I can’t remember where I first saw that for creativity you need both alone-time and stimulation-time. (Actually, that’s not a bad idea for everyone to have both in their life.) If I want to write comics, I need quiet time alone to draw and work with wording. If I want to just write, I need time alone to think.

I also need stimulation. I need to be doing interesting things and talking to interesting people. My ideas come from interaction with the outside world. More importantly, I need diverse inputs. I have to be interacting with lots of different people/things.

I don’t feel as if I’m getting enough time for either of these things, although I am getting better dosages of the latter.

As much as I disliked college, it was an excellent environment for fostering creativity. It gave me heavy dosages of both things. I had ample free time, which I had enough free time to do my creative things. Seriously, so much free time. I wasn’t in class 8 hours a day; I had no commute; I didn’t need decompression time. Even with homework, more time belonged to me. College also provided a lot of interesting fodder for comic material. I interacted with a larger, more diverse group of people. The people I knew ranged across a broad spectrum from acquaintance to friend. Being forced to take new classes meant I met new people every semester. New classes also meant I was being exposed to new information.

Last year, I went on a delete binge. I tried to remove inputs from my life. I stopped reading blogs, comics, newspapers; I watch less TV. Overall, I don’t know if it’s made my life any better, or made me any happier. I don’t know if the answer is “less.” When it comes to TV, I’m glad that I don’t just sit there and channel surf anymore. However, I like watching TV and I feel like TV is good for me insofar as good storytelling is good for me. I want to watch a variety of shows. Getting lots of inputs is good for creativity.

I guess perhaps I need to be more discriminating when it comes to these inputs. Less news. Less abstraction. More stories. More conversations.

I reviewed last year and I only regret not doing enough. I didn’t do enough programming projects. I didn’t work hard enough on my comic. So, this year I have to do more. I have to work harder. My theme this year is the Year of Doing the Work.

I am not going to lock myself into any projects now, except the one Ruby on Rails project. But as soon as that is done, I will push forward with another project.

I also want to establish some new habits. This don’t need to be done at once. I want to start journaling everyday. I think I need to spend more time reflecting. Then, I want to start blogging again. I would also like to do some health related habits after that.

Lastly, I want to make a lot more money this year than last year.

1. It is curious that for some people, the central lesson of the Soviet experince is that communism doesn’t work. I thought about this and Animal Farm, and I realized that you can’t really make a textual case from the book that the revolution failed because communism doesn’t work. The problem at the end of the book isn’t that communism failed, but that they can’t tell the difference between the pigs and the humans.

2. When I taught this book to younger kids, I don’t remember any of them thinking Jones should still be in charge.

If you read Animal Farm and think Jones should have stayed in charge, you might have read Burke.

3. Although the original villain Jones stands in for the monarchists, it is interesting that all the farmers are really businessmen.

I am angry about banks. This is a virtual protest.

Alright, now I’m officially a two-time winner for Time’s Person of the Year.

Ugh. I just lost my first fantasy football playoff game in three years. I won both leagues last year, and I won my one league the year before. Alas, Kung Fu Treachery puts upba respectable score, but loses by three points. I wonder what would have happened had Fred Davis not been suspended. Perhaps against that abysmal NE secondary, he could have been the difference. Oh well.

Lessons learned: 1. Never ever carry a second kicker. Kickers are way too random to make it worth holding one during the bye week. 2. Don’t think you are set if your depth lacks talent. I thought I was set with Jackie Battle, but he didn’t have that much talent. So, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he faded. I should have been more aggressive in the RB market. Or rather, I never should have dropped Tolbert. That was my biggest mistake.

My best move was trading Pierre Thomas for Antonio Brown. PT didn’t do much, while Brown was consistent. And he scored me a bunch of points this week.

Aside from the best, TE’s are a crap shoot. You either get a touchdown or you don’t. And touchdowns are way too random. Here are the only TE’s I’d consider grabbing early next year: Gronk, Graham, Gates, Hernandez, and Fred Davis. Not too many TE’s can get good yardage. Gronk may be worth an extreme premium next year (as early as third rd… Maybe even 2nd). I suspect that because of his injury history these past two years, Gates may be available at a steep discount. If you don’t get the top tier TE’s, you can wait until the very end of the draft.

