since had the choice to live healthy. This is the fruit of civilization. In fact, this is the only reason for civilization. Psychological needs are everything else. Growing our psychological needs makes us perennially hungry, we yearn for filling that empty space within without knowing how. Civilization is supposed to help us eliminate such needs. Yet does it? Civilization as it exists today is a travesty because it does the opposite. Not only does it grow our psychological needs immeasurably (loneliness, boredom, addictions, ambition, greed, and nonsense afflictions like road rage abound), it is undermining its raison d' être by preventing the satisfaction of physical needs like sleep, shelter, clean water and air. Reject such a civilization that makes a person homeless, that chokes the third world, that renders the poor obese, that starves the beautiful, that sleep deprives the brightest, and enrages the tired. Humans don't need thinner TVs, faster broadband and mars rockets at the expense of being human, they need to be free. Do not tolerate sleep depravation, it cuts at the meaning of existence. Do not tolerate boredom, cure it. It is a craving like any addiction. Don't strengthen it with distraction and activity. Cure it with mindful abiding. Living in the present moment, and an active observation of the self will cure every psychological affliction. Be aware of your body and mind. Meditate.
Re: [silk] What You Learn in Your 40s
Upon prodding by Udhay, here's a few things I can put together. These are entirely driven by my personal experience. YMMV. I'm 48, and have been working since I was 17. Here's what I tell my friends and my eldest child, a boy of 16: 1. Marriage is obsolete. At least the sort of marriage favoured by many, involving mutual fidelity, a public ceremony involving parents and registrars, living together in closeness, parenting children, walking into the sunset hand in hand etc. All of these things may indeed happen and should happen if it comes naturally, but marriage is neither necessary nor sufficient nor indicated as a condition for any of these. One must resist urges by concerned parents and relatives to get married, there is very little net positive from that ceremony and what follows that I can sense, with the potential exception of inheritance rights - which is easily solvable anyway with one line in your will. One must, however love with abandon, and experience the highs and lows of life with those that you love by your side. It's something else altogether. 2. Having children is awesome. I have three. The oldest is a wise-beyond-his-years 16. The youngest just turned one. It is something else to lie at floor level and see the ground as a crawling baby sees it, and a joy to see how a 3-year old begins to form words around thoughts that are more complex than the words he knows to express them in. I was too young to appreciate them when I first became a dad at 32. I cherish it more now. 3. Focus is over-rated, especially in all matters regarding career. Well-meaning folks advise you to super-specialise. I think I've done well by, inadvertently though, super-generalising. Having a shallow, superficial and simultaneous knowledge of programming language structures, discounted cash flow calculations, copywriting, travel hacks, subwoofer dynamics, IPO mechanics, company law, the lyrics of Roger Waters, bhut jokokia and access to influential friends across music, movies, startups, art and business communities have all helped me add a lot of value to people and companies I work with. Typically one starts with a broad liberal arts background and then successively specialises. I think the opposite approach is just as, if not more useful in life. 4. You can have enough money. You can't have enough time. My desire for more personal wealth started tapering off a while ago - and I've since sought out increasing swathes of time - not just in a few weeks more of vacation - but a few hours more in every day for daily vacations. 5. Delegate, delegate, delegate. As a corollary, you can't get these swathes of time till you hand over day-to-day responsibility for things to others who will start off worse than you, but if you've picked them well, will end up executing better than you. 6. Keep a cash runway. I've gone through minor hell when I ended up dead-ass broke several times in the last 30 years by taking everything I've earned on a bet and then betting it on something else. Now I've socked away enough for a subsistence income if needed, and access to cash if needed. It's very freeing. Especially to bet the rest on the next big thing. 