The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 14 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Brooks: The bucket list is a destructive concept that fuels dissatisfaction
“The worst, most metastatically stupid idea in Western society, in American society is the bucket list. The bucket list is like, I'm going to make a list of all my cravings and attachments and desires, and I'm going to pour over it.”
Brooks: Authentic Happiness Comes From Faith, Family, Friendship, and Work
“There are four idols that people chase in life. Money, power, pleasure, and honor, by which he meant fame, and which we mean prestige in life. Those are idols that never bring satisfaction. They run you in the wrong direction. If you want to be ambitious for t…”
Brooks: US poverty rate stayed at 10-15% despite $20T spent
“We have, the poverty rate has bounced around between 10 and 15% every year since then. Despite the fact that we spent somewhere around 20 trillion dollars in the war on poverty.”
Brooks: Satisfaction equals what you have divided by what you want
“Satisfaction doesn't come from what you have. Satisfaction comes from what you have divided by what you want. And each of us, if we actually want to find enduring satisfaction, no matter where we are economically, we need a wants management strategy.”
Brooks: 10th percentile US housing size matches 1980 median
“Today, the person at the 10th percentile economically in America lives in the same square footage of housing as the person at the 50th percentile in 1980.”
Brooks: Society treats poor people as liabilities instead of assets
“The problem that we have is we treat the poor as liabilities to manage, as opposed to assets to develop.”
Brooks: Government applies complicated engineering fixes to complex human problems
“All of life's big problems that are hard to solve are complex, adaptive, human dynamic problems. And all of the solutions that we get from government are complicated.”
Brooks: Social media cannot solve loneliness through engineering
“The problem with social media today is social media is a complicated solution to a complex problem of loneliness. It's a basically, it's an app based complicated engineering solution to the problem of love. That's why it's utterly inadequate and not up to the …”
Brooks: Expanding bureaucracy and tech has made Americans less happy
“We turned the keys in America over to bureaucrats and engineers 30 years ago. We, I mean, it's like, we basically pump all of the money and resources and time and affection and energy into bureaucracy, which is massively expanded, and to engineering and tech, …”
Brooks: US Happiness Has Suffered a Secular Decline Since Late 1980s
“My intuition is that really it turned around in the late 19 eighties and that since the late 19 eighties, we actually have been a relatively secular decline where we came up a little bit at the end of the nineties, beginning in the 2000. And most definitely we…”
Brooks: 50% of Individual Happiness Is Determined by Genetics
“And 50% of your happiness is genetic, by the way.”
Brooks: Escaping poverty reduces unhappiness rather than creating happiness
“Money never bought happiness. Even early on, you find that people actually have a higher affect balance. They feel better about their lives when they go from poor to not poor. It's absolutely true, but it's not because they're getting happier. This sounds like…”
Brooks: Entrepreneurs View Money as a Scorecard, Not the End Goal
“Josef Schumpeter, the father of modern entrepreneurship, the understanding, the professor at Harvard, but he was a visionary. He said that entrepreneurs actually don't care about money per se More than the fact that it's a scorecard for what they're building.”
Brooks: Happiness and unhappiness are processed in different prefrontal hemispheres
“Happiness and unhappiness are, as cognitions are processed in different hemispheres of the prefrontal cortex. Literally, a different part of your brain is lighting up when you're having unhappy feelings as opposed to happy feelings.”