Welcome to Issue #75 of ThinkSpace Thursday
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📚 Light Reading
Reason is a powerful tool, but it pays to know its limits
Awakening from reason’s spell means you’re free to not know. Free to live a life that is more of a muddle but also more authentic: a life in which genuine commitment to certain values is mixed up with equally genuine doubt about whether those values are real.
School is not enough
The purpose of education is to develop agency in a child. Purposeful work and achieving mastery are tools for getting there—learning is simply the consequence of doing. To understand this is to understand the ecology that fosters genius and talent.
Making the case for small talk
Many of you reading this are closing yourself off to others, and you’re doing it willingly. Forget "deep" conversations. Short, pleasant interactions are the lifeblood of humanity
🔎 Study of the Week
You need to get outside
A new study of over 400,000 people in the UK shows that each additional hour spent outdoors during the day was associated with lower odds of lifetime major depressive disorder, antidepressant usage, less frequent low mood, greater happiness, and lower neuroticism.
📺 Video of the Week
As our lives are transformed by digital technology, curiosity is what enables individuals and businesses to survive and thrive. Co-author of The Curious Advantage, Garrick Jones, explains how to use the “7 Cs of Curiosity” to your advantage. (10 mins.)
🎙 Podcast Episode
John Danaher is largely regarded as the greatest MMA coach in the world. In this conversation, he discusses how he went from nightclub bouncer to an MMA coaching legend with a PhD in philosophy.
🗣 Quote of the Week
“Seneca believed that one should spend their time fulfilling their duties and responsibilities, enjoying any wealth and fortune that might come of them, but not work for the purpose of social status or material success beyond one’s minimal needs, because beyond almost everything else, he argued for allocating as much time as possible to leisure—more specifically, a particular type of well-focused leisure in which one finds tranquility, introspection, and stillness.”
— Robert Pantano
👀 Perception Watch
😲 WTF
Imagine that you walk into a room where there are two closed boxes on a table in front of you. Box A contains £1,000. Box B contains either nothing or £1 million. You don’t know which. You have two options:
Take both boxes.
Take box B only.
You keep the contents of the box/boxes you take, and your aim is to get the most money.
But here’s the thing: The test was set by a Super-Intelligent Being, who has already made a prediction about what you will do. If her prediction was that you would take both boxes, she left B empty. If her prediction was that you would take B only, she put a ₤1 million cheque in it.
Before making your decision, you do your due diligence and discover that the Super-Intelligent Being has never made a bad prediction. She has correctly predicted things you and others have done, including in situations just like this one, never once getting it wrong. It’s a remarkable track record. So, what do you choose? Both boxes or just box B?
😁 In the Memetime
📖 Book Club
Pulling from ideas in Stoicism, Existentialism, Nihilism, Absurdism, Buddhism, Taoism, and more, Robert Pantano combines his own thoughts with concepts from philosophy to create accessible, thought-provoking, and beautiful takeaways that will change the way you think about yourself, existence, and how to appreciate the absurdity of it all.
🤔 Contemplation Corner
A typically philosophical skit from South Park on the use of AI. Is it unethical to make someone happy like this?
🎧 The Song of the Week
ZG Smith - Nighttime Animal
Listen to the ThinkSpace Thursday playlist on Spotify.
🧠 Go Deeper with ThinkSpace
Join a vibrant community of curious minds who share a passion for bridging timeless philosophy with modern life. Every month, we explore a different philosopher’s ideas and deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world. Click here to learn more.
Next Masterclass:
👍 Thanks for Reading
As always, if you enjoy ThinkSpace Thursday, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. If you’re not finding it valuable, please consider unsubscribing—no hard feelings!
Live well, and I’ll see you next week.
John