7. All forecasts are lies. Being involved somewhat with a few dozen companies, I can tell you all forecasts of revenues and margins are lies. I can't imagine how public companies give guidance every quarter, unless they're sand-bagging and fibbing and 'adjusting' big time. 8. I don't know if I can retire. Really. My $0.02 Mahesh 6. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Din esh dinesh.mad...@gmail.com wrote: And I learnt that chocolate spread is the result of an unholy nexus between capitalism and my children to get them to eat chocolate for breakfast. Just now. a moment back. When my 6 yr old asked for another slice of toast expanding his stomach size by 2. Am only trying to live no. 6 in Thaths mail, if you found my learning too silly for your liking. I am a lurker, but have empathised with this chain so much its brought tears to my eyes. And I am not 40 yet (that doesn't tell you much I know). Thanks everyone. Dinesh On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 7:15 AM, Sudhakar Chandra tha...@gmail.com wrote: What I've learned so far in my 40's: 1. This too shall pass. 2. Underneath our egos, fashion, persona, achievements, ideas and goals we are all wet, naked, shivering, starving babies wanting to be hugged. 3. Don't believe every thought you have. 4. When seen from the frame of reference of the heat death of the universe, almost everything is less serious than your mind makes it out to be. 5. It is almost universally better to have a nice walk than to argue with somebody who disagrees with you on the internet. 6. The past is over. The future has not arrived yet. All you have is this. very. moment. Try and live in it as much as you can. Thaths On Wed May 21 2014 at 3:00:46 PM, Danese Cooper dan...@gmail.com wrote:
Re: [silk] What You Learn in Your 40s
Oh I forgot. Contrary to some opinions here: I now sleep only 5 or 6 hours a day. Less than I ever did before. And it seems fine. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 12:58 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan che...@gmail.comwrote: On May 19, 2014 4:50 PM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: - 8 hours of sleep is not just one of life's great pleasures, it's a necessity for which I am willing to give up job offers, and many other things. - The only true evil is boredom. Human needs are merely two, physical and psychological. The purpose of life is to _provide_ for the former and _eliminate_ the latter. Physical needs are sleep, food, water, shelter from the elements and so on. This was largely solved a few centuries ago - people have since had the choice to live healthy. This is the fruit of civilization. In fact, this is the only reason for civilization. Psychological needs are everything else. Growing our psychological needs makes us perennially hungry, we yearn for filling that empty space within without knowing how. Civilization is supposed to help us eliminate such needs. Yet does it? Civilization as it exists today is a travesty because it does the opposite. Not only does it grow our psychological needs immeasurably (loneliness, boredom, addictions, ambition, greed, and nonsense afflictions like road rage abound), it is undermining its raison d' être by preventing the satisfaction of physical needs like sleep, shelter, clean water and air. Reject such a civilization that makes a person homeless, that chokes the third world, that renders the poor obese, that starves the beautiful, that sleep deprives the brightest, and enrages the tired. Humans don't need thinner TVs, faster broadband and mars rockets at the expense of being human, they need to be free. Do not tolerate sleep depravation, it cuts at the meaning of existence. Do not tolerate boredom, cure it. It is a craving like any addiction. Don't strengthen it with distraction and activity. Cure it with mindful abiding. Living in the present moment, and an active observation of the self will cure every psychological affliction. Be aware of your body and mind. Meditate.
Re: [silk] What You Learn in Your 40s
On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan che...@gmail.com wrote: [...] I find many of my ambitious friends make a macho contest out of it - where sleeping becomes a crime. s/many/some/
Re: [silk] What You Learn in Your 40s
To bring some variety to this thread would someone like to take a stab at what a 48 year old Barak Obama or Narendra Modi would have said? On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 8:37 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: This is a fun list. Please add your own discoveries here.
Re: [silk] What You Learn in Your 40s
So I'm not 40 (yet). Hopefully your lists will help make my cycles of iteration a little shorter. I want to also call on the list's wisdom with regards one item on Udhay's list: How does one make a living from a calling of being surrounded by interesting people and interesting conversation?
