As soon as I write a thought down, I am forced to think deeply about whether it's true. This hardly happens when I am speaking haha. I hate writing, and that's why I love it.

Be careful of those who promise utopia.

😂

The old

Chill…

Good morning

Beautiful Friday evening.

I love Nassim Taleb's Silver Rule: Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you. It feels simpler to me. I don't want to be controlled, deceived or killed, so I should not do those things to other people. The positive side takes care of itself over time.

Raising my children to be free thinkers, who can challenge authority has been really important to me. The old-school, strict parent approach didn't work well for me, so I chose a different path. I explain the reasoning behind my rules so that they can challenge the reasoning if they disagree. If their argument is good and well thought out, I change my mind. I never soften reality for them. They know that there are beautiful people and some sociopaths, and we talk a lot about when to be a lamb and when to be a lion. This approach is inconvenient because they will challenge you a lot hahaha, but I am happy to pay the price.

I write to warm up my brain before diving into work. Some of it feels worth sharing, so I share it.

Beautiful quotes are often powerful and memorable because they are short and well generalised. Generalisation strips ideas of context and nuance. It's when you try to apply them to a specific situation that you start to notice how incomplete they are. You need to add the context and nuance of your situation to make them useful for you.

I think the best posture towards life is epistemic humility. No philosophy, religion, science or money will prevent life from dishing out suffering and beauty. I think it's best to be curious and playfully explore life. If at the end I still have a soft and loving heart, my life will have been a success.

I have great neighbours. They're the kind of people who will restore your faith in humanity. We have a power outage at the moment in our area as there is maintenance work in one of the substations. Since it's late at night I did not want to fire up my generator. They have solar panels so the power outage is not a problem at all for them. They offered to have me user their spare inverter, and because they were not at home they told me I could go into their house and get it. The trust, the consideration, the kindness is just so inspiring and heartwarming. I love my neighbours.❤️