https://vegasharmon.com/tags/wisdom/ Recent content in Wisdom on Vegas Harmon Hugo en Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/apprenticed-to-the-land-berry-s-test-of-who-we-are/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/apprenticed-to-the-land-berry-s-test-of-who-we-are/ Berry always saw in humanity’s relationship with its land, and with the wider creation, a litmus test of what kind of people we were, or were becoming. “I have made myself its follower and its apprentice,” he wrote of his own farm in his 1968 essay “A Native Hill.” If we wanted to begin living better lives, he wrote in 2011, we should also apprentice ourselves to something local and particular, in whatever form we found it. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/billionaires-who-couldn-t-stop-why-they-keep-working/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/billionaires-who-couldn-t-stop-why-they-keep-working/ One thing few people realize about billionaires is that all of them could have stopped sooner. They could have gotten acquired, or found someone else to run the company. Many founders do. The ones who become really rich are the ones who keep working. And what makes them keep working is not just money. What keeps them working is the same thing that keeps anyone else working when they could stop if they wanted to: that there’s nothing else they’d rather do. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/depth-first-breadth-later/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/depth-first-breadth-later/ The great wisdom of his career, as Glimm likes to tell it, is depth first, then breadth. Do not waste time on a million directions at once—do one thing well, and then master another. Over time, you can have deep knowledge across a wide range of subjects. He is unusual, even among elite mathematicians, in that his research actually spans multiple academic disciplines. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/dream-first-verify-after-kekul%C3%A9-s-disciplined-imagination/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/dream-first-verify-after-kekul%C3%A9-s-disciplined-imagination/ Kekulé had become practiced in receiving and developing helpful images in this way. When he described the roots of his scientific creativity in the Benzolfest in his honor in 1890, Kekulé told his audience, “Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the truth.” He added the salutary caution, “But let us beware of publishing our dreams till they have been tested by the waking understanding.” https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/exploitation-myths-trap-the-poor-while-the-rich-know-better/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/exploitation-myths-trap-the-poor-while-the-rich-know-better/ The greatest danger of this nonsense may not even be that it sends policy astray, but that it misleads ambitious people. Can you imagine a better way to destroy social mobility than by telling poor kids that the way to get rich is by exploiting people, while the rich kids know, from having watched the preceding generation do it, how it’s really done? https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/flip-the-polarity-from-why-not-to-how/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/flip-the-polarity-from-why-not-to-how/ The right way to deal with new ideas is to treat them as a challenge to your imagination — not just to have lower standards, but to switch polarity entirely, from listing the reasons an idea won’t work to trying to think of ways it could. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/goodhart-s-law-civilizational-scale/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/goodhart-s-law-civilizational-scale/ Boomers and spiritual boomers love to pull up charts and graphs that “show” that today’s young people are “objectively” better off. But the charts look that way because we have burned priceless (but invisible and illegible) goods in exchange for the goods that show up in metrics dashboards: Goodhart’s Law, at civilizational scale. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/honest-doubt-beats-dogmatic-certainty/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/honest-doubt-beats-dogmatic-certainty/ If we recognise that a kind of inner honesty and a genuine relation to experience is what constitutes religious existence, the fundamental enemy to good religious dialogue or apologetics becomes dogmatism and projected certainty, not a lack of assertion about any argument we may have. A believer can and probably should have more affinity with an atheist who struggles with divine hiddenness or genuinely finds the problem of evil too much to overcome in order to believe than they can with a fellow believer asserting that the fine tuning argument or psycho-physical laws proves theism. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/innovate-with-eyes-open-or-become-your-tools-slave/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/innovate-with-eyes-open-or-become-your-tools-slave/ If we do not enter upon innovation with our eyes wide open to how our tools and machines will reshape us, we will become their slaves, not their masters. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/live-so-the-world-is-better-for-having-had-you-in-it/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/live-so-the-world-is-better-for-having-had-you-in-it/ You should live the kind of life where if you were given a terminal cancer diagnosis, you’d feel like you’d achieved something of note. That there was some important respect in which the world was better because of you. Don’t merely aimlessly float by—achieve something meaningful. And love, through your actions, all those you love in your heart, unfailingly, till the end. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/men-need-a-mission-worth-sacrificing-for/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/men-need-a-mission-worth-sacrificing-for/ Not everyone needs to act like a monk, but men need a mission, a purpose to pursue, a sense that they matter. They need to have something for which they would sacrifice their comfort or in some cases even their lives if necessary. Young men need to know, as Jordan Peterson once wrote, that they have “some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world.” https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/one-more-year-to-write-what-matters-most/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/one-more-year-to-write-what-matters-most/ If I had another year on Earth, what would I want to achieve? I’d want to keep writing. My guess is I’d write more about the things I think are most important. I’d spend more time talking about the big picture on important topics, less on frivolous culture war issues. