Ryan Stephens - Random Musings

I like ideas that challenge the status quo. I like controversial slants that stir the pot. I love when science validates my assumptions about life. And when I get tired of writing about business & marketing I share quotes & articles that meet those criteria here. I do not necessarily endorse or believe in everything shared here. This is a portal for me to re-visit things that challenge me to continue asking questions that matter.

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Nice job, USA. 👏

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Question: What happened to marriage?

Answer: Hormonal birth control happened

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Embrace the Ordinary

See, for all the mindfulness apps and meditation retreats, for all of the inelegant Carpe Diem tattoos and posts about being ‘present’, for most of the time we are all off somewhere else. Because the grease that keeps the treadmill gears running smooth is escapism, whether it be drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, travel, pornography, Netflix or our old friend Twitter.

And the cure for escapism is to embrace ordinariness, that cousin of boredom. If you accept that you can’t escape, then you stop doing stultifying escapist acts. (Or using neutral things in an escapist manner). And if you stop doing these things, you paradoxically rise above this dreaded everydayness.

Source: https://thomasjbevan.substack.com/p/embrace-the-ordinary

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Karl Knausgaard on Balancing Work and Children

“I have always had a great need for solitude. I require huge swathes of loneliness and when I do not have it, which has been the case for the last five years, my frustration can sometimes become almost panicked, or aggressive.” “Nothing I had previously experienced warned me about the invasion into your life that having children entails. The immense intimacy you have with them, the way in which your own temperament and mood are, so to speak, woven into theirs, such that your own worst sides are no longer something you can keep to yourself, hidden, but seem to take shape outside you, and are then hurled back.”

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Beauty is objectively measurable.

Beauty is objectively measurable. Slender women are more attractive than fat women to the overwhelming majority of men. There was never a time when men liked fat women. A 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio is the most attractive body shape for a woman. A BMI of 20.85 is the most attractive weight for a woman. A young, healthy woman with clear skin is more attractive than an old, unhealthy woman with blotchy skin. Yes, ♥Vanessa, there is a sexual marketplace, women are just as much a commodity to be bartered in this marketplace as men are, there is no alternative to this reality, and there IS a wrong way to have a body.

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Nature vs. Nuture

As human beings develop, they collect vast amounts of social information and use it to form specific relationships and understand the specific details of the people around them, but also average out that information to create categories and groups, and to understand how to act to become part of the groups we think we belong in. We also seek to pursue our self-interest and, by figuring out what other people think about us relative to what they think about everyone else, we select strategies that we think will help us get ahead relative to the other members of our group or category.

The answer to the nature/nurture question is, of course, that both are hugely influential. Our genetics provide the blueprint by which we will interact with the world, and from there the specific course of our interactions and experiences with other people will determine how we turn out.

Source:  Why Are No Two People Alike? (Part 2) - Farnam Street

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Awesome Robin Williams tribute.

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Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

Muhammad Ali  

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Charlie Munger’s Six Element System

Charlie’s system for those of us in softer realms than piloting, rooted in the deep structure of the human mind, is to develop a multi-disciplinary synthesis and to use it regularly,thinking through problems forwards and backwards, applying mental checklists whenever possible. This means learning the truly important doctrines from the main disciplines and how to synthesize them. It’s only once we assimilate all the tools we need that we stop making so many mistakes.

The question of how is clearly the toughest one. Even if we have the will, what is the way? We would argue that practical worldly wisdom falls into a few major buckets — these act as the closest proxy of the fixed/knowable rules we discussed above:

Numeracy. The ability to understand and think in numbers and properly quantify. This would included a basic understanding of statistics and its limitations, of probability thinking and its limitations, and basic numerical and quantitative thinking applied to the real world.

Human nature. The ability to understand the true nature of the people around you, and of yourself, with heavy consideration given to human psychology.

History. The knowledge of what’s come before you in the world.

Natural science. An understanding of the physical world around us.

Business. An understanding of commerce and finance, concepts we must allregularly deal with unless we plan to live in a monastery.

Second-level thinking. The ability to think beyond the “first step” and think through consequences. And then what?

These six buckets have humongous areas of overlap, but we find them a useful way to group our various forms of knowledge and file them away. Read broadly and constantly across the fundamental areas of worldly knowledge, and practice synthesizing with them on a daily basis. Don’t shy away from what you’re not familiar with, attack it instead. Use the buckets as a guide to figure out what you need more of. And as you develop an understanding of the world,constantly seek to file away and apply what you’ve learned, both directly and by studying others vicariously.

Source: Farnam Street

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Billy had just won two national championships, and I was a nobody,'' Stevens says. "But as I'm speaking, he's taking notes and asking questions. That's how it's supposed to be. You're supposed to keep learning. You're not supposed to stagnate.

Brad Stevens (Coach of the Boston Celtics. Source.)

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Persuasion isn't always here's the facts, you're either an idiot or you're not. It's here are the facts and here is a sensitivity to your state of mind. And it's the facts plus the sensitivity when convolved together creates impact.

Neil deGrasse Tyson addressing Richard Dawkins

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There is no “conflict between the sciences and humanities,” or at least there shouldn’t be. There should be no turf battle as to who gets to speak about what matters. What matters are ideas. We should seek the ideas that give us the deepest, richest, best-informed understanding of the human condition, regardless of which people or what discipline originates them. That has to include the sciences, but it can’t come only from the sciences. The focus should be on ideas, not on people, disciplines, or academic traditions.

Stephen Pinker

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Every statistician knows that a large, relevant sample size is their best friend. What are the three largest, most relevant sample sizes for identifying universal principles? Bucket number one is inorganic systems, which are 13.7 billion years in size. It’s all the laws of math and physics, the entire physical universe. Bucket number two is organic systems, 3.5 billion years of biology on Earth. And bucket number three is human history, you can pick your own number, I picked 20,000 years of recorded human behavior. Those are the three largest sample sizes we can access and the most relevant.

Peter Kaufman

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Why Your Home is Not a Good Investment

Renting is Throwing Money Away … Right?

Why Your Home is Not a Good Investment

If you bought a house for $30,000 in 1970 and it's worth $180,000 today, you've earned nothing after inflation. You think you've made a fortune, but you haven't gone anywhere. Add in property taxes, insurance and repairs, and you're down. 

The Economist Who Just Won a Nobel Prize Thinks Owning a Home Is a Terrible Investment 

Why Your House is a Terrible Investment 

37 Bogus Arguments About Housing

It’s Financial Suicide to Own a House

Sorry, but Your Home Is a Bad Long-Term Investment 

Americans think owning a home is better for them than it is

People forget that housing deteriorates over time. It goes out of style. There are new innovations that people want, different layouts of rooms,” he told me. “And technological progress keeps bringing the cost of construction down.” Meaning your worn, old-fashioned home is competing with new, relatively inexpensive ones. Over the past century, housing prices have grown at a compound annual rate of just 0.3 percent once one adjusts for inflation. Yet Americans still think it’s financially savvy to dump all their savings into a single, large, highly illiquid asset.

In the Long Run, Sleep at Home and Invest in the Stock Market 

We underestimate Phantom Costs like insurance, inflation, maintenance fees, and taxes.    Why Your Home Is Not the Investment You Think It Is

Economic studies have demonstrated over and over that houses (1) cost more than most people make when they sell and (2) rarely match the long-term returns of stocks or other investments.

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“I have a competition in me...”

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