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Why Imitation Is at the Heart of Being Human
A growing number of cognitive scientists and anthropologists think that human beings survive and thrive because we imitate others and don’t think for ourselves.
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Key Ideas
Wonder is said to be a childish emotion. However, as adults, we experience it when gaping at something unexpectedly spectacular.
Adam Smith, an 18th-century moral philosopher, describes wonder as something new and singular that is presented, and memory cannot find any image that nearly resembles this unique appearance.
The bodily symptoms of this strange appearance point to three dimensions:
At the mild end of this emotion, we talk about things being marvelous. More intense emotions might be described as astonishing. The extreme of this experiences is met with expressions of awe.
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Key Ideas
Breaking down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up.
It’s one of the best ways to learn to think for yourself, unlock your creative potential, and move from linear to non-linear results.
This approach was used by the philosopher Aristotle and is used now by Elon Musk and Charlie Munger.
...is a foundational proposition or assumption that stands alone. We cannot deduce first principles from any other proposition or assumption.
Reasoning by first principles removes the impurity of assumptions and conventions. What remains is the essentials.
If we never learn to take something apart, test the assumptions, and reconstruct it, we end up trapped in what other people tell us.
We remain trapped in the way things have always been done. When the environment changes, we just continue as if things were the same.