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That is all.

Sitting outside at a restaurant with my son and wife on a warm afternoon in a small town in Colorado. We had been at the range while my son zeroed in his scope on his birthday rifle.

Time stopped. I was where I was supposed to be. I was content and peaceful.

I can be there again.

And in fact briefly I achieved it, deliberately. And this happened, in the car rental shuttle to the Denver airport. I remembered the day before in Basalt and realized I could be there anytime I wanted to. “There” meaning peace of mind.

And I was. And I knew it.

Then I started judging the design of the parking structure. Haha. Gone.

And I knew it. And laughed.

Paul Portesi’s Twitter exhortations are why I first started thinking about this. “Informational” is his word.

If some street hustler challenges you to a game of three card monte you don’t need to bother to play, just hand him the money, not because you’re going to lose but because you owe him for the insight: he selected you. Whatever he saw in you everyone sees in you, from the dumb blonde at the bar to your elderly father you’ve dismissed as out of touch, the only person who doesn’t see it is you, which is why you fell for it. Even mirrors fail you. Hence a sketch.

The Last Psychiatrist

The information you need is not in the interaction with the con man. The information you need is that you were selected. You need to know that you are an obvious mark.

Seeing this is hard. It’s easy to get caught up in the bustle, the distractions.

The bustle, the distractions. They are deliberate. That, too, is information you need.

“You” meaning me.

One last quote from that blog post from The Last Psychiatrist:

The con worked. Of course it worked: they selected you.

The Last Psychiatrist

Ouch.

He continues. Look at this sentence in the context of 2020’s presidential race and what is put on offer for consumption on Twitter. Probably elsewhere, too, but I don’t look elsewhere.

“Well, not authority– power. You can’t deny their power is massive, but of course I’m not a stupid, I don’t think it’s legitimate.” I’m sorry, no, you are stupid. You’ll let it have power over you in exchange for the right to brag that you know its not legitimate.

“They” are the side whose opinion you have been trained to think is wrong. If you have been assigned opinions that cause you to self-identify as a Democrat, you seize on something about Trump and shout gleefully about how wrong he is. Sorry, you lose. That’s the short con. Have you identified the long con in politics yet?

Not to pick on Democrats. Have you been assigned to the Republican camp? Republicans do the same thing. Pick someone or some idea. Pelosi, say. You have fallen for the short con. Identify the long con.

You probably can’t even identify the conman, let alone spot the game. (I’m talking to me now, not you. But if the shoe fits. . . .) It goes without saying that you don’t see yourself as the mark.

“The only winning strategy is to not play the game.” No. The winning strategy is to play the “spot the con” game. You will lose most of the time at first, just as new poker players lose most of the time. You’re buying information about yourself and the world around you.

The way to smell a fraud is to have skin in the game. Taleb says he is dumb without skin in the game. And if you’re focused on a benefit, it’s time to suspect that you’re missing something critical. Especially when the benefit is being advertised to you. Equilibrium demands an offsetting cost. If you can’t see the cost, you’re paying it.

But the important point is not that you believe this to be true, the point is that you want this to be true.

The Last Psychiatrist delivers a spear straight to the chest.

And let’s do a little reflection here, Mr. Laughs. How much of this thinking and self-improvement and work on self is a short con in some long con I can’t see?

The confidence with which she knows how her perception of self-esteem affects everything in life, “it couldn’t be more crucial” is not an insight, it is not wisdom gained from years of therapy: she has been conned, it is society’s long con so her pocket can be picked.

Good God, Dr. L. Psychiatrist. Is there no end to the chunks of truth you ask me to swallow?

This can become a “turtles all the way down” trap. Any glee felt at achieving enlightenment is the clue. You’ve fallen for something. It’s false to say to yourself “Well, I sure am glad that I figured that out. Now I know the truth. Everything is squared away and I’m safe, so let me now turn my attention to perfecting another facet of myself.” The reason you know that’s true is that before the Blinding Realization you just had, you didn’t know that the Blinding Realization existed.

What else do you not know? What else can be delivered to you by the long con?

How to avoid turtle life? All I can do is predict, with fair accuracy, that there is no profit and no power for someone else if I live and die according to Stoic principles. Start from a way of life that cannot be gamed.

When I set this website I spent an hour or two being butthurt about some bullshit. It wasn’t a static site (I couldn’t figure out the Ruby permissions on my Mac, so I couldn’t run Jekyll and host this thing on GitHub or Gitlab). The web host I used did a bullshit upsell on me to get HTTPS.

The uproar in my head (dissatisfaction with self for lack of technical skill in setting PATH on a Mac on the command line) (how dare they at EasyWP cripple the teaser low-priced hosting offer)?

I saw it. I let it go. I paid the upsell and resolved to get better on the command line in the next 12 months.

It’s gratifying when you see that the deep guiding principles are installed and operating as desired.

What I control, what I don’t.

I won’t always avoid getting butthurt about bullshit. All I ask of myself is that when I see it, I let it go.

I even gave myself permission to skip the command line stuff if I feel like it. Is it really important for me to hyper-nerd like that? No. But I like it. Heh.

Sometimes you’re doing stuff and you realize that you’re at peace. You don’t flap when little things pop up, and just take stuff in stride.

Because none of it matters.

Specific example right now: at the airport and my wife walks slowly, far slower than my default pace. Stop, wait, slow down. It’s all good.

