Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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An Alternative To Categories?
I really do believe in the power of categories, of separating things into different drawers. The power of categories is to be able to filter, to chunk, to address many by one name. But categories can be stifling too. A classic type of overdone category is “musical genre”. Classifying songs into particular genres is great […]
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Defined By Your Most Recent Post
I just took a look at my dashboard and realized that I have 190 posts here, dating back to 2006. I don’t know if that’s a lot or a little, or if the quantity itself has any relevance, but what’s interesting is that each time I sit down to write, I expect that newest article […]
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Eli Pariser: On Finding What You’re Looking For
I recently viewed Eli Pariser’s TED talk – which I’ll summarize so you don’t have to watch the video itself (or read the book for that matter). Essentially, Facebook, Google, et. al. look at your clicks, searches, likes, friends, replies, etc, and determine that what you do, algorithmically, equals your preferences. And over time, Google […]
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NYC Is Spewing Fire
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Recruit Your Dreams
From Richard Hamming’s “You and Your Research“: “Everybody who has studied creativity is driven finally to saying, “creativity comes out of your subconscious.” Somehow, suddenly, there it is. It just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but one thing you are pretty well aware of is that your dreams also come out […]
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Beans vs Seeds
You can’t count beans that didn’t start off as planted seeds. But those who plant often aren’t those who count. It takes risk to plant, to sow, to tend, to hope that the time spent today will pay off months later. And sometimes a seed planted yields no beans. But never has a bean counted […]
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Rocking & Rowing (the boat)
Was thinking recently about the fear of rocking the boat. I didn’t bring it up because I didn’t want to rock the boat. What is usually the case when you’re afraid of rocking the boat, is that you end up not rowing the boat either. And paralyzed by a fear of tipping over, you let […]
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A Walk In The Park
A beautiful, misty morning in Central Park. Walking around the Great Lawn with my Zoey, one woman commented to me “that’s some stroller.” I replied “it’s some passenger”. Walked around for 90 minutes or so, the park was filled with people out for early morning walks. Zoey was the only child. Everyone else was out […]
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Scale vs Focus? Or Focus to Scale?
What does it take to scale? To expand, to widen… to thrive? It takes focus, it takes determination, effort, repetition. It takes subtlety, and fine tuning. It’s easy to say yes to many things, it’s easy to be an expert in many things. But being an expert is not the same as having a well-worn […]
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Overwhelmed by Phone Numbers
“Feeling overwhelmed” is an interesting emotion. It says nothing about the source of overwhelm, and everything about the quantity of it. It also speaks to beliefs of success and failure. Phone numbers are 7-digits long because humans can’t really remember more than that easily. Seven is at our upper limits. And on top of that, […]
Got any book recommendations?