Categories
Mental Social/Emotion

Overcoming Fear

I recently read George Soros’ The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means, a bargain book I got off Big Bad Wolf 2012. Having read the author’s Alchemy of Finance, this 162 page book further refines his idea on reflexivity. While I don’t claim to understand every single thing he talked about, I posted on my goodreads.com account, “Just read all his books anyway.”

Categories
Mental Spiritual

The Draft Copy of My Theory of Everything

The following are three broad concepts that I have been toying for some time now and I think it’s just timely to combine them into a bigger piece of framework:

Categories
Social/Emotion

The Liberation of Choice

When the master says the first step is to build choices, I thought hey, this guy’s onto something. It took me some time to digest his words. Building choices is different from making the right choices. He, of course, is none other than Richard Bandler, the co-creator of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

Categories
Mental

The Next 3 Rules

We have previously discussed on a number of interesting concepts like game theory (click here), randomness (click here) and various biases (click here) that we should at least be aware of, if not overcome.   

On one fine day, I was staring at the sea waves advancing like galloping white horses when the next 3 things that I would like to explore in depth came to me:

Categories
Mental

The good news of the bad news

Almost anyone is thrilled to read articles like ‘top 5 successful traits of business executives’, books like Jim Collins’ Good to Great, successful traits of certain individuals and how we can emulate them and not to mention the bizarre following and hero worshipping of certain individuals and the likes.

But the truth of the matter is you and I should treat them like fantasy novels.

Categories
Mental

Bayes’ theorem and the base rate neglect

This is a continuation of the previous posting. Please click here to go to the first posting.

The answer is 41%. Why?

To recap,

  • 85% of the car is Green and the remaining 15% Blue
  • A witness testified that the cab involved in the accident was Blue
  • The witness was tested for the ability to discriminate Green from Blue and was found to be correct 80% of the time
  • What is the probability that the cab in the accident was Blue as the witness testified?

(a)    80% (b)   50% (c)    41% (d)   29%

Categories
Mental

Debunking the myth: “I am 80% smarter than you”

As best as science can describe it, there is a short cut system in us, scientifically called System 1 or commonly known as Intuition or Six Sense. The bestseller author Malcolm Gladwell romanticized the term Blink, which basically meant the same thing.

All of us would definitely experience this, but almost vaguely if we don’t stop to ponder upon it. Are women more gifted with intuition since they are more feely type?

Categories
Mental

Now enter strength

Question: what should we do to improve ourselves? Work on our weaknesses or bang on our strengths?

The suggested framework is for one to capitalize on individual strengths first and not on improving weaknesses, although the latter may come in at a later stage.

Categories
Social/Emotion

The darker arts of body language

The other day I was observing a girl playing the piano. A guy approached her and was towering over her. After exchanging a few words, he literally shrank and was squatting by the piano stool. It may seem like a normal scene but it speaks volume.

Categories
Mental

Life is a story that only time can tell

My English teacher once told me that the toughest part in the language to master  is tenses. (besides the absolutely ridiculous spelling and pronunciation). However the silver lining is that you can very quickly grasp the idea in this post. Do you realize your attitude towards time can reveal a big chunk about you?