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/peer-review-isn-t-the-point-scientific-inquiry-is/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/peer-review-isn-t-the-point-scientific-inquiry-is/ A lot of the blame should fall on misguided narratives (common across academia) about what makes science work, which have been entrenched by the best-funded scientific institutions. A core scientific norm is that disputes should be resolved with reference to concrete empirical tests or rigorous proofs, judged by the scrutiny of one’s scientific peers. But that’s very different from the idea that ideas should be developed via paper-sized units of work which are each individually defended and justified. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/preparation-earns-the-eureka-moment/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/preparation-earns-the-eureka-moment/ Just as “chance favors the prepared mind” (Louis Pasteur) so the muses of science and creativity favor those who have done their homework. Based on a survey of recent research in creativity, we could describe the four key stages of discovery as follows: Immersion – a long depth engagement with a subject Acquisition – of a wealth of data and experience relevant to the subject Inspiration – the Eureka moment Evaluation – testing the discovery through experiment and dissemination [2] You can’t force stage three. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/sneaking-past-your-own-standards/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/sneaking-past-your-own-standards/ Another common trick is to start by considering new work to be of a different, less exacting type. To start a painting saying that it’s just a sketch, or a new piece of software saying that it’s just a quick hack. Then you judge your initial results by a lower standard. Once the project is rolling you can sneakily convert it to something more. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-good-approached-only-by-fleeing-the-evil/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-good-approached-only-by-fleeing-the-evil/ The good is that at which we aim, to be sure, and yet the good that we seek can only ever be asymptotically approached by avoiding the evil, which is always nearer and clearer. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/track-the-slope-not-the-point/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/track-the-slope-not-the-point/ It can help if you focus less on where you are and more on the rate of change. You won’t worry so much about doing bad work if you can see it improving. Obviously the faster it improves, the easier this is. So when you start something new, it’s good if you can spend a lot of time on it. That’s another advantage of being young: you tend to have bigger blocks of time. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/wanting-to-pull-the-lever-then-finding-reasons-why/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/wanting-to-pull-the-lever-then-finding-reasons-why/ What went wrong here? It’s hard to know exactly what led any given person to endorse any given argument. But when we zoom out, it becomes clear that many people in this space really want to pull some lever that feels important, and privilege arguments which justify that. That might come from a sense that they need to have an impact on the world; or fear about failing to fulfil their potential; or the more mundane explanation that big levers tend to be associated with money and prestige and proximity to power. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-devil-owns-the-world-anyway-dot-dot-dot/ Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-devil-owns-the-world-anyway-dot-dot-dot/ The devil owns the world anyway. Our job is to make it through the best we can. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-point-of-gtd-lists/ Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-point-of-gtd-lists/ The point of all this list-making isn’t to do everything on the lists. While these lists do help you remember what to do next, what they’re really good for is deciding what not to do – at all. The promise of GTD is that it will help you consciously choose not to do some of the things you set out to accomplish. This is in contrast to how most of us operate: we have a bunch of things we want to do, and we end up doing the things that are easiest, or at top of mind, even if they’re not the most important things. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/seek-out-overlooked-work-you-can-explain/ Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/seek-out-overlooked-work-you-can-explain/ Indeed this pattern is so common that you can use it as a recipe: if you’re excited about some kind of work that’s not considered prestigious and you can explain what everyone else is overlooking about it, then this is not merely a kind of work that’s ok to do, but one to seek out. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/want-of-wonder/ Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/want-of-wonder/ The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/five-minutes-by-the-clock/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/five-minutes-by-the-clock/ Which leads into another good question to ask yourself straight out: Did I spend five minutes with my eyes closed, brainstorming wild and creative options, trying to think of a better alternative? It has to be five minutes by the clock, because otherwise you blink—close your eyes and open them again—and say, “Why, yes, I searched for alternatives, but there weren’t any.” Blinking makes a good black hole down which to dump your duties. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/strategy-is-deciding-what-truly-matters/ Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/strategy-is-deciding-what-truly-matters/ Here, as in so many situations, the required actions were not mysterious. The impediment was the hope that the pain of those actions could, somehow, be avoided. Indeed, we always hope that a brilliant insight or very clever design will allow us to accomplish several apparently conflicting objectives with a single stroke, and occasionally we are vouchsafed this kind of deliverance. Nevertheless, strategy is primarily about deciding what is truly important and focusing resources and action on that objective. