The Ultimate Studying Soundtrack

May 8, 2012

Devon Sampson Original Content , , , , , Leave a comment

The music I am about to share with you is BY FAR the most potent ever designed for the purposes of doing productive knowledge work (ie: reading, writing, studying, homework, etc.) This will drastically increase your productivity, not to mention make you much more stoked about life.

If you know of a great studying soundtrack that I missed, share it with us in the comments section!
 

#1 – The Social Network Official Soundtrack

 
Composed by Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) and Atticus Ross, this soundtrack can make even the most menial tasks seem grandiose and important. While most of your projects aren’t going to IPO for billions of dollars, The Social Network soundtrack does a sublime job of convincing you that they just might.

Download:
-”A Familiar Taste”
-”In Motion”
-”Pieces Form the Whole”
-”Intriguing Possibilities”
-”Complication with Optimistic Outcome”
 

 

#2 – Rounders: Music From the Motion Picture

 
Rounders was essentially a movie about a card shark who owes money and then eventually finds a way to make up the money; yet the soundtrack made it seem like the most important thing in the world, and it can have the same effect on your labor of love. Seriously, this is the ultimate music for making your life seem cooler than it actually is.

Download:
-”Rounders”
-”The Catch”
-”Railbirds”
-”Finger Up Your Spine”
-”The Apple”
 

 

#3 – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack

 
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross composed this soundtrack as well, and once again they do a stellar job of convincing you that your work is more than worthwhile. This album has more of a curious detective theme rather than that of a computer programmer.

Download:
-”Pinned and Mounted”
-”A Thousand Details”
-”Great Bird of Prey”
-”The Heretics”
-”Infiltrator”
 

 

Psychological Visibility, Self-Image, and You

January 24, 2012

Devon Sampson Human Psychology, Original Content, Social Dynamics , , , , , Leave a comment

As conscious human beings, we have a subtle anatomical problem: we cannot directly perceive our body in its entirety. We have (or at least, should have) a sense of identity based on our thoughts, feelings, and values but we cannot see ourselves completely with our limited visual perception. The closest that we can come to perceiving ourselves totally is through external reflections.

We have a basic need as human beings to view ourselves in a positive manner. On a superficial level, this is accomplished by maintaining proper hygiene and dressing well so that your physical reflection in a mirror is agreeable. But our need for a positive self-image must also be satisfied on a deeper level.

For a moment, imagine if someone in your life built a life-size bronze statue of you. You would gain an immense sense of pride and would feel profoundly appreciated, especially if the architect was someone you had a great amount of respect for. But while few of us will ever get the chance to witness such an explicit and grandiose reflection of ourselves, our self-image can get valuable reinforcement if we are appreciated by someone who shares our values. This does not just apply to extremely confident, self-actualized people either. Consider the temporary satisfaction of an insecure womanizer who has just recognized that some party girl is attracted to him. Someone has perceived him in a positive manner and he feels psychologically visible as a result, even if the appreciation rests on the shaky foundation of her lack of standards.

I would like to stress that our human desire to feel visible and appreciated must not be confused with the irrational tendency of some people to derive their entire identity through the reactions and standards of other people. A person gains a natural, selfish pleasure from the appreciation of their identity insofar as it is reflected back to them by others whom they admire – but it is crucial that our hero first possess his own identity that is indepedant of other people’s opinions.

In Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, the protagonist, Howard Roark, offers a memorable quote towards the end of the story: “To say ‘I love you’, one must first know how to say the ‘I’.”

Unfortunately, learning how to say the “I” is not an easy process. Like it or not, identity formation is a rational, conscious process; any other approach to it will result in a mess of random and arbitrary values which cannot be practiced in reality without contradiction.

Once you have devoloped an integrated, non-contradictory set of values you are halfway to full self-actualization. The other half of the journey is living your values without compromise. If you respect this process, your presence and sense of life will inspire people with similar values, and their recognition of you will allow you experience the abstract concept of your identity on the perceptual, concrete level of awareness.

(Edit: The natural corollary of positive reinforcement is negative reinforcement, and this is okay. To say that we should ignore our basic need for psychological visibility because we might not get it is like saying it’s bad to look at mirrors because sometimes you might not like what you see. Accept reality as it is and commit yourself to constant growth.)

The Hidden Price of the Unearned

January 16, 2012

Devon Sampson Ayn Rand, Original Content, Politics , , , , , Leave a comment

Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.

-Malcolm S. Forbes

Like most people, I do not enjoy losing.

But that is just what I experienced some hours ago. Since I like to multitask while listening to audiobooks (I’m a voracious listener as well as a voracious reader), I played EA Sports’ NHL 12. A week ago, I had started a playoff run with the Boston Bruins (with a fantasy draft before the season, so the team was an eclectic mix of players), and now I was in the Stanley Cup Finals against the Detroit Red Wings. It was a dramatic, far-too-intense-for-a-video-game series that had reached a 7th and deciding game. My team, however, was down by a goal with 50 seconds left, but then my Bruins beared down and tied the game! My euphoria continued well after the ensuing face-off at centre ice – but it ended abruptly seconds later when Detroit came back and immediately took the lead again! This time, their lead would hold up and I lost the (virtual) Stanley Cup.

I was devastated.

This may seem like an overreaction, but I had a lot of time invested with this (virtual) team and it was a bitter feeling to come up short. I thought to myself, “If only the result could be different…”

But then I stopped myself. For at that exact moment, a particularly relevant Ayn Rand quote came to mind:

There is no conflict of the interests among men who do not desire the unearned.