I am still trying to figure out tiering with WR’s. It seems like receiving yardage is so variable, that I am not sure what the difference is between a WR2 and a WR3. This is something I will need to look up. I traded Roddy White for Reggie Bush and Tolbert right before White finally started having games where he scored 10+ points. He was getting consistent points before, but nothing spectacular. He stopped dropping so many balls after I traded him. I don’t regret the trade at all, though. Bush has played well and I don’t think Brown was a huge downgrade. I did have a Djax for Jacobs trade that got cancelled before I could accept. My internet was out because AT&T sucks. Djax was my biggest headache this year. I thought he would do well when I drafted him. Oh yeah, another lesson: Avoid headcases.

The Slap Kings won this week and earned a number 1 seed. It is time for a 3-peat.

Kung Fu Treachery needs a miracle to make the playoffs. (I need to win my match-up, plus I need two people to lose. Plus, I still need to outscore one of those losers.) I’m not making any money this year. Roddy White and Djax were disappointments, and Roddy White stopped dropping balls after I traded him. Ugh. I had two close losses the last two weeks (2 points and 3 points). Both of these would’ve been victories had my Eagles players done better. Shady got stopped on the two yard line 2 weeks ago. Djax dropped two potential TDs and got benched in the 4th quarter. Tough luck.

Slap Kings is first place, and I think a win clinches a playoff spot. Somehow this team has survived ridiculous injuries. Here are my top 7 draft picks: Jamaal Charles (out for season), Mike Wallace (still a stud), Frank Gore (a stud, but has underperformed since he got hurt), Ahmad Bradshaw (been hurt for last several weeks, but might actually play this week), Matt Schaub (out for season), Jimmy Graham (beast), and Kenny Britt. So, I’ve lost a lot of top-performing guys. But I have managed to overcome it. Time for a 3rd consecutive title.

I’m rewatching Battlestar Galactica with Stevie (well, she’s watching it for the first time) and it’s made me think about recent events. For instance, there’s a scene where the people are rioting on a ship. They send in untrained people, with guns, to deal with the ground and people get shot. The culpability lies with the commander for the error. So, let’s not get caught up in people vs. police.

Secondly, I really like Gaius Baltar as a character. He shows an incredible survival instinct. He’s not a very morally admirable creature, but he manages to stay alive throughout big changes. When I first watched the show, I really identified with Lee, but I liked Tigh and Gaius as interesting characters. Anyway, what I’m wondering is if I should be more like Gaius. Or rather: What if the revolution fails?

I know, it’s a leap to even say there’s a revolution going on. There may or may not be. It’s like a recession. You won’t really know until things are all fucked up. There’s a good likelihood it can fail. People aren’t organized well. The police have become increasingly militarized, so it’s easier to stop the people. Those in power have been able to act with impunity, so it’s unsurprising if things get more violent but they win.

Now, there are degrees of freedom. Cicero died because he loved the Republic, but people lived pretty well under the Empire. Not every tyranny is a police state. If there’s a revolution (or a lesser degree of it), there are questions to consider: How much freedom can I lose? Can the revolution succeed?

If it can’t succeed, it may be smarter just to keep one’s mouth shut. If we keep the status quo, things aren’t that bad for me. And even in China, many people live decent lives.

I’ve been battling with AT&T the past week. They shut off my internet and I couldn’t get it back on. I finally canceled my service after tech support hung up on me. In retrospect, I think cancellations should be the second call I make — that’s probably the best way to escalate your ticket.

Last Saturday, as I’m watching football, my TV suddenly shuts off. So, now my TV is broken and I have no internet. I’m glad my friends were able to make do with watching a DVD on my friends laptop.

