Read Things You Disagree With

Many of us are guilty of reading things which only confirm biases that we previously held. It is very easy to do so because knowing that others agree with what you think is a rather uplifting experience.

However, just living in Boulder, Colorado is uplifting enough; so I expect (some of) the books I read to provide more than just a fuzzy feeling, I want them to push me intellectually.

The best way to do that is to start reading things that disagree with ideas that I currently believe to be true, both things I have good reason to believe as well as things I hold as dogma.

The 4-Hour Workweek and Walden were the first 2 books I read that challenged the beliefs of what I held as societal dogma: buy insanely large homes and materialistic possessions that we don't really need, work insanely long hours to pay for those things, and then buy even more shit that we don't need to compensate for the depression of working long hours.

In contrast, Nassim Nicolas Taleb's The Black Swan is a very heavy read(well so is Walden) that challenges many deeply seated scientific beliefs, all of which have plenty of evidence in their favor, or,  in some cases, simply lack of evidence against(which Taleb repeatedly points out is not evidence for).

One argument in particular really challenged my beliefs(and one which I had plenty of evidence to support) is his disagreement with the globalization of economies, large size of banks and the internet. As an engineer, efficiency is usually what I am trying to optimize, and there is no arguing against the massive efficiency and price reduction that can be gained through globalization of the economy. However, Taleb points out that when it fails, the massive coupling will ripple through the entire system, as opposed to being isolated in the location that it originated.

Do I still think the internet and global economy are amazing? Yes.

I just hope they don't fail in my lifetime.