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The Evolution Of Thinking
Nassim Taleb nails it with this simple but profound sentence:
Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but, rather, to get out of trouble rapidly and have progeny. – Nassim Taleb (Fooled By Randomness)
We human beings are so full of ourselves. With much hubris, we auto-assume that we are above all other life forms just because we can “think“. We concoct immortal and all-powerful gods in our minds who we “think” are watching over our well-being (but not the well being of those we don’t like). Then, when something terrible happens, we wonder “why” our gods could allow such a tragedy. Instead, maybe we should contemplate “why not?“.
The ability to “think” has unquestioningly made life more comfortable locally for the human race over time. However, it’s questionable whether “thinking” has made human life more comfortable globally. Unlike a “mindless” swarm of locusts that ravish the environment with a vengeance, we “mindful” humans seem to be ravishing our environment and other fellow humans at an increasingly alarming rate as our “thinking” supposedly evolves.
Mind Full, or Mindful?
Years ago, I watched a televised debate between Deepak Chopra and atheist Sam Harris. Since Deepak came across at times as defensive, I’ve never felt the need to delve into any of Deepak’s books. Nevertheless, since I instantaneously fell in love with this telling picture from the Chopra LinkedIn post “The Conscious Lifestyle: Awareness Skills“, I just had to copy and paste it here:
They Do Us!
Sensors AND Actuators
Motherbuckers
I love discovering people and companies that buck the current “kool and hip” trends followed religiously by the herd (mooo!). One of these motherbuckers is Evernote Inc. I’m not an Evernote user, but the app is phenomenally successful and has an enthusiastic following.
In “One Reason Everyone Has Outsourced Their Brains To Evernote | Fast Company”, Evernote CEO Phil Libin says:
We do everything native. That was actually the big decision. Right from the beginning we said, “No common denominator crap.” No HTML5. Just all native on every platform.
You would think that it makes no business sense to maintain a separate, resource-sucking team for each supported platform, but think again:
Yes, it’s really expensive. Yes, it takes a ton of developers. But it works for Evernote: As Libin says, they’ve got independent teams for every platform. They compete to make the best version, steal from each other, and leapfrog one another. Since each platform is different–BlackBerry, for instance, has that keyboard thing–the versions are tailored to them. And each fits. – FastCompany
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