Oh and I lost my fantasy football QB for the year. So, I’ve got Tebow in one league (glad no one picked him up after I dropped him) and Palmer in another league (a bye week solution becomes a permanent solution).

All in all, not a great week. But in my head, I wanted to label it one of the worst weeks ever.

It wasn’t, though. I’ve lived without TV before. I’ve lived without internet at my place before. I had to walk to Starbucks to use the internet, or use it at work, but it wasn’t as if some great injustice had been done to me. I’m paying a little bit more for Comcast now. My TV is still under warranty, and I still have a working old TV.

Yet even if this stuff wasn’t easily replaced, it’s still only stuff. I don’t need any of it. It’s good to be reminded of that. Or rather, I need to make an effort to remind myself of it more frequently (not just from time to time). It’s just stuff. It doesn’t matter.

I guess there are a million reasons why I don’t write in this blog as often, and I can examine all of them, but most of the things I list will be excuses. The real reason is that I simply don’t make the time to sit down in front of the computer and let thoughts flow through my brain, into my fingers, pass through the keyboard, and land on the blog. I simply don’t make the time. Now, should I make the time? Yes, because I’ve been letting myself coast instead of truly examining my thoughts and behavior. I must live an examined life, so to speak. So, let’s take the time to think about things, even if my thoughts aren’t perfect.

I believe the Occupy movement is rather important — not just now, but in a historical sense. I’ve been reading Glenn Greenwald’s new book, and I’m getting angry about things I had let myself forget. (Why did I forget about telco immunity after illegal wiretapping? Probably a lack of agency, but that’s just an excuse.) His book shows how the elite escape the justice system in America. The US is controlled by an oligarchy, which isn’t bad in and of itself, but it becomes bad when these rulers aren’t constrained by the rule of law. Who is in this oligarchy? Government, corporate leaders, media? Because of the revolving door, there’s no meaningful distinction here. They’re all the same people, switching from job to job. So, when people argue about the blame in the financial crisis, whether it was government or corporate greed, it doesn’t really matter which is which because the people in both worlds are the same people. The Occupy movement is important because this is the first popular uprising against the financial elite. They control our government and act with impunity. They must be stopped. They are the 1% that are being talked about.

I don’t know if our government needs radical reform. I’m inclined to think that it doesn’t. One of the problems with monarchy is that it requires the right people — and more often than not, you’ll have the wrong people. I don’t know that democracy solves this problem. You still need the right people in power. (Plus, you need the rule of law.) So, I think rather than thinking about reform, it is essential to take out the people currently holding power. I won’t necessarily agree with the new people, but all I want is a respect for the rule of law and a hatred for the old rulers. Part of this will involve voting people out. We must also disinvest in evil companies, or at least demand better CEO’s. We must break the current political parties. We must turn off cable news. A revolution needs to sweep the oligarchy from power.

There is another thing we can do, which is rather controversial: Resort to violence. It’s odd to find myself ambivalent about violence. So, I’ll talk through the reasons for violence. The fact is that the bankers are guilty of fraud and bringing down the economy. Instead of facing justice for crimes, they got big bonuses. Bullshit. If you go back a hundred years and further, these people would have been tarred, feathered, and run out of town. Perhaps justice can be done — if the mob carries it out instead of the courts. Oddly enough, when I discuss this with people — suggesting that instead of setting up encampments or protesting, the aggrieved burn down mansions, my suggestions face less pushback than I would expect. People seem less afraid of the idea than I do myself.

The only thing holding me back is that I wouldn’t do this myself. I couldn’t actually lead a mob, hold a torch, and light someone’s house on fire — even after all the nasty things they’ve done. Thus, I can’t put my money where my mouth is. So, I have no business advocating what I wouldn’t do myself. I hope that this sentiment comes from an inner civility and conscience, not from a lack of courage.

I can still promote all the things I mentioned earlier. I still want these people punished. I want their reputations tattered and their power taken away. I want them disgraced. And, once that has happened, I want their crimes prosecuted.

I don’t believe it will fix all our problems, but I do believe it is a good start in restoring the rule of law and restoring power to the people of America.

