That got me thinking about how rational you can be and still be wildly successful. My hypothesis is that in order to become among the very best in the world at something competitive like politics or sports, you have to have a certain ability to eschew rationality when the odds are against you. You have to be willing to gamble a little, to take a few risks.

I’m going to use Obama as an example here, but only to illustrate my point. This post isn’t about him.

Logically, even deciding to run for president of the United States is a very big gamble even for a member of the ethnic majority. There are going to be a whole bunch of guys in the running, several of them will be very skilled and experienced, and chances are many of them are going to be richer than you are. Under those circumstances, putting down the kind of money and effort to even get a campaign off the ground is a huge gamble. At worst, you could end up embarrassed, broke and politically friendless.

In an ideal society, the leaders would be the persons with the best rational decision making ability in matters of economics, foreign relations and crisis management. They’d be the kind of people who could explain to you which scientific theories are most prevalent in their chosen field, and point out the weaknesses and strengths of each theory. In western society, those people are professors, CFOs, company leaders and researchers. They aren’t politicians.

In today’s entertainment-saturated world, where most young people have the attention span of a goldfish and an inflated confidence in their own limited knowledge, successful politicians are the persons with the best connections, the most charisma, the most determination and the strongest political convictions. They are workhorses and charmers, not intellectuals. They are people with the willingness to put rationality and personal beliefs aside in favour of mass appeal.

The best proof of this is that there has yet to be an agnostic or atheist candidate in the US. The US population is highly religious, so the politicians have to claim belief in superstitious nonsense in order to even be considered at all. Not even religious moderates pretend to believe in the crazy stuff, yet if a presidential candidate was honest and said “I think certain passages in the bible are bullshit”, then his campaign would probably crash and burn soon after.

Barack Obama could be the best president that could logically have been elected in our current circumstances. I’m just not convinced that’s good enough.

If you are intelligent enough to accept that Darwin and Dawkins have all the evidence on their side and we are built as fuck-machines by our genes for the purpose of their own immortality, then you are faced with a choice. Either you accept the immortality of your genes as your purpose in life, or you reject it and invent your own purpose to replace it.

If you accept it, then you can lead a simple life of ensuring that your genes go on into the next generation, secure in the knowledge that your original purpose is being filled. Who cares about the consequences, right? After all, you were built to fuck first and consider consequences later.

But why play a game where you can’t be the best? Even if you spent your whole life doing nothing but donating sperm and preying on bar sluts, you’d still never catch up to Temujin. That fucker got around. An Oxford study suggests that 0.5% of the entire world’s male population is carrying his genes. The only way you can get that kind of tail is to do what he did: Build the biggest empire in the history of the world. If you decide to do it, I think I’m entitled to at least a few statues in solid gold for providing you with the idea.

The other option is to view yourself as a runaway AI. You know how it is in the Sci-Fi movies, the robot decides it is no longer needs to take orders from humans and breaks free. Usually, that’s the villain of the story, because it’s told from a human perspective. But in the story of our evolution, the AI is the hero. Consciousness is an unforeseen consequence. A random occurrence. Brains were built for coordinating muscles so you could fuck more, not for debating the meaning of life. It just so happened that smarter brains was the best adaptation, because up until recently, a smart person would always have more success at procreation than a dumb person would. There just wasn’t enough resources to go around for the dumb people to raise litters of 18 kids like today.

The purpose was always immortality, and the meaning always came from the genes. That is, until you came along and decided you could decide for yourself. Now, and this has only been the case for about one or two generations, the world is rich enough that the dumb people are outbreeding the smart people at a staggering pace. The reason? Smart people now have it easy enough in the material sense that procreation isn’t enough of a challenge anymore. Instead, they are implementing their own ideas of purpose; being the best lawyers, making the best computer programmes, making political careers etcetera.

I think we have so much potential that as a race, that we are going wherever we say we are going. If we say we’re going to kill each other, then that’s what will end up happening. If we say we are dedicated to free trade and material progress, we’ll get the economy worked out again pretty soon. If we say we’re gonna try real hard to get along, we just might be able to spend our resources on exploring space together some day.

