Practical Useful

The Simulation Argument proposed by Nick Bostrom in 2003 remains the single most perplexing answer to the Fermi Paradox yet proposed.

The short version of these two arguments are:
  - Fermi Paradox: Given how many habitable planets there are in the Galaxy and how long they’ve been about… where the hell are all the aliens? They should have over run the place with von Neumann probes already!
  - Simulation Argument: Given that it will become possible in the future to simulate not just individuals but whole populations, it is significantly more probable that we are ancestor simulations being run by our future prodigy rather than real world residents who will first develop that technology.

So SA’s answer to FP is simply: You are a Sim. The simulation does not include the aliens.
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The very existence of “Ikigai” has come about because the author, Sebastian Marshall, got so pissed off at his treatment by a large publisher that he decided to flip the bird in spectacular fashion and grind out a book in one week.

As you’d expect from a project that was so tightly framed, there are some rough edges to the completed work, but these are not so jarring as the ones that spoiled my enjoyment of How to be the Luckiest Person Alive. This book may have been churned out in about a week, but in that week a designer and an editor were working hard on adding value to the collection of essays gleaned from the blog.

The main rough edge issues are repitition of some sections and also many of the essays were in response to emailed questions or previous discussions and they have not been properly re-framed to take that into account. It’s not hard to see where this is the case and backfill a little yourself, but does leave you feeling that one more week of editing could have made a big difference.
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I’ve been doing a lot of interesting reading recently in a bid to continue improving how I go about living my life. There has been a fair amount of pay-off from the changes I’ve been making over the past couple of years, between marriage, a baby and of course the move to Japan!

Among the various sources of inspiration and advice I’ve been following is the excellent blog of Sebastian Marshall, a most fascinating chap who is pursuing the goal of becoming the most skilled strategist of our era. A lofty goal, but one I have little doubt he can achieve. I had a most interesting discussion with him on Skype last week about Eastern vs Western mentality and business practice that was illuminating.

Sebastian encourages his readers to make contact with him and many good articles and pieces have come out of that, so I decided I should also step out of the shadows and get in touch, hence the reason I ended up having a call with him. His review of what I’d written in my email was very positive too, so positive in fact that he decided to publish it on his blog.

In that article I mention a few items I have been reading and would like to give a slightly broader review and pointers on each of them…
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