I just beat Contre Jour yesterday. Today, an update was available: a new chapter! Great timing. I should do a blog entry about all my favorite iPad games.

I don’t know how many people can understand the guilt of making a comic strip yet not being able to draw. Something I would like to do is take some extended vacation time and just work on drawing.

Before facebook and twitter, if I saw something on the internet that I wanted someone else to see, I’d put it on this blog. Now, my audience has migrated to facebook, and I’m not sure who reads this blog anymore. But I want to write! And fb and twitter aren’t so great at that. So here I am, back at this blog. And I’ll be back tomorrow.

Holy shit! This is the best video ever. I’ve watched it like 10 times and it still cracks me up.

Not enough:

*Planning
*Conversation
*Writing/Storytelling
*Pop Culture
*Ambition
*Challenge

Hm, this seems prescient: something I wrote about class warfare last year.

Occupy Wall Street is an expression of class warfare, methinks. One could also argue that there are elements of the Tea Party that are part of this too. The left/right politics not only blind people to the fact that this is class warfare, but it probably keeps them divided too. I guess I’m waiting for the politician who sees the opening to unite the disaffected left and right.

As much as I actually want to root for the side that will screw over the rich, a demagogue may be concerning when it comes to civil liberties. Of course, civil liberties aren’t worth shit right now anyway.

For now, it’s some members of the police who have been violent, but the violence of the rich can’t compare to the potential violence by the poor.

I guess I’ll finish on that happy note.

I overpaid for Schaub in both my drafts. Four weeks and this is the same as what I thought after the drafts, but my thoughts are more fleshed out now.

I had Vick/Brady/Rodgers/Brees/Rivers as a top tier. Then, I had Romo and Schaub. I thought the gap between them and any other QB was big because there was so much uncertainty. But the price I had to pay for Schaub was too much. I should’ve passed on QB, then waited until maybe Freeman or even Flacco/Stafford, who could’ve been had in the later rounds. My QB situation might not be better off, but my RB/WR situation would probably be better.

Of course, I wouldn’t be wringing my hands so much if I wasn’t hit so hard by injuries. I know, I know, it’s part of the game and this’ll be my last time complaining. I just want to mark it here, in case future me cares. I lost Jamaal Charles and Kenny Britt in one league. These were probably my two best players (with Mike Wallace a close third). I’m surprised I even have 1 victory, to be honest. In my other league, I also lost Kenny Britt, which is a shame because my team seemed unstoppable. (Britt, Roddy White, and DeSean Jackson as my top 3 wideouts. My RB situation was going to stabilize as LeSean McCoy and Darren Sproles… not bad, right?)

Anyway, right now I have the two best tight ends, Rob Gronkowski and Jimmy Graham, in one league. This is worthless since I can only play one. I need to make some type of trade.

Imagine that your favorite TV show was canceled 5 years ago. Now, it’s been announced that they’re going to do another season and a movie. Let’s pretend there’s a 50/50 chance that a) they’ll be better than the original or b) so bad they’ll ruin the show for you forever. Really, you won’t be able to enjoy the show any longer. Let’s also pretend you have the power to kill the new season and movie. Would you do it? What if the odds were 75/25? 25/75?

My answer: It’d depend on how good my second favorite show was in comparison to my favorite show. If it’s really good, I’d even go with the 25/75 considering that I have a high tolerance for letting chance play its role.

(Why this question? I felt inspired after reading Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.)

I have a fever but I didn’t let it stop me from updating my comic.

The ‘Times’ Thinks It Might Have (Maybe) Witnessed Police Brutality (Secondhand). Police attacking protesters in NYC>

Plus, the NYPD has a counterterrorism unit.

Disturbing trends…

This was helpful: http://osdir.com/ml/version-control.msysgit/2008-05/msg00081.html

I typed cd /e and I was able to get to my USB drive in Git Bash for Windows.

I’ve lately lacked the desire to make comics. I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps it’s exhaustion. Perhaps it’s that I’ve gotten wrapped up in Game of Thrones, along with the rest of my friends.

