Local thinking vs. heavy

When you encounter a situation, an idea, a fact, an experience.
You try naturally to understand it. To get the point, or to learn some correction to previously held beliefs.

There may arise the want to verify the belief in a system wide way. If I learned something that reduced the value of money for example, or of prudence etc. I may try to adjust my general beliefs and find out the correct wieght to put upon whatever it is.

This way of thinking is quite heavy and tiresome. It implies that every lesson we learn wil go back to be connected to all our related beleifs and we will consider everything related again.

An entirely different strategy is to Get the lesson in a local way. A local lesson is a local one. Ultimately we build a whole set of beleifs and relationships. This ultimate conclusion is a result of all our local belifs, experiences etc.

The way the brain works is that a local experience and lesson is magnified locally, but our later overal opinions will be a result of multiple local lessons.

Given that, it may even be better to learn each experience in the very local way. This way you can generally invest much more energy and attention towards the local experience. The cummulative aggregated knowledge may be even better this way, and thinking easier.

PS. Note that over generalization, takes your mind out of the current situation, and assumptions theory etc. take a bigger role. Additionally, thinking in a generalized manner seems to require more mental effort, which can be quite tiring, and even decrease the joy of thinking altogether.

soon and multiply

Just fell upon an economic principle

value creating acitons should be done sooner rather than later.

Another obvious idea is to multiply. If something is good do as much of it as possible (i.e. If you fell upon a great mood for reading and the reading goes perfectly, ignore any other activity appointment etc. Enjoy the momentum to its maximum)


These two principles are much neglected. We are taught about balance, and not to eat like a pig, etc. All of which is utterly nonsense. If something 9is really good eat like a pig in the size of an elephant. And soon.

You never lose from being richer. In any aspect.

love the pain of what you do not have

Being a oprhan with parents, I remember the pain of hanging out with freinds who had intact homes. I walk in, a nice house, organized, a little bit too organized to my taste. and I am getting all anxious. The pain of why I do not have it was unbearable.

Result. One forget what good and nice is. It is different from sour grapes. Because here one does not think his situation is good. He simply cannot bear the pain of seeing the goods he does not have.

Result. One get even more distant from what he addmited is good.

Choosing my company has suffered from a similar problem. I met today a person I consider a real person. a strong person. a person that aside from being strong and sounding smart, knows how to experinece life.

While talking, I spoke theoretically about one of my weakness without eluding to myself. She offered that this level of stupidity ois not worth talking about.

It was so painful to hear. I almost thought that I am not smart talking to her.
It took some hours to realize that I want to be around people whose ideas and perceptions are great and balanced, even if there is pain of experiencing my misdeeds.

I want to be influenced by the smart and happy. EVEN if it reminds me on my sufferings and stupidity. You want to be affected from the best.


PS. It involves pain. But this is yet another expertise to bear pain without getting lost, or escaping at any price.

Optimism and old age (psychological research)

Research found that optimism is negative for old individuals. Why?

I suggest that optimism brings people to make more effort and get stressed (research by Segerstorm and Solberg Nes). WHile stress is negative, the positive results of these actions surpasses the cost, and makes optimism a positive trait.

The old, we know, are slow to recover form stress. It implies that hte cost of short term stress is much higher. This may make optimism an overally negative trait then.

unconscious happiness and positive affect

Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) is a state where one is entirely consumed in an activity. In such a state one is generally not aware of his very existence. Yet Csikszentmihalyi holds it is a central way to a happy life.

Why is not everybody trying to acheive as much flow as possible? (aside from the regular reasons why people do not improve their lives.....)

Possibly because in flow we are nott conscious of our very existence and therefore we are later less aware of the fact that we had so much fun (or positive affect ;-))

Being happy and not knowing about it is highly interesting idea. I had two periods in my life when I was very anxious etc. but other people thoguht that I looked as happy as never before and after. (I am still not sure how to accout ofr htese experiences....)

A similar idea is promoted by Daniel Kahneman with his observation that moment to moment experience differs from the way we think about our life.
One may similarly wonder what is the meaning and value of happiness at sleep.

calibration and fine tuning are useless

Knowledge comes in two levels. The idea level, what we know more or less and uisually get the gist of it in the first look, and then comes the exact. I got convinced in this idea, but how sure am I aobut it? 80%, 90%? then you may even ask 84%? 82%.
This is calibration. The futile try to be exact in what one knows, and sometimes to define the borders clearly.

It is futile for several reasons, but most of all because its results are increased stupidity. One usually gets delusions and made up stories rather than information.


Degree of reliability goes down as one goes into smalle measures. One can know whetehr something is probably true or false. But knowing whether it is 70% reliable or 80% reliable is next to impossible.

Value of information goes down as one goes into the smaller. The ultimate meaing of a 10% difference is much lower than that of true false issue.


there is so much to think about or experience that there is no reason to waste precious attention and energy in useless fine-uning. Unless one enjoys it, maybe.

counter opportunity moments

There are moments of opportunity. When a once-in-a-life-time opportunity comes along and one got to learn how to grab it.

There are moments of weakness. Moments when there does not seem to be a suitable acitons around. When the mind in blurred etc.

Here, a very special ability is to abstain from action. Do nothing and you should be proud of it.

It is very hard, though.

A good example or this are moments of emotional overwhelm. For most of us there are times when the mind does not work very efficiently, when we really do not know what to do. But there the feeling comes that "something must be done/said", and this is a mistake. Alas, one got to be able to hold pain for that, which is another rare skill.