Paul Erdös did it regularly, yes. Successfully, it seems — but I wonder about the costs. Does anyone have consistent data on that?
Picking only Erdös’ case, would, I’m afraid, be a case of both survivorship bias and hasty generalization.
ABranco
Karma: 373
Reminded me immediately of Philippe Petit — the French artist who gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers (WTC) in 1974. Commenting on the vision of his yet-to-be-accomplished project, he said:
“It’s impossible, that’s sure. So let’s start working.”
The inspiring documentary on his feat, Man On Wire, won an Academy Award in 2008. His kind of perseverance seems to rely on a rather unbreakable spirit of self-confidence.
There’s a question begging to be made here: what is a good martial art? Is one that brings inner calm and equilibrium in itself? Or one that is effective in keeping aggressions away?
Not that those aren’t correlated, but some martial arts excel more in the former and in the environment of feudal Japan. I doubt the exuberance and aesthetics of most of those arts prove effective, however, confronting the dangers of modern cities.
In this sense, something much less choreographic or devoid of ancient philosophy — such as the straightforward and objective Israeli self-defense krav maga — seems to be much more effective.
What is curious here is: a great deal of krav maga training involves lots of restraining, since hitting “for real” would mean fractured necks or destroyed testes. So there’s no competition, either.
Can it be that in martial arts there’s a somehow inverse correlation between the potential of real-life damage (and therefore effectiveness) and the realism by which the training is executed?
Exactly.
Some of Pavlina’s advice on sleeping habits, for instance, is very eye-opening. But his posts should be taken with a grain of salt, though, as there’s a great deal of magical thinking and new-age, the-secret-like self-help in his site.
Having read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and Peikoff’s OPAR, I’ve had enough time and material to reflect on Objectivism.
While Rand’s contribution to rationalism was mostly admirable, Eliezer’s analysis seems very fair. What’s interesting, too, is that some of its contents overlaps with the article “The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand”, written by Nathaniel Branden 25 years ago, which can be found in his website.
I recommend the reading.
As Branden (reasonably) states, some of Rand’s major flaws were:
Confusing reason with “the reasonable”
Encouraging repression of emotions
Encouraging moralizing
Conflating sacrifice and benevolence
Overemphasizing the role of philosophical premises
Encouraging dogmatism
The world of business tends to emphasize pattern over particular. But intellectual aspects of pattern prevents people from caring.
So the marketer would win by using the sad and more concrete image of the oily bird, persuading more people by means of the Ludic fallacy.