Why I changed my mind about courage

February 13, 2022

I used to not think much of courage as a virtue. After all, isn't it courageous to drive 50 mph over the speed limit despite being nervous about driving - or to rob a bank despite being next to a police station?Don't soldiers show courage fighting, even when fighting for the more evil side?It takes courage to become a boxer (because you're likely to have your face pummeled by a powerful person), but is that a good trait to encourage?What made me rethink courage was witnessing many cases where p...

How do we predict high levels of success?

September 12, 2021

Below, I outline 13 approaches to predicting high levels of success with differing levels of complexity, including my own mega model at the bottom. Note: here, I use the term "success" merely in terms of achievement, career success, or high levels of expertise, NOT in terms of happiness, living a good life, morality, having strong social bonds, etc. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to be successful in the way this post focuses on. But if you DO want "success" in the sense in...

Intersecting advice from highly successful people

January 26, 2021

Photo by Paulina Milde-Jachowska on Unsplash

It's popular to read interviews and books with advice from highly successful people. But is their advice good advice? Perhaps it works for their situation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it generalizes to other circumstances. Maybe they are just overfitting to their personal life experience. Perhaps they are attributing too much of their success to the actions they happened to take rather than to factors outside of their control. And what should we make of the fact that advice often contradi...