The only real way an economic crisis can weaken a country is when another country ‘capitalises’ on it. Hence, the name ‘Capitalism.’
America can afford to play hare instead of tortoise because there isn’t anybody else lined up in any serious way to take their place.
The idea that economic crises or bubbles spell the end of a system that doesn’t immediately favour the working class is wishful thinking.
People who know how to use their capital benefit from the short term hits because of the bounce back.
Astrology is my least favourite belief system because at least with most religions you can derive meanings that you may not find in irreligious texts.
But Astrology is just arbitrary personality traits- there’s no progression towards some greater understanding of the world.
What may seem like a ‘bad decision’ now could be setting you up for something good in the future.
What we call ‘regrets’ are simply things that didn’t need to be changed at the time.
They’re only ‘regrets’ in hindsight because things now have to change.
But that doesn’t make what you did in the past a waste of time or the wrong decision.
The global economy is a form of super intelligence which is so difficult to be understood that there is no universal economic theory on how exactly it will behave.
Now imagine a single AI with that degree of complexity.
We wouldn’t have any idea what it was doing.
Once human civilisation emerged, individual hunter gatherers could no longer compete against the combined knowledge and resources of agriculture.
And that’s what AI is.
It’s a multitude of roles and resources inside a single body.
The Ice Age was not simply an environmental crisis which homo sapiens and mammals survived.
Out of it came extreme evolutionary change for life on Earth.
In particular, the birth of human civilisation- a form of super intelligence that reduced animals to resources.
Global Warming is the Ice Age of our time.
What we should fear is not whether it will be survived but the dominance of electric autonomous machines the day after the emissions stop.
Animals survived the Ice Age but not without conceding dominance to human civilisation.
2025 was the best year of my life.
I found out who I was.
I found out all kinds of things I didn’t know about myself.
I found out things I never realised I was excellent at.
And that’s another thing I gained: confidence.
Confidence to talk about the things I gained and the things I’m great at.
One of the things we get wrong about happiness is that we need more of whatever has made us happy to be happy again.
What makes something a truly happy time isn’t more of what has made us happy before.
It’s something that stands out on its own and truly grows you as a person.
The problem we now face is that we’re beyond the Postwar period and people of all backgrounds now want to increase their grip at once and that festers the extremes we’re seeing.
We are not willing to compromise or conform in any way- and that leads to factionalism and too much internal focus.
The solution to our economic problems has to be a balance (i.e a mixed economy) where people have essential provisions but are still incentivised to compete against each other.
That is essentially what we did have. It was an equilibrium where people of all backgrounds were reasonably appeased.
The declining birth rate of western countries such as the UK is only indirectly related to the cost of living.
It is happening because the purpose of reproduction has shifted from religious obligation to a personal freedom (a lifestyle choice).
Countries in extreme poverty are producing children.
The vast majority of what the news or social media has to say isn’t useful.
If you were in the wild, you wouldn’t go around consuming everything growing out of the ground in sight.
For every valuable nugget of information, there’s a multitude of useless info which’ll only distract or derail you.
2025 is the best year of my life. A year of truly pivotal realisations that have given me a substantially bigger understanding of who I am, how my brain works. how to navigate society and how the world works.
While we can use technology to our advantage- it’s also more important than ever to embrace the human touch while we have it because technology is also eroding that.
You haven’t got as much time left, but the beauty of that is that you spend it well.
I only intend to be the most productive version of myself for the rest of my life.
One of the greatest lessons of approaching 30 is that (at best) you’re a third through your life now.
Are you going to waste what remains on unfulfilling relationships or endeavours, social media or other unproductive things which do nothing but waste your life and fill you with negativity?
Many of the fruits of freedom we enjoy now are going to come to an end because they’re economically unsustainable.
We enjoy the freedoms we do now from riding the inertia of imperialism and exploitation.
When the inertia runs out, we will have to be self-sufficient to survive.
This is part of a bigger trend of intangible resources losing significance.
University degrees and white collar trades are becoming less valuable than physical labour because they’re more accessible.
They’re not based on survival of the physical body which carries our brain.
The unfortunate side effect of our free society is that we lose productivity and manufacturing because we aren’t disciplined to do these things.
We can pursue ‘higher things’ because our country exploits the resources of poorer countries.
If a country relies heavily on intangible wealth and offshores manufacturing, eventually the economies with the manufacturing capabilities are going to expand and square out the countries reliant on intangible wealth.
Numbers on paper will be treated like paper. Torn up.
2025 has been a remarkable year.
It taught me so much about myself that I didn’t know before.
I tried things I always wanted to try that I realised weren’t for me.
The thing I value the most isn’t following my passions.
It’s self-discipline.
I don't want to change my beliefs to be in line with a party structure I don't agree with.
I think just let the system be.
We can't control the weather, we can only work around it.
Let the voters decide what they want and focus on things you actually can influence.
I will never be left, right or anything in between. They all have problems.
I like hearing people talk about their beliefs but I don't agree with any singular ideology.
I wouldn't be able to because two completely different points of view can equally make as much sense.
I realised I'm not passionate about politics because there is no nuance involved - it's just the loudest most extreme voices who dislike each other.
I don't want to be somebody who projects their life problems and insecurities onto groups they dislike instead of trying to forge my own path.
Passion is what you’re willing to discipline yourself to do continuously in order to achieve a rewarding outcome.
Passion isn’t doing whatever you want to do whenever you feel like doing it- that’s not passion. That’s just momentary urges.
I don’t want to use social media or engage with politics anymore right now.
That will likely change at some point but right now I’m fed up with seeing constant negativity and polarisation.
Technological progress is inevitable.
There will definitely be bad consequences in the same way that when the Industrial Revolution came along many labourers starved as a result of losing their work to machinery.
At the same time good outcomes and worst fears proven wrong will also be the case.