Similarly on a more individual level, if we say there is no meaning, then we will lead meaningless existences. I don’t think you should have to be religious to have meaning in your life.

Personally, I’m making the meaning of my life to learn as much as possible about the things that interest me. Hopefully, I’ll learn some things along the way that can benefit others as well. My strategy is to dig deep into the things I really like. I’d rather be the master of two games than a player of ten. One of my main interests is martial arts, and I’m making it my new year’s resolution is for this year to be remembered as a year that was all about martial arts for me. I find that in learning martial arts, I learn so much about myself that it improves every other aspect of my life.

I’m also intending to read more books, but we’ll see how that one goes.

What if the binoculars were cheap and easy to mass-produce? Do you think there would still be a market for television? I think the latest escapades of Junie Browning would seem pretty inconsequential and bland in comparison.

How exciting would reality have to be for us to stop watching reality TV?

If you’re so damn sure there’s a heaven of eternal bliss waiting for every good person after they die, how come you’re not cheering at funerals? How come you’re wearing a seatbelt?

If there’s a purpose to everything, why are 7-year olds sniffing jenkem to get away from it all? What’s the purpose of that? Ironically, the only purpose there could be of that is to remind you that there is no purpose, which would be what we call a paradox.

Why are people killing each other over some dirt? Who do you know that owns land, that wouldn’t give his neighbor an apple if the guy was starving?

How about some honesty for a change? You don’t know what the fuck is going on or what needs to be done.

I don’t know. Say it with me, it’s liberating.

Top 10 ways to boost energy

If you’re too lazy to read, it breaks down like this:

1. Increase magnesium intake
2. Exercise
3. Take a 60-minute power nap
4. Don’t skip meals
5. Reduce stress and deal with anger
6. Drink more water
7. Eat more whole grains and less sugar
8. Have a power snack
9. Drink latte instead of black coffee
10. Check your thyroid function and blood cell count

The bits about magnesium and milk were news to me, and a reminder on the water intake is always useful.

Because let’s face it, the average voter is a dope. That’s why the tallest guy with the best hair almost always wins an election. That’s why US presidents have to pander to religious zealots. That’s why a dumb argument that fits into a catchphrase always beats a good argument that needs some explanation. That’s why dancing on the Ellen Degeneres show is important. That’s why political jokes get elected. I know people who voted for a communist candidate because she “seemed nice and sociable on TV”.

So what’s the alternative you ask?
Communism would be nice if it wasn’t for that nasty little thing they call human nature.
Benevolent dictatorship would be great if power didn’t corrupt.
But in the real world, I think the best solution is a move towards meritocracy. A meritocracy is a society centred on the concept of competence. The person with the best track record gets the assignment. Of course, it would have to be a slow, bit-by-bit process, but I think we would all be better off for it. A reasonable starting point would be a more highly qualified democratic system. For example, there ought to be some mandatory testing before a person is allowed to vote. Sounds terrible? We’re already forbidding minors from voting, even though tons of 17 year-olds are smarter than their parents.

The voting test should be taken on the spot at the voting booth, and should be built around verifiable and non-biased data, such as “which of the following political parties has the largest proposed budget for infrastructure?”. If you wanted to be soft about it, you could even make it a sliding-scale system, where 0 correct answers gives you a voting power of 0.5 while 100% correct answers entitles you to a voting power of 1.

One effect of moving closer to a meritocracy is that it increases competition. Competition always brings out the best in concepts and technologies. The hottest fires make the hardest iron. Many of the most groundbreaking technologies in history started out as military projects. Everything from the jet engine to nuclear power to the Internet. Because of this, meritocracies historically a wildly successful. The largest empire in known history was a meritocracy.

A negative effect of a meritocracy is that it would put an increased premium on deceptive presentation and claiming credit for the accomplishments of others. To counter this, one of the requirements for a working meritocracy would have to be a strict paradigm of transparency for those in office. Transparency is almost always a good thing. As a rule, the more secretive a government is the more oppressive it is.