Or perhaps it’s the lack of stories in my life. I don’t get that much social interaction at work. I never thought I’d say this, but I kind of miss all the people at college. Nostalgia tells me things were rather vibrant back then. I like interacting with lots of different people. I liked that I could look at all these different subjects. Despite being a philosophy major, I took classes in many different departments.

Well, let me point out a specific behavior that has changed. I used to pass by acquaintances, and they would ask me how I was. Instead of saying “good,” I would say something quick that was maybe humorous. I felt like enough things happened that I could say something interesting. Currently, I don’t feel like I spend that much time observing the world around me, and so I don’t have as much to report. So, that’s what I mean by a lack of stories.

Lightning strikes less and less. I haven’t felt inspired lately with comic ideas. I write less. My comic ideas don’t amuse me as much.

Then, there’s the stagnation… You see, I hate facebook because the way it quantifies the worth of my comics. I have X number of fans. I have so many likes. Ugh, yet it’s there and I can’t help but judge myself by the numbers. And they’ve been rather dreary. The number of fans has been level for months. The likes and comments have dwindled down. It’s all so uninspiring.

As I stared at the stagnating numbers, I had a realization: I’ve gone as far as I can with the amount of effort I put in. My comic has plateaued. I have the number of fans I deserve. I can’t go farther unless I put more into it.

I certainly don’t want to stay the same. It’s within the realm of possibility, but it is not something I want to do. I don’t want to just tread water. To me, stagnation is a sign of degradation. Things are getting worse. I’m moving backwards.

That leaves me with two choices: Put more effort into it, or kill it.

I’ve done this comic a long time. I started in my last year of high school. That was over 6 years ago, now. Perhaps it’s time to move on. The problem with putting more effort into it is that I don’t have some burning desire to be a cartoonist. It doesn’t pay well, and I’m not great at drawing, haha.

That being said, I must create. If I don’t have a creative outlet, I’ll explode into little tiny bits.

I’ve killed projects before. I used to have a website: psycho-ward.org. I started that in middle school. Then, I started writing less and less. Eventually, I killed it. But right at the end, I started making new comics. I even planned to make a new website. But instead, I stuck with the comics because I liked it. What would replace The Chalkboard Manifesto? Coding? Blogging?

What would the more effort route involve? Perhaps upping comics to 5 times a week. Studying more comics. I’ve occasionally picked up books of newspaper comics from the library, but I haven’t done that in maybe a year. Getting better at drawing. Talking more with the fans. Building up some type of presence. Maybe quitting facebook to focus less on the numbers.

I was going to give myself a deadline of the end of the week to make a decision, but why wait? I already know which way I lean. I think The Chalkboard Manifesto deserves one last hurrah. I’ll set a date for the 5x a week schedule.

I’ve always had this fear of running out of ideas. I thought I’d conquered it, but it’s creeping up again. Like I said, the ideas aren’t as bountiful as they used to be. But I think this time, if I run out of ideas, it’s okay. It means it’s the end. And I’ll move on to something new.

Ugh, Jamaal Charles is done for the season. Not only do I have a massive man-crush, but I picked him #1 in my fantasy football draft this year. I lost by 4 points this week. With a healthy Jamaal Charles, I might win that game and be in second place. Alas, I’m now 0-2 and last place. Oh well, at least I’m 2-0 in my money league, and I have never been 2-0. I’ve always managed to start 1-2.

I wore all black yesterday as mourning clothes. I haven’t cried this much since Chewbacca died in that Star Wars book.

When I do a fantasy football draft, I have several rules of thumb that I follow. I also have some for playing week-to-week. Most of these rules aren’t mine, and I’ve taken them from all my reading, but I can’t really attribute them to one source. (I generally read the stuff on ESPN and Yahoo.) One rule is this: Don’t get cute.