Now, it is one thing to read that quote in a neutral emotional state, with no immediate conflict facing you. It is quite another to hear that quote in the midst of a torrent of melancholy and frustration. However, the quote still struck me as profoundly true.

Since, however, emotions are not tools of cognition (but rather, a sort of adviser for what your conscious mind should focus on) I decided to divert my attention away from my broken heart and consider why that particular quote struck me as true.

This led to me to the following thought experiment: what if the players in my virtual Stanley Cup Finals were real? And what if my team still lost to Detroit? If I could reverse the NHL’s verdict to award the Stanley Cup to Detroit rather than my Bruins, without changing the scores of any of the games or the fact that Detroit had technically earned it, would I?

This is actually an extremely complex thought experiment because there are many factors to consider that are not immediately obvious. I’ll summarize my thinking below:

  • If I reverse the decision, I win the Stanley Cup and feel good, but not as good as if I had earned it.
  • In addition, Detroit, the team that did earn it, would not be able to reap the rewards of their effort.
  • Through my own actions, I have given my fullest consent to a world (or social system) in which those who earn values may not get to keep those values.
  • Therefore, if I ever earn something myself it is unlikely that I will be able to reap the rewards of my success.

A mere desire for the unearned is contradictory to a desire to be able to keep that which you earn. It is not just an act of resistance against a free and just society, it is a rebellion against the Law of Causality itself. Since I do not desire an irrational world, I would therefore refuse to accept the Stanley Cup that I did not earn and congratulate the Detroit Red Wings on their hard-fought victory.

Those of you who are particularly astute may have already realized that this concept is applicable to any other situation where there is a “conflict of interest”, from job searches to love triangles.

There is a difference between someone who has lost and someone who is a loser. The purpose of this article was to further illuminate this distinction.

But it’s still going to take me a few days to get over this loss…

The Romantic Lifestyle: Becoming Your Own Magnum Opus

December 12, 2011

Devon Sampson Ayn Rand, Original Content, Philosophy , , , , , 1 Comment

She was looking up at the face of a man who knelt by her side, and she knew that in all the years behind her, this was what she would have given her life to see: a face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt. The shape his mouth was pride, and more: it was as if he took pride in being proud.

-Atlas Shrugged, page 531, Dagny Taggert’s first impression of John Galt

 

This weekend I finished The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand. In it, Rand argues that all art is “a selective recreation of reality according to one’s metaphysical value judgments.” This means that any work of art intrinsically says, “This is life as I see it”, either intentionally or unintentionally. If an artist defaults on this responsibility, his work will still represent a certain world-view, but it will be perverse, scattered, and portray some sort of malevolent universe.

Its viewers have to decide whether they agree or disagree with the work’s world-view, again, a process that cannot be avoided even by default.

The objective standard of value that art should be judged by, however, is not whether it is generally agreeable, but by how well it represents its particular metaphysical world-view. For example, even if you disagree with Shakespeare’s view that people have a predetermined fate and a tragic flaw that will lead them to that fate, it does not mean that Shakespeare is not still brilliant. You just won’t personally enjoy his work quite as much.

(A nice illustration of the opposite effect is my love of the HBO series Entourage; I get an infinite amount of enjoyment from that show because of its general themes of friendship and prosperity, despite the fact that it has little objective aesthetic value.)

Essentially, the standard of value for a work of art is not what it is, just that it is.

An easy false conclusion to come to from all of this is that art is a medium of teaching others about your views, but that is only a consequence of art, not the purpose. The purpose of aesthetics, according to Rand, is simply to show. She offers a brilliant analogy to explain:

The primary purpose of an airplane is not to teach man how to fly, but to give him the actual experience of flying. So is the primary purpose of an art work.

-The Romantic Manifesto, page 163 (emphasis added)

In the book Rand is referring to literature, paintings, sculptures, plays, and music. But this got me to think: could this apply to your physical appearance as well?

The answer: of course!

Just as a disheveled and feeble appearance with no thought put into it suggests a weak internal constitution of beliefs and values, a congruent, physically-fit appearance can serve as an aesthetic demonstration of the potential of human beings, what man could and ought to be like. This is romanticism, or, as Rand refers to her particular brand of it, romantic realism.

Crafting your appearance into an aesthetic experience is not the kind of endeavor that one can dabble in, however. Half-measures are pointless; mediocre-to-average is not something to aspire to. It requires a serious amount of sustained effort, but after reading The Romantic Manifesto it’s hard to deny how absolutely worthwhile it is.

Treating your physical appearance as a Romantic work of art is such a brilliant frame of mind to have in your daily life. It’s one of my best ideas in months, and that’s saying something because I am smart.

The Truth About Internal Validation

December 2, 2011

Devon Sampson Original Content, Philosophy, Social Dynamics , , , , 1 Comment

Validation in general is defined as anything that affirms the truth or validity of one’s ideas, principles, or actions.

The true meaning of internal validation is lost on many in today’s society. To explain such a concept it is important to first describe its opposite: external validation.

External validation is the approval of one’s ideas, principles, or actions – as delegated by other people. It is the fuel that drives most people today and it plays a significant role in all of our lives, to varying degrees. It is easy to orient your entire life around the chase for external validation, but it is an endless and unsatisfying path.

As The Law of E3 states: “Since there can be no bias in favor of or against any individual, the expected value of all external circumstances is exactly zero.” So although external validation can make one feel good in the short term, it cannot be the foundation of long term self