PRINCIPLE 1 Become genuinely interested in other people. PRINCIPLE 2 Smile. PRINCIPLE 3 Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. PRINCIPLE 4 Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. PRINCIPLE 5 Talk in terms of the other person’s…
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it. For example, two people may be in the same place, doing the same thing; both may have about an equal amount of money and prestige, and yet one may be miserable and the other…
If any have offended against thee, consider first: What is my relation to men, and that we are made for one another; and in another respect, I was made to be set over them, as a ram over the flock or a bull over the herd. But examine the matter from first principles, from this: If all things are not mere atoms, it is…
There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen. Suppose that he was a good and wise man, will there not be at last some one to say to himself, Let us at last breathe freely being relieved from this schoolmaster? It is true that he was…
A man deposits seed in a womb and goes away, and then another cause takes it, and labours on it and makes a child. What a thing from such a material! Again, the child passes food down through the throat, and then another cause takes it and makes perception and motion, and in fine life and strength and other things…
If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgement now. But if anything in thy own disposition gives thee pain, who hinders thee from correcting thy opinion? And even if thou art pained because thou art…
In he morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But…
Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. For thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such thoughts as these, What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking…
We ught to consider not only that our life is daily wasting away and a smaller part of it is left, but another thing also must be taken into the account, that if a man should live longer, it is quite uncertain whether the understanding will still continue sufficient for the comprehension of things, and retain the…
Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all…
The idea of ChatGPT as a bullshit machine is a helpful one when combined with the distinction between hard and soft bullshit. Reaching again for the example of the dodgy student paper: we’ve all, I take it, marked papers where it was obvious that a dictionary or thesaurus had been deployed with a crushing lack of…
There's a membership problem. Haqr society is like the Shakers--the community can't grow by the usual primate strategy--biological reproduction is right out--so its continuation depends on the faithful going out and bringing in new recruits from the general population. Yes, we're saying it out loud: Haqrs recruit…
I pride myself on never losing my cool I've never screamed at anyone I've never gotten physical with anyone but the ideas in my head that tell me to do things tell me to do unspeakable things like what they're unspeakable I'd have to speak them you really want to know Mum I'm also [ __ ] weird so just remember that no…
2.8 Rarely is a person seen to be in a bad way because he has failed to attend to what is happening in someone else’s soul, but those who fail to pay careful attention to the motions of their own souls are bound to be in a wretched state. 2.11 Let your every action, word, and thought be those of one who could depart…
The vita contemplativa presupposes instruction in a particular way of seeing. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche formulates three tasks for which pedagogues are necessary. One needs to learn to see, to think, and to speak and write. The goal of education, according to Nietzsche, is “noble culture.” Learning to see…
For hundreds of years Europeans appear to have been oblivious to the existence of stone tools. Presumably many people saw them. At least it is hard for me to believe that no stone axes, spear points, or arrowheads turned up in plowed fields, dried streambeds, or eroded hillsides. But, as William Stiebing observes…
The current state-of-the-art Gemini model can fit roughly 1.5 million words in its context. That’s enough for me to upload the full text of all fourteen of my books, plus every article, blog post, or interview I’ve ever published—and the entirety of my collection of research notes that I’ve compiled over the years…
Humans of all to be much more physically active than our ape ancestors. Typical chimpanzee walks maybe two to three kilometers a day, and they take maybe what, three, 4,000 steps a day. A typical hunter-gatherer takes about 15 to 20,000 steps a day. Per kilo hunter-gatherers spend about twice as much energy per kilo…
Imagine living, in order of birth, through the life of every human being who has ever lived.1 Your first life begins about three hundred thousand years ago in Africa.2 After living that life and dying, you travel back in time and are reincarnated as the second-ever person, born slightly later than the first. Once that…