Re: [silk] What You Learn in Your 40s
My two bits (Credit: Cattleprod applied by Udhay) 1) It is simple to be happy, but difficult to be simple. Simplify, simplify, simplify. (Is that grammatically correct? Wot me worry!) 2) Confront what makes you unhappy and implement a plan to remove the causes. Most of our fears, doubts and unhappy thoughts can be easily eliminated 3) Don't worry too much about the approval of others. (See #1) 4) High IQ is good but IQ+EQ is the real killer combination. IQ can take you places in the early years of one's career when technical skills matter more than people skills, but the higher up one goes, the more EQ one needs. 5) Figure out what makes you happy, and create the time and space for it. If reading makes you happy, read. If singing makes you happy, sing. 6) Slow down, listen with empathy, and smile. It is amazing how many friends you can make with these simple steps. This is probably 80% of EQ. 7) Contentment is underrated, while the pursuit of happiness is overrated. 8) Money and financial literacy are extremely important if you have to be a master of money, and not a slave. Start your financial literacy journey as early as possible. 9) Love without clinging. 10) Focus and refocus on the good and exciting things in life and you will always wake up every morning full of hope and optimism. This is the secret to staying young. Nuff said! Venky On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Mahesh Murthy mahesh.mur...@gmail.comwrote: Upon prodding by Udhay, here's a few things I can put together. These are entirely driven by my personal experience. YMMV. I'm 48, and have been working since I was 17. Here's what I tell my friends and my eldest child, a boy of 16: 1. Marriage is obsolete. At least the sort of marriage favoured by many, involving mutual fidelity, a public ceremony involving parents and registrars, living together in closeness, parenting children, walking into the sunset hand in hand etc. All of these things may indeed happen and should happen if it comes naturally, but marriage is neither necessary nor sufficient nor indicated as a condition for any of these. One must resist urges by concerned parents and relatives to get married, there is very little net positive from that ceremony and what follows that I can sense, with the potential exception of inheritance rights - which is easily solvable anyway with one line in your will. One must, however love with abandon, and experience the highs and lows of life with those that you love by your side. It's something else altogether. 2. Having children is awesome. I have three. The oldest is a wise-beyond-his-years 16. The youngest just turned one. It is something else to lie at floor level and see the ground as a crawling baby sees it, and a joy to see how a 3-year old begins to form words around thoughts that are more complex than the words he knows to express them in. I was too young to appreciate them when I first became a dad at 32. I cherish it more now. 3. Focus is over-rated, especially in all matters regarding career. Well-meaning folks advise you to super-specialise. I think I've done well by, inadvertently though, super-generalising. Having a shallow, superficial and simultaneous knowledge of programming language structures, discounted cash flow calculations, copywriting, travel hacks, subwoofer dynamics, IPO mechanics, company law, the lyrics of Roger Waters, bhut jokokia and access to influential friends across music, movies, startups, art and business communities have all helped me add a lot of value to people and companies I work with. Typically one starts with a broad liberal arts background and then successively specialises. I think the opposite approach is just as, if not more useful in life. 4. You can have enough money. You can't have enough time. My desire for more personal wealth started tapering off a while ago - and I've since sought out increasing swathes of time - not just in a few weeks more of vacation - but a few hours more in every day for daily vacations. 5. Delegate, delegate, delegate. As a corollary, you can't get these swathes of time till you hand over day-to-day responsibility for things to others who will start off worse than you, but if you've picked them well, will end up executing better than you. 6. Keep a cash runway. I've gone through minor hell when I ended up dead-ass broke several times in the last 30 years by taking everything I've earned on a bet and then betting it on something else. Now I've socked away enough for a subsistence income if needed, and access to cash if needed. It's very freeing. Especially to bet the rest on the next big thing. 7. All forecasts are lies. Being involved somewhat with a few dozen companies, I can tell you all forecasts of revenues and margins are lies. I can't imagine how public companies give guidance every quarter, unless they're sand-bagging and fibbing and 'adjusting' big time. 8. I don't know if I can retire.
