That most predictions are wrong and that prevention, robustness and adaptability is way more important. I can’t help myself – I have to add one thing about the people who give out predictions on all kinds of things. Often these are the people who live in a world where their actions have no consequences and where their ideas and theories don’t have to agree with reality....“You only have to be right on a very, very few things in your lifetime as long as you never make any big mistakes…An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.”

Darwin’s result was due in large measure to his working method, which violated all my rules for misery and particularly emphasized a backward twist in that he always gave priority attention to evidence tending to disconfirm whatever cherished and hard-won theory he already had. In contrast, most people early achieve and later intensify a tendency to process new and disconfirming information so that any original conclusion remains intact. They become people of whom Philip Wylie observed: “You couldn’t squeeze a dime between what they already know and what they will never learn.”

Gresham’s Law

This can be common in some business fields. Take two drug salespeople – one willing to bribe doctors in order to make sales, and one not willing to do so. If the industry functions such that fraudulent business practices are not punished, and the bribery goes uncovered by the buyer’s organization, then bribery obviously gains a sustainable competitive advantage over non-bribery. Clearly, the deceptive practice will take hold, as salespeople unburdened by morals are promoted and compensated better than the high-roaders. It’s a clear form of Gresham’s Law. When bad behavior has taken root, and that bad behavior has a “survival advantage” against good behavior, it becomes difficult, and occasionally impossible, to drive out the bad behavior; a process akin to natural selection.

Walking the Dog

Sometimes I take the dog out for a walk. She drags me tree to tree, and post to post wanting to stop and sniff each for dog knows what. Sometimes for entertainment I pause and let her sniff to her delight just to see if she will ever get her fill and decide to move on on her own, but usually her delight outlasts my impatience. Then there are those times that I stop to observe a particular bird, or butterfly, or flower, maybe even just a glimmer of light, but of course, she has no patience for that, and pulls me away to the next awaiting tree or post to be thoroughly explored all over again. I am still not certain whether it is history that interests her, or current events. The thing I have noticed is that dogs almost never have a macro view of the world. Instead they are almost always focused on the micro world that is most immediately in front of them or should I say in front of their noses. Sometimes I think it is a great advantage not to look so far out. After a while the dog and I get distracted by just the walking and we develop a rhythm where we each keep to ourselves as we focus only on the path we walk. It is in moments just as these that I begin to understand a little more the pleasure of the dog taking me out for a walk.

Death

Once you actually begin to die and you experience death, you no longer fear death. Then you can really start to live. When you watch someone die and you watch them let go of everything. They let go of all their possessions, all of their financial security, all of their hopes and dreams, all of their material attachments and even their ego. Finally, they even have to let go of their loved ones. Once they have done that, then they are free to go and there is nothing left to fear. You realize it is not into an abyss that you go, but an abyss you that come from.

Spirit is like zero - it is not divisible, and they only thing that is real is zero. All of the other numbers are illusions of things added unto each other, or subtracted from, or even multiplied or divided. They can never stand onto themselves. All that is left is zero and it alone stands onto itself. It can never be multiplied or divided. You cannot subtract from it and end up with anything other than a negation of itself. You cannot add onto it and end up with anything more than that which is added. The spirit always stands onto itself unchanged.

Spirit is like zero - it is indivisible.
It alone stands onto itself
it cannot be multiplied, nor divided
if you add to it, you are left only with whatever was added
if you subtract from it, then you end with the negation of that which is added.