As compared to “She isn’t doing airport right.”

I certainly didn’t prepare myself to be calm and accepting and adaptable. It just happened.

What’s in my control and what is outside my control? Today it didn’t require a conscious thought. It just worked.

Sebastian Marshall’s podcast (episode 18) contained an interesting question.

When told that someone is really good, his response is a question: good on a normal scale or good on the elite scale?

You’re a good basketball player. Really good. In what context? Normal person good means something different than NBA good. And even NBA players—who are elite by any standard you care to use—can’t measure up to the truly elite-elite scale where you find Kobe Bryant, Kareem, and the like.

Shooting for really, really good in the real world and by the real world’s scale is a fine accomplishment. So is shooting for elite performance.

Just know how you are judging your performance.

The natural inclination is to go for elite performance. But is that what I want? Really? Am I willing to do what elite performers do, just as table stakes? Not even to dominate, just to be in the game.

There is something in me that says I would rather be in the bottom decile of elite than the top 1% of ordinary. It’s just a hunger. I can’t explain why.

Am I willing to put some muscle behind that arrow?

Everything on the internet is persuasion. Everything on the internet is designed to make you do something.

You must see this if you wish to think well.

You think you rationally arrived at an opinion or decision. No you didn’t. You (speaking to myself now) are dumb and believe the last thing you hear. You opinions have been handed to me and then reinforced by propaganda.

Fortunately I have some training to be skeptical and look for the other side of the argument. Do I use this consistently? No. I am as dumb as every fish who ever saw a shiny with a yummy on it and decided it was lunchtime.

Eventually I wake up though.

Why am I hearing this? Why am I hearing this now? Who or what receives the benefit of my action or passive assent to the message?

These questions, when asked regularly, make me smarter.

Even better? Just ask why the dog isn’t barking. What’s missing from the picture? What is not being said? As often as not, truth is found in the void, in what is omitted.

Sins of omission. Look for them.

“If you do it right 51 percent of the time you will end up a hero.”

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.

Legendary chairman of General Motors.

Side note: Tim Cook presides over Apple, Inc. in its Alfred Sloan era of General Motors existence. Apple has long since transitioned into Fat American Corporatism.

Back to Alfred Sloan.

It’s heartening to think about this. You don’t have to be right all the time. Not even most of the time. In fact, it’s probably better to not focus on being right.

Alfred Sloan’s admonition can probably be revised to read as follows:

“If you do it right when it matters, it doesn’t matter how many times you do it wrong.”

Me.

This is not original, of course. Nassim Taleb theory of life, as far as I can understand his books.

Make mistakes when the downside doesn’t matter so much, but make lots of decisions. Or more precisely, do lots of things. Because decisions don’t matter. Actions matter.

Naval Ravikant talks about why Tim Cook gets paid huge money. Naval’s theory is that someone who is right 10% more than the next person will, with the effect of compounding, create outsized returns. If Tim Cook is right 70% of the time but someone else is right 60% of the time, then the fact that Tim Cook is piloting a huge enterprise means the compound effect of that extra 10% “right” will create billions of dollars of wealth.

That’s right, but be right about what matters. Being 10% better at decisions with low payoffs is of little value.

Let’s summarize:

• Don’t be concerned with being right all the time.
• In fact, be happy to be wrong frequently.
• Focus more on the payoff of the right and wrong decisions. Improve your decision-making in the payoff space, not the probability space.

In personal life this means understanding deeply what is true. This is where the #Lindy idea is useful. Then understand the Stoic perspective: what is within your control and what is not. Personal payoffs (peace of mind, living up to your principles, etc.) are where your principles are #Lindy and your actions are within your control.

In other words, the title to this post is wrong. The right title would be “What should I be right about?”

I want to lose weight. Ten pounds: from 180-ish to 170-ish.

That’s not really my intention. What I really want is to have a healthy, strong body. And not just for its own sake (though that matters to me). I want a healthy, strong body so I can look good.

Yes. Vanity.

That’s not the point of today’s entry, but it’s an interesting revelation of truth that didn’t come about until I started hammering the keyboard.

Here’s what I came to say.

The exercise of dropping weight (for me, the layer of fat around my waist) isn’t a purely physical exercise. It isn’t all about the things I do: what I eat, how much I eat, when I eat, how many calories burned, what I do for exercises to burn more calories.

In fact that is the lesser part of the effort.

Let me say it clearly. I was afraid of the physical sensation of hunger. That’s not my biggest impediment. Hunger pangs are rare, transient, and can be handled with a bottle of water or a cup of coffee and some chewing gum.

The greater part of the exercise is emotional. Am I willing to be in occasional distress (the inside man) in order to change my appearance (the outside man)?

Am I willing to be agitated, lonely, sad, bored . . . all of those things . . . and stay away from the refrigerator?

I contend that losing weight (there must be a better mental framing for this project) is really an inside job. How many times have I gone to the freezer and grabbed some ice cream for no reason, as if compelled to fall to the ground by gravity? “Eat your feelings” indeed.

Run straight into this shitstorm. Welcome the feelings. Sit, aware of them. This, too, shall pass.

That’s what works for me. The weight is slowly, slowly falling away. It’s an inside job.

You already know the answer.

The outside reading, conversations with friends, all of that? Essential.

They’re just ways to help you uncover what you already know.

The Kingdom of God is within.