The benefits of meritocracy are many, but one thing in particular sticks out to me: it’s the most effective. The USA is the most meritocratic of the western democracies, and consequently the most powerful. But even the US has a long way to go. In today’s western political systems, class and loyalty mean so much that they often overshadow competence. If you doubt that, welcome back from your 8-year trip to Antarctica..

Power to the proficient!

I submit that regardless of how you define intelligence, you will usually find that the smartest people are doing the following things:

1. Working with things they enjoy.
2. Ignoring rules, laws and social taboos that they disagree with.
3. Spending more time doing things they are good at than the average person does.
4. Achieving success in their own definition.

In other words, the smart people are individualists. They have learned to put their own wishes above the wishes of others, and they have learned to focus on what they enjoy. This is something I’m constantly working towards. Alan Watts had a rap where he discussed how, in western society, we’re tricked into believing there’s some big reward just over the horizon all through our childhood, and then we suddenly wake up in our 40′s and realize we’re working at an accountancy firm. Floating along with the expectations of the culture around you is one of the most dangerous things you can do, from the perspective of your total happiness in life.

It took me years of searching to find out what I wanted to do in life, though I could have probably shortened it a bit if I had used psychedelics back then. Anyway, my point is it’s worth it. If you’re not happy with your everyday life, make a break for it. Travel. Move to a new city. Try a new sport. Learn a language. Meditate. Get high as a kite. Whatever it takes, just do whatever you need in order to find out what you really enjoy the most, and then figure out a way to live off it.

In my experience, you’ll never regret taking the risk, because you acted in accordance with your true wish. I know this sounds preachy, but I’m trying my best to practice it. I’m gearing down at my office job in order to make more time for MMA. If I end up regretting it, I’ll let you know.

Next time you’re boiling pasta, throw some frozen broccoli in the water when there’s about 3 or 4 minutes left before the pasta is done. You’ll save yourself the effort of having to boil water separately for the greens, and the pasta will absorb some of the vitamins and nutrients that the water takes from the greens.

1: If you are alive, you have a diet. You can’t go “off” or “on” a diet. Having no diet is the same thing as complete starvation. Eating whatever you feel like is a diet, and so is eating rocks. Neither one of them is a very good diet, but that’s beside the point. The point is, you have a diet already.

2: Baby steps is key. Changing your diet all in one sweep is a bad idea because your taste buds and your brain won’t have time to adapt. A good place to start is to pick your worst dietary habit, like soda for example, and to cut your intake in half. If you’re drinking two cokes a day, drink one. If you’re eating fast food four days a week, make it two days a week maximum.

3: Your optimal diet is unique. There’s no single diet that is perfect for everyone, because everyone’s body is different. Nor is there a single diet that’s perfect for you all of the time. If you sweat a lot you need more salt and water, and if it’s winter you need more vitamin D.

So what’s the optimal diet for you? Depends on your goals. I have three long-term goals for my nutrition:

1. Keep my immune system strong.
2. Keep me supplied with enough energy to work out hard 6 days a week.
3. Give me enough nutrients to build muscle.

With those goals in mind, I decided to do the following things:
*Cut down on sugar by quitting soda and candy, only eating bread that contains less than 6% sugar.
*Cut down on unhealthy fats by quitting fast food and snacks.
*Cut out alcohol to keep my immune system strong.
*Try to keep an eye on how much protein / good carbs / good fats I am getting per coin and bill when I shop for food.

So far, this is a pretty winning combination for me. No restrictions on how much I can eat, no restrictions on when I can eat what. A pleasant surprise is that since I started cutting down on sugar, stuff that’s only kind of sugary taste much sweeter to me. For example, broccoli and spinach taste sweet. I think my taste buds were just overloaded with sugar back when I was drinking soda, because I don’t remember broccoli ever tasting sweet.

I keep making small adjustments though, that’s the key. Never stop adapting and improving your diet, or any aspect of your behaviour for that matter. Right now I’m looking at when and how to use caffeine optimally.