Thread by @daily_allowance

My highlights from Russ Roberts "How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life."
A short read with lots of insight into how we can apply the wisdom in Adam Smith's 'other' great work "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" towards living a better life.

Part 1

1. Economics helps you understand that money isn’t the only thing that matters in life--that making a choice means giving up something.
Economics can help you appreciate complexity and how seemingly unrelated actions and people can become entangled.

2. Getting the most out of life means choosing wisely and well.
The essence of economics: Being aware of how choosing one road means not taking another, of how my choices interact with the choices of others.

3. In The Wealth of Nations Smith suggests that people are fundamentally self-interested, which is not the same thing as selfish. The idea that other people care about themselves is a good thing to remember if you want them to do something for you in return

4. The Iron Law of You: You think more about yourself than you think about Me
The Iron Law of Me: I think more about myself than I do of you.
This is why the email you sent never gets a response or the copy of the manuscript you shipped to that publisher never gets read.

5. Smith believes that our desire for approval from those around us is embedded within us and that our moral sense comes from experiencing approval and disapproval from others. As we experience those responses, we come to imagine an impartial spectator judging us.

6. Stepping outside yourself is an opportunity for what is called mindfulness—the art of paying attention instead of drifting through life oblivious to your flaws and habits.

7. How often do you listen for understanding rather than waiting for the other person to finish so you can make another point or tell another story?
Imagining an impartial spectator can help you turn your conversation into a dialogue rather than competing monologues.

8. Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.

When Smith says that we want to be lovely, he means worthy of being loved.

9. Smith encourages us not to be fooled. The biggest challenge we face isn’t detecting the false praise of others it's from ourselves. We so much want to be lovely that we can convince ourselves of our loveliness when the reality is otherwise.

10. "This self-deceit is the fatal weakness of mankind, it's the source of half the disorders of human life. If we saw ourselves in the light in which others see us, or in which they would see us if they knew all, a reformation would generally be unavoidable."

11. Our observations upon the conduct of others lead us to form certain general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided.

12. People use selfless sounding language to make the self-indulgent appear selfless. This is a form of advertising: We cloak our selfishness in something that looks more like kindness.

13. We don’t just fool ourselves about the quality of our personal behavior, we deceive ourselves about our worldview, our ideology, our religion, the evidence of our senses, and the interpretation of the world that we use to construct our beliefs.

14. The Universe is full of dots--connect the right ones, and you can draw anything. The question is not whether the dots you picked are really there, but why you chose to ignore all the others.

15. Another name for the challenge of understanding our complex world comes from @nntaleb—the narrative fallacy. We like narratives that follow a nice, clean pattern. Evidence that fits the narrative is noted after the fact, other evidence that doesn’t fit is discarded.

16. Practice humility:

It’s amazing how liberating it can be to say “I don’t know.”

Maybe your opponents aren’t evil, perhaps they see the world through a different lens than you do. Hard as it is to imagine, maybe they have evidence they find just as convincing.

17. Quote from The Theory of Moral Sentiments: "What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?"

18. We have all the tools of contentment at hand already. Stay human and subdue the rat within. Life’s not a race. It’s a journey to savor and enjoy. Ambition—the relentless desire for more—can eat you up

19. Smith on how newer doesn't equal better: "The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another."

20. Smith on delaying gratification: "The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first of all, superior reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or detriment...

...which is likely to result from them: and secondly, self-command, by which we are enabled to abstain from present pleasure or to endure present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure or to avoid a greater pain in some future time...

...In the union of those two qualities consists the virtue of prudence, of all the virtues that which is most useful to the individual."

21. "In the courts of princes, where success and preferment depend, not upon the esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals, but upon the fanciful and foolish favour of ignorant... and proud superiors; flattery and falsehood too often prevail over merit and abilities."

22. For Smith, ambition—the desire to be rich or famous or both—is a poison to be avoided. Once you get on that treadmill, there is no rest.