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-kernel-of-good-strategy/ Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-kernel-of-good-strategy/ The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical. A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis. A set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/ask-the-ai-for-consequences-not-decisions/ Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/ask-the-ai-for-consequences-not-decisions/ Before the settlement could be finalized, however, the CEO of Robot Central asked his AI system to explore all possible actions he could take and tell him their consequences. He adhered to the 1990s principle: Never ask an AI system what to do. Ask it to tell you the consequences of the different things you might do. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/every-idea-feeds-on-itself/ Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/every-idea-feeds-on-itself/ I feel like that was in part, I got much better at the skill of noticing things and thinking harder about predicting things. Also, there is just a thing where after a while every idea feeds on itself and builds on itself, you like to pick up a whole collection of useful ideas which you can apply to everything. I love… Gian-Carlo Rota has a good quote for how he does research where he said like, “Everyone has two mental tools that they apply to every problem, and a great mathematician will have 3. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/stay-upwind/ Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/stay-upwind/ What do you do in the face of uncertainty? Get more certainty. And probably the best way to do that is to try working on things you’re interested in. That will get you more information about how interested you are in them, how good you are at them, and how much scope they offer for ambition. … One useful trick for judging different kinds of work is to look at who your colleagues will be. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/create-more-than-you-consume/ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/create-more-than-you-consume/ The more you create, the more powerful you become. The more you consume, the more powerful others become. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/advance-confidently-in-the-direction-of-your-dreams/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/advance-confidently-in-the-direction-of-your-dreams/ I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor… If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/desire-then-kindred-spirits/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/desire-then-kindred-spirits/ If you want to know how to do a thing you must first have a complete desire to do that thing. Then go to kindred spirits—others who have wanted to do that thing—and study their ways and means, learn from their successes and failures, and add to your quota. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/happiness-courts-the-light/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/happiness-courts-the-light/ Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/learning-as-ever-richer-mnemonic-devices/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/learning-as-ever-richer-mnemonic-devices/ Learning can be seen as a process of acquiring smarter and richer mnemonic devices to represent information, encoding similar information, into patterns, organization principles, and rules which represent even material we have never before encountered, but which is like what we do know, and thus can be recognized or remembered. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/life-as-a-ceaseless-contest/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/life-as-a-ceaseless-contest/ Life he saw as a ceaseless and courageous contest. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/no-golden-rules/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/no-golden-rules/ The golden rule is that there are no golden rules. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/no-virtue-or-vice-in-a-transitive-verb/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/no-virtue-or-vice-in-a-transitive-verb/ There is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/not-wise-to-grow-too-old/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/not-wise-to-grow-too-old/ Sometimes I think it is not wise to grow too old,.. […] But I am not aware that we are given a choice in this matter. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/nothing-more-permanent-than-a-temporary-fix/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/nothing-more-permanent-than-a-temporary-fix/ There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary fix. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/resolve-as-a-prior-moral-decision/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/resolve-as-a-prior-moral-decision/ [Resolve is] the action of making a moral decision prior to the circumstances in which it is applied. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-extraordinary-concentration-of-einstein-and-aquinas/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-extraordinary-concentration-of-einstein-and-aquinas/ In both [descriptions of Einstein and Aquinas], one gets a vivid sense of extraordinary concentration on problems to the exclusion of most daily routine. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-rarity-of-actual-wanting/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-rarity-of-actual-wanting/ You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-world-will-indulge-you-just-so-long/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-world-will-indulge-you-just-so-long/ You will have to grow accustomed to it. The world will indulge you just so long, Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thirst-was-made-for-water/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thirst-was-made-for-water/ ‘You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thy-will-be-done/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thy-will-be-done/ There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/time-weighs-most-on-those-who-have-it-least/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/time-weighs-most-on-those-who-have-it-least/ Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/to-be-in-a-passion/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/to-be-in-a-passion/ To be in a Passion you Good may do But no Good if a Passion is in you. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/when-in-rome-leave/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/when-in-rome-leave/ When in Rome, leave. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/x-flavored-y-things/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/x-flavored-y-things/ For every activity you naturally want to do, try to figure out a way to apply it to your direction. Your direction is sort of like a theme - if your direction is X and your interest is Y, then go do X-flavored Y-things.