[silk] Werden Sie den dicken Mann zu schieben?
Mashup of Sapir-Whorf and the Trolley problem http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21602192-when-moral-dilemmas-are-posed-foreign-language-people-become-more-coolly http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094842;jsessionid=65B55B3C893C0723ECAFD99F69B6CD07 “WOULD You Kill the Fat Man?” is the title of a recent book about a set of moral problems that philosophers like to ponder, and psychologists to put to their experimental subjects. In the canonical form, you are on a footbridge watching a trolley speeding down a track that will kill five unsuspecting people. You can push a fat man over the bridge onto the tracks to save the five. (You cannot stop the trolley by jumping yourself, only the fat man is heavy enough.) Would you do it? Most people quail at the idea of shoving the man to his death. But alter the scenario a bit, and reactions change. People are more likely to throw a switch that would divert the trolley on to another track where it will kill only one person. The utilitarian calculation is identical—but the physical and emotional distance from the killing makes throwing the switch much more popular than throwing the man. There are other ways to nudge people’s judgments, too. A rather counter-intuitive one was reported in a paper published last month in PLOS ONE, a journal. In it, Albert Costa of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, and his colleagues, found that the language in which the dilemma is posed can alter how people answer. Specifically, when people are asked the fat-man question in a foreign language, they are more likely to kill him for the others’ sake. Dr Costa and his colleagues interviewed 317 people, all of whom spoke two languages—mostly English plus one of Spanish, Korean or French. Half of each group were randomly assigned the dilemma in their native tongue. The other half answered the problem in their second language. When asked in their native language, only 20% of subjects said they would push the fat man. When asked in the foreign language, the proportion jumped to 33%. Dans le jardin of good and evil Morally speaking, this is a troubling result. The language in which a dilemma is posed should make no difference to how it is answered. Linguists have wondered whether different languages encode different assumptions about morality, which might explain the result. But the effect existed for every combination of languages that the researchers looked at, so culture does not seem to explain things. Other studies in “trolleyology” have found that East Asians are less likely to make the coldly utilitarian calculation, and indeed none of the Korean subjects said they would push the fat man when asked in Korean. But 7.5% were prepared to when asked in English. The explanation seems to lie in the difference between being merely competent in a foreign language and being fluent. The subjects in the experiment were not native bilinguals, but had, on average, begun the study of their foreign language at age 14. (The average participant was 21.) The participants typically rated their ability with their acquired tongue at around 3.0 on a five-point scale. Their language skills were, in other words, pretty good—but not great. Several psychologists, including Daniel Kahneman, who was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2002 for his work on how people make decisions, think that the mind uses two separate cognitive systems—one for quick, intuitive decisions and another that makes slower, more reasoned choices. These can conflict, which is what the trolley dilemma is designed to provoke: normal people have a moral aversion to killing (the intuitive system), but can nonetheless recognise that one death is, mathematically speaking, better than five (the reasoning system). This latest study fits with other research which suggests that speaking a foreign language boosts the second system—provided, that is, you don’t speak it as well as a native. Earlier work, by some of the same scholars who performed this new study, found that people tend to fare better on tests of pure logic in a foreign language—and particularly on questions with an obvious-but-wrong answer and a correct answer that takes time to work out. Dr Costa and his colleagues hypothesise that, while fluent speakers can form sentences effortlessly, the merely competent must spend more brainpower, and reason much more carefully, when operating in their less-familiar tongue. And that kind of thinking helps to provide psychological and emotional distance, in much the same way that replacing the fat man with a switch does. As further support for that idea, the researchers note that the effect of speaking the foreign language became smaller as the speaker’s familiarity with it increased. Regardless of the exact mental mechanism behind the team’s findings, they could have big implications. Boaz Keysar, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and one of the study’s authors, talks
