Greetings from Taipei. Anything I should be reading these days?
Five Good Reads
โ #1 Universal Laws: Morgan Houselโs essays are a must read. I loved learning about Wiioโs laws:
โIn mass communication, the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be.โ
and Brandoliniโs law:
โThe amount of energy needed to refute bullsh*t is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.โ
+More If you think our world is awash in bullshit, check out the timeless essay On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt too
๐จ #2 Peter Thiel: While quite a long article, I found pieces of this essay about Thiel to to be fascinating, esepcially his obsession with Rene Girardโs ideas:
โThiel credits Girard with inspiring him to switch careers. Before he internalized Girardโs ideas, Thiel was on track to become a lawyer. He worked as an associate for Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City, where the hours were long and the competition was cutthroat. As Thiel recounts, all the lawyers competed for the same shared goals. They ranked themselves not by absolute progress towards a transcendent end goal, but by progress within their peer group.โ
As Peter Thiel recounted:
โWhen I left after seven months and three days, one of the lawyers down the hall from me said, โYou know, I had no idea it was possible to escape from Alcatraz.โ Of course that was not literally true, since all you had to do was go out the front door and not come back. But psychologically this was not what people were capable of. Because their identity was defined by competing so intensely with other people, they could not imagine leavingโฆ On the outside, everybody wanted to get in. On the inside, everybody wanted to get out.โ
๐ #3 Health: I found this post from Ben Greenfield to be incredibly useful in terms of understanding digestion and my health.
๐ #4 Own or Rent?: This is the best post Iโve ever seen on the own vs. buy debate.
โ #5 Work, Work Work: I explored the nine schools of work that shape our modern work beliefs. Which ones influence you?
Thanks for reading Boundless Reads! I started this in 2016 as a way to share what I was reading and as a way to engage with others who want to go deeper and explore different ideas.
Iโm currently living in Taiwan and trying to hack a living through a mix of online and offline activities and living simply. If youโd like to offer a gift to support my journey, you can become a paying member of this newsletter by hitting subscribe below, offering a gift onย Patreonย or sending some one-time loveย here.
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