1/ For all of its warts, Goodreads is still pretty darned good.
I was trying to wrap my head around Lisa Feldman Barrett's work, and so I hop onto the Goodreads page for How Emotions are Made. goodreads.com/book/show/2371…
From there, it's a short hop to more scholarly sources.
2/ David Clarke's review seems like it's written by someone with a background in psychology; he points out that Barrett presents her theory as being close to consensus, but in more scholarly publications, she is reserved and says more work needed. goodreads.com/review/show/29…
3/ And this question ("Can anyone point me to a review that would indicate how well-received this research is received in the professional community?") contains good answers — at least, solid enough to kickstart a dive into the more scholarly sources. goodreads.com/questions/1446…
4/ So within a few seconds of hitting Goodreads, I know:
a) She was the last editor of 'The Handbook of Emotions', and I should check that.
b) She's more tempered in academic settings (time to hop onto Google Scholar?)
c) My next step: academic reviews of her book.
5/ Of course, Goodreads
a) loads slower than a herd of snails racing through peanut butter
b) has star ratings that are next to useless
and c) reviews that are all over the place
But it's not too bad for what it is.
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There are four categories of responses to this type of article. Each of these correspond to one of the four classical theories of truth. Let's examine each of them in turn, as an exercise in critical thinking.
The first response is to evaluate the argument based on its argumentative structure. Do the conclusions flow logically and coherently from the premises? Are there inconsistencies or logical fallacies in the reasoning?
This is the coherence theory of truth.
The coherence theory of truth states that a claim is true if it is logically coherent with all of its upstream propositions.
Basically, the whole 'Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal shebang.'
On this basis, Milo's piece passes the bar for truth.
Singapore's stay home notice procedures (aka arrival quarantine), a thread.
(Yes, that's a coffee cup on the ledge of my hotel room; more on this in a bit).
I arrived in Singapore on Monday morning, around midnight. I was in Vietnam for business at the end of 2019, and skipped going back to SG in favour of going to Kuching, my hometown, for CNY. Then the Malaysian lockdown happened and I was stuck in Kuching for 6 months.
The aircraft had all of 11 passengers. This made boarding and social distancing easier. We were seated near the back of the plane, likely for aircraft balancing reasons. No more than one person per row, with an empty row between us.
The capital allocator playbook is simple to grok. Build a free cash flow generating business. Wait. Take the FCF and then use it to purchase another FCF-generating business. Wait. Use those cash flows to buy yet another FCF generating business. Wait.
Rinse and repeat.
There are many variations of this, of course. The model I described above is pretty much the one @awilkinson uses; it's also the Berkshire model.
One thing I’ve noticed after going back to Judo: there’s a tendency for seniors to over-explain throw variations + counters + combinations. I guess when you love a sport so much, you can’t help but share everything on a technique.
But I don’t think it’s pedagogically effective.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this because there are parallels to a lot of other things in life.
You often can’t learn a high-level combination until you master the fundamentals. The meta skill involved here is breaking the skill into smaller sub-skills in your head.
Your brain can’t handle an information dump without internalising lower level skills.
When I reflect on my Judo, I realise that so much of my knowledge builds on a deep understanding of a single throw. (This is called a ‘tokuiwaza’, or favourite technique.)
Love this quote from Gregory Northcraft: "The difference between experience and expertise is that with expertise, you have a predictive model that works." Sort of adds a new layer to 'you can either have five years of experience, or one year of experience five times.'
There are lots of non obvious implications from this single quote.
For instance: want to hire a good generalist for your startup? The best indicator: they have a history of finding ‘predictive models that work’ in all their previous domains. You can test for this.
When you say “that person might not be the smartest person in the room, but boy are they effective” what you’re essentially saying is that they have a history of systematically looking for predictive models that work. This quality is orthogonal to intelligence.