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Jim OShaughnessy Profile picture
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May 13, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1/ I drove my wife's car to work today and she had NPR news on the radio. I listened for a few minutes and confirmed my bias: The "news" is designed to enrage you, make you emotional and encourage you to think your beliefs and biases are the actual truth and not just your
2/ particular preferences. And before you try and make it political, I think this is true of ALL news, be it NPR or Fox. Working on a longer piece about how all of us have a bunch of things knocking around our heads that we "know" that it would be much better if we didn't "know"
3/ them, and it's often difficult to decide which is which. It requires a sustained assault by thought, and then the ability to ruthlessly discard "things you know and believe" that are in fact wrong. Many times, you didn't even originate those beliefs, they are inserted there
4/ by things like "the news" and so many other external sources. We can't think clearly unless we constantly guard our brains from noxious ideas that are living there rent-free. It requires constant vigilance, but it's well worth it.

Don't outsource your thinking.

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More from @jposhaughnessy

Jim OShaughnessy Profile picture
Feb 17
1/ I'm recording an @InfiniteL88ps chat with @krishnanrohit today and going through his work is like catnip for me--I've been thinking about things that he opines on with a vastly better take than my early dreams on such as virtual reality.
2/ But what I think is cool is that we've been thinking about these things for a LONG time, exhibit A👇🏻(1988)

3/ It seems ideas take longer to become realities than many (very much including me) think they will, exhibit B 👇🏻
Read 11 tweets
Jim OShaughnessy Profile picture
Feb 12
Douglas Adams 🗣️

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
“Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”

“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”
Read 4 tweets
Jim OShaughnessy Profile picture
Jan 17
1/ Our team at @InfiniteL88ps wanted to experiment with the NFT marketplace in order to get a better understanding of how it worked and see if the online auction pace was similar to what we see offline.

We commissioned the artist @cernicageanina to produce the artwork 👇🏻
2/ Our hypothesis was that an NFT that "unlocked" a benefit would be more highly valued than one that didn't, so we included the opportunity to either co-host an @InfiniteL88ps with me or choose a guest.

As far as the behaviour of the auction, we found it *did* mimic that of
3/ auctions conducted IRL. The price stayed pretty stable until the last half hour, when @vtslkshk watched as the price screamed higher, with the winning bidder @dineshraju paying WETH 9.0 or approximately $36,543.78 $USD at the time of the sale.
Read 25 tweets
Jim OShaughnessy Profile picture
Jan 15
1/ “A good magic trick forces the spectator to tell a story that arrives at an impossible conclusion, and the clearer the story is, the better.”
~@DerrenBrown
The first job I ever got paid to do was that of a professional magician. I’d loved magic since my early childhood
2/ and badgered my mother to take me to the Eagle Magic Store in Minneapolis almost every Saturday, where I would linger for hours and bug adult magicians to teach me some of the tricks of the trade. Unlike many of my friends who had posters of their favorite bands or
3/ Farrah Fawcett on their walls, I had Harry Houdini. I was fascinated with the ability to create illusions that made people gasp in delight. I started using two books that my dad had given me (which I think my grandfather gave to *him*) and learned as many effects with cards
Read 19 tweets
Jim OShaughnessy Profile picture
Jan 14
1/ Recorded a great conversation with @RickDoblin, the Founder and Executive Director of @MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. We were joined by Amy Emerson, the CEO of the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of @MAPS
2/ We had a broad ranging discussion about the potential benefits of psychedelics in treating PTSD; depression; alcoholism and many other conditions that have challenged doctors and have been notoriously difficult for therapists to help patients find lasting recoveries.
3/ We also discussed the history of why governments and other authorities vilified psychedelics through a sustained propaganda effort that still has effects on people's attitudes to this very day. There are major breakthroughs occurring regularly in research trials conducted
Read 5 tweets
Jim OShaughnessy Profile picture
Jan 1
“The ordinary man places his life's happiness in things external to him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer
In his book "Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine," @DerrenBrown writes "The vital changes to our happiness do not come from outside circumstances, however appealing they might seem." and our failure to understand this leads many to mount the hedonic treadmill.
He illustrates how many of our desires--things we think will make us happy--are actually chased in order to impress other people, thinking that the approval of these 'other people,' many of whom we don't even know, will lead to happiness for ourselves.
Read 24 tweets

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