by Ryan Holiday

Stoic philosophy has never sat well with me—I’m always at odds with the fact that in order to manifest true Stoicism, you have to discard your emotions, and act on rational choice alone. “BUT MUH EMOTIONS,” I lamented, “it’s all I have to feel alive!”

This book (unlike “The Obstacle is the Way” that I have read previously) takes a more holistic approach and quotes a few notable Stoics on various aspects of the “art of living one’s life” (the purpose of philosophy). Reading all the 366 quotes, I’ve got a more coherent picture of Stoicism than ever before.

One thing that particularly stood out to me while reading the book was what I would call “being right by induction.” In mathematics (and sometimes in programming), proof by induction is a common way to prove that something is covering all cases. For example, if we can give a correct answer for 0 (the base case) and the next number (0 + 1 or 1), then “by induction” every next step is an instance of the step “number + 1”, which, in turn, means that we have all the numbers covered.

It is the same for Stoics. Similar to Buddhists, they say that you will only suffer if you try rely on events outside of your immediate control (e. g. the future or other people), hence you must only focus on the choices you make about things under your immediate control. Which is, obviously, what you do here and now. This is the base case—if you do the “right” thing now, you are behaving honestly and correctly, according to the Stoics.

The induction step is the integration of these moments where you are doing the right thing. If you ignore things outside your immediate control and follow your immediate and rational choice from one moment to the next, then by induction you will live as a true philopher, you will have learned the “art of living” by showing that you know how to do it, moment to moment.

Both the Buddhist notion of “groundlessness” (that the future is uncertain, and change is inevitable) and this Stoic notion of “being right by induction” have been powerful and liberating in that they give you a solid (despite their meaning) alternative viewpoint that exposes a completely different view of your situation in the world. I’m constantly struggling with finding meaning in my life, and learning about both has made a difference.

I was skeptical about reading “The Daily Stoic” but the multiangular approach the author takes definitely gives enough food for thought—it’s far from the modern business book density of one idea per hundred pages. Even if you don’t like all of it, you’ll find some of it interesting.

This review on GoodReads

by Mark C. Chu-Carroll

What if you were curious about some higher level math but didn’t have the will or intention to study it just out of curiosity? What if you could ask a skilled mathematician to break down the concepts for you and explain in an approachable, clear way? That’s exactly what this book is.

From the get-go, we are exposed to Peano Arithmetic, and new concepts get introduced bit by bit based on that resulting in explanations about natural, real and irrational numbers, not in terms of their nature, but how one may build them from axioms and use them.

The second half of the book talks about logic, sets, group theory and finally the approaches to computation: finite state machines, the Turing machine and lambda calculus.

For a programmer, it’s a relatively shallow but enticing introduction to the topics he or she might learn in greater detail to understand how computers work and the math behind it.

This book can’t be compared to actual math books, but reading it and having the gist and a modicum of understanding of what’s out there – and motivation to learn it one day – is, I think, exactly what the author’s intended.

by Ray Dalio

You can rarely get a candid look into the life and work of such an accomplished person like Ray Dalio. Even more interesting than his personal story (which all have a bit of survivorship bias) are the principles which he’s been following to build his outstanding company, Bridgewater.

The beginning takes us through his early life and circumstances. This part was reminiscent of Edward Thorp’s autobiography “A Man For All Markets” – there are certainly some parallels.

I won’t retell any of the principles here, he’s making a great job of it himself by providing bullet points, short descriptions and a summary.

What jumped out to me the most was his notion of the “culture of excellence” – being aware and proactive about making all the aspects of an activity excellent. Dalio describes how to look out for and solve problems to achieve it, and this process is, in its essence, kaizen, or continuous improvement on all levels. He never mentions kaizen or Toyota (which popularized the practice in business), but the tools and practices he outlines in his principles are similar. But, to think of it, isn’t continuous striving for excellence a prerequisite of success?

Overall, the life principles section, though thought provoking, left me mostly dispassionate. I think that the real goldmine are the work principles. All aspects of effective management and decision making are precisely dissected and presented to the reader in a digested, easy to understand way. Remember that Dalio has spent decades designing them! Of course, what’s in the book is just a taste of what is actually used, but still his approach to designing and running a company is refreshing and utterly logical.

Another surprising thing was how I caught an echo of Dalio’s words the other day when watching “The incredible inventions of intuitive AI”. Maurice Conti (the presenter) describes human tools throughout history as passive in the sense that a human must always control them. After that he proposes tools which are intuitive, or proactive, which provide the necessary information or perform actions without the human having to fully control them. This is exactly what Dalio says about internal Bridgewater tools which help manage the company (like the Dot Connector), adding that he strongly believes in the future, where machines proactively augment the humans’ decisions. What an interesting coincidence!