Leo Gura

Technically it is not correct. There are many things you can know. If that wasn't the case you could not survive. But even beyond the practical stuff, you can know metaphysical stuff. Like, you can know that God exists. But there is also some deeper truth which his statement is pointing to, which is that knowledge is a very limited thing and at the metaphysical level you don't really know what anything is.

These are actually distinct things. You can know how a doorknob works without knowing anything metaphysical or existential or scientific about it. If this wasn't the case it would be impossible for children to survive to adulthood. You are falling into the trap of getting overly philosophical about the practical stuff. The practical world is never about 100% guaranteed absolute knowledge. It's always probabilistic, fallible, and uncertain. And then you just reason and act within that chaos. 1) There is no guarantee that studying hard will pay off. 2) But there are still best principles by which to operate in life. Hard work doesn't always pay off, but it's usually better than the alternative, so you act based on that. Your actions should align with the principles that tend to give the best results. And how do you know what those principle are? Well, again, you never know for sure, you just make your best intuitive guesses. And if your intuition proves wrong you analyze why it went wrong and you adjust it. The overall trap you're falling into here is the expectation of or demand for 100% certainty. Life just doesn't work like that. Embrace the hairy chaos of it. And as far as morality goes, certainty doesn't even apply there because morality is a human-invented domain. Killing someone is not "certainly wrong". It's null. It's whatever meaning you give it and whatever consequences come about (which can vary wildly) depending on who you killed and why.

Ralston is one of the few books you want to sit down and carefully read. Most other books don't demand that.

Be careful with that. I don't like the idea of you visualizing negative stuff all the time. This could easily be done in the wrong way and make things worse. "Negative visualization" is a narrow kind of Stoic technique which is supposed to make you more contemplative and appreciative about your life. Great! I don't know what you're asking me.

Yes. Pre-mortem technique to avoid traps is very different from being pessimistic and stuck in negativity. Contemplating the past for lessons is very good. But again, that's very different from being stuck in negative feelings about the past. If you're doing it properly you should feel empowered, not weakened.

Thanks!

It's not really new. I don't know why it turned out that way, I think my backlight got set too dim for some reason. It wasn't supposed to change.

32k is still pretty good. Enough for most conversations.

Coffee has no effect on me, up or down.

Yes, capitalism and socialism videos are planned.

I've been to Ikea.

Piers Morgan is not a grifter or con artist. He just has a centrist perspective and you want him to be more radical.

Can't you use VPN?

I never listen with headphones. My phone is easy to hear on loudspeaker. Get a quality phone with good speaker. And get Bluetooth for your car.

@Butters Nice!

It's not like blacks or women were doing well economically back then either. Yes, wealth inequality is a big problem today. However the overall GDP of everyone rose. Certain items like houses and college and healthcare have inflated a lot.

Paypal lets you pay via credit card. I'm unsure what the limits are. Some countries may not be supported. There are also online services like Privacy.com which let you create virtual credit cards which you can then use to make purchases. Paypal should accecpt virtual credit cards. But again, they restrict some countries.

I have 200GBs of audiobooks on my phone.

Yes

I will consider that.

We'll be dead before America becomes totally stage Green. Culture wars of course.

It would take a major catasrophe or black swan event to start a revolt in America. Americans are too comfortable otherwise.

Statistically what he said is true. But it is irrelevant in the context of revolt.

My communication has been lacking. The outage caught me by surprise. I've never had an outage that long so I didn't even think about the need for a backup communication method. I will think about how to improve communication. Maybe I can use my Twitter/X account more.