The general scenario is this: Not-so-good football player with a great matchup. Do you start him? This week, Rex Grossman has a good matchup against the excruciatingly bad Arizona secondary. Would you start him over a much better QB? What if your QB struggled last week? (Like Big Ben or Schaub?) What if your QB has a bad matchup?

Or what if your TE struggled last week? Do you pick up someone who had a good week off the waivers and play him instead? Do you play a player with a much lower ranking if you have a good feeling about him?

In general, I don’t play the good player, even if they struggled. I don’t like to get too cute. I don’t downgrade guys a lot for one bad game or get too high on a guy for one good game. (I started to panic about Schaub last week, but I didn’t pick up another QB in either of my leagues.)

I made an exception this week. I played Fred Davis over Owen Daniels. I only saw one other ranker who put Fred Davis ahead of Owen Daniels. So far, it’s working out okay. It seems crazy, but it wasn’t merely an overreaction to last week. Fred Davis is a really good player, but he didn’t have much opportunity because Chris Cooley was ahead of him on the depth chart. Plus, Owen Daniels, to me, isn’t on the same tier as a lot of the other TEs. I’d give Vernon Davis, Dallas Clark, Jermichael Finley the benefit of the doubt. But Owen Daniels gets a lot of credit for one really good, injury-shortened season. He did start to look good at the end of last year, but he hasn’t proven that much. Granted, Fred Davis hasn’t proved a lot yet either. I knew he had talent, though. So I decided to roll the dice.

Last year, for fantasy football, the knock on the Patriots TE’s was that you didn’t know which one to start. I have a suspicion that both may be useful every-week starters this year. Seeing the success the Patriots have with this, I wonder if their tight end focused attack be emulated. I know Baltimore has some young talented TEs. Hm.

Other notes:

*Seeing how bad the Arizona secondary is, I think Kolb will be a good fantasy QB. He’ll be in a lot of shootouts. I’m tempted to spend a waiver claim on him. This could change as Patrick Peterson gets more experience; he has a lot of talent.

*I’m worried about Matt Schaub. I have him in two leagues and I think I overdrafted him. I didn’t think the QBs after him had much value, so I grabbed him. All the elite QBs went too early. I think I’ll regret drafting Roddy White instead of Vick in another league. By the time I was ready to draft again, all the elite QBs were gone. Or maybe I should’ve drafted Brady. (I had Schaub beneath Romo and above Big Ben. I wasn’t as excited about Big Ben as some, especially since in one of my leagues, there are negative consequences for taking sacks.) Anyway, the drafts are done, and I’m worried about the future. I think I might pick up some backup QBs as insurance. (I like Fitzpatrick and Kolb.)

*Wow, there were some exciting kick returns. (I saw the 49ers-Seahawks game.) I’m curious is special teams are suffering because of the lockout. The rookies had less time to prepare. One potential strategy is to pick up D/ST with good kick/punt returners and pray for TDs.

*I’m curious about Fred Davis because I know him from his USC days. He had 105 yards receiving last game, and the only real concern is Chris Cooley getting back to 100% and cannibalizing targets. Okay, and Rex Grossman being Rex Grossman.

*Looks like it’s not necessarily a good idea to stream defenses against Rex Grossman. I forgot that he is ridiculously inconsistent, which means he can have good games too.

I used to have a heuristic where if I couldn’t summarize the book in a good way, then the book was probably good. When someone asked me, “What’s The Brothers Karamazov about?” it was hard for me to give a good summary. Even though my memory of the book has faded, it is still one of my favorite books.

I didn’t really understand the mechanism behind the rule, but I think I know now. I’m reading this book on complexity. It explains Seth Lloyd’s proposal of 3 dimensions for measuring complexity: 1) How hard is it to describe? 2) How hard is it to create? and 3) What is its degree of organization? [Note: I’ve lifted these verbatim from Mitchell’s book.]

I can connect this back to my heuristic on books. I think the books that were hard for me to describe were more complex. They didn’t have simple characters and simple plots. As a high school student, I liked more complex books because I was a smart kid who wanted more challenging reading material. Moreover, books that aren’t simple have more to say about the human condition because they mirror real life better.

Okay, now it’s “tough” interrogation instead of torture.

Previously:
coercive interrogation
enhanced interrogation
harsh interrogation

What’s next?

I find politics depressing these days. (My political reading is limited to Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald, along with occasionally reading Daniel Larison.) Despite the election of Obama, Guantanamo is still open and Dick Cheney is on a book tour bragging about his war crimes. The National Security State grows, sucking up money and distributing it to corporations, while civil liberties continue to be stomped on. There’s a huge gap between the wealthy and everyone else. The rich get bonuses while everyone else gets laid off. It all seems so overwhelming.

But I guess I had one useful thought. It’s easier to be depressed when these are seen as symptoms of decline. Things are getting worse, we think. Yet I wonder, where is the Golden Age that we declined from? When have the rich not used their privilege to get more money at the expense of others? When have politicians not abused power?

It seems as if some of these issues have root causes that are really old problems. Stuff that can never be solved. Sometimes, these problems can be ameliorated, but never permanently. So, I should toss aside the idea of being able to “fix” this. But it’s not impossible to make some improvements.

Plus, haven’t things gotten better in some areas? Tolerance of gays is improving. Gay marriage will be legal in every state within my lifetime. So, I can’t view things in a manner of strict decline or progress. I don’t think it’s cyclical either. Things are just mixed.

I don’t know what conclusions to draw from this. These are just some thoughts.

An antifragile approach to joke-stealing:

My silent motto when I began to encounter joke theft on Twitter was “Go ahead and take ’em, motherfucker. Here come five more.”

http://splitsider.com/2011/08/rob-delaney-has-what-should-be-the-final-word-on-joke-plagiarism

I forgot my keys the other day and it made me realize how unintuitive antifragility really is. These may not seem connected, but let me tell my story.

During Outside Lands, I stayed in Berkeley because it was easier for Stevie and me to travel to SF together. Naturally, I wanted less things to carry, so everyday I went out to Outside Lands, I went without my keys. So, when I finally went home to my apartment, I managed to leave once last time without my keys. Because I broke my routine, I forgot my keys.

When I first went to college, I lived in the dorms. The door to my room automatically locked when I left the room. It thus became very important to remember my keys before I left my room. I developed a threshold routine. I checked my pockets for my wallet, my phone, my keys, and a pen.

This threshold routine is rather robust. It’s rare that you’ll leave your place without crossing through a door. I don’t usually leave my place through the window. So, no matter what you have to do in the morning, it’s more difficult to forget your keys.

Compare this to dealing with an essay you just composed. If you print it out and leave it in the printer, it’s rather easy to forget it in the morning. This is fragile. If you put it in your backpack the night before, that’s more robust because it’s less likely that you’ll leave without your backpack. Of course, some emergency may make you forget your backpack, but everything’s about odds with me.

As I thought about all this when I was locked out of my apartment, I pondered, “What would it mean to have an antifragile strategy for remembering my keys?” I think it would mean that the more my routine got fucked up, the more likely it would be for me to remember my keys. And that is a very, very strange thing. I don’t think there exists an antifragile strategy for remembering one’s keys. I think that are ones with different levels of robustness. My dad told me he used to keep a spare key in his wallet. That adds more robustness, but it still isn’t antifragile.

I can think, “How can I make it less likely to forget my keys?” Yet it’s very, very strange to think, “How can changing my routine cause me to be more likely to remember my keys?” Ugh, it’s even hard to form that question in a non-awkward way.

When I first read Taleb’s explanation of antifragility, he noted that a word for the opposite of fragility didn’t exist in English and many other languages. I think that one part of the reason is because of the concept’s strangeness. If i think of antifragility in terms of the hydra, it makes sense to me. However, in many other situations, such as remember my keys, it has no application.

How to win any argument…

Know the philosophies of these three people:

*Hume
*Sextus Empiricus
*Taleb

Usually, you can get by with just Hume. Note that this just allows you to win any argument. It doesn’t mean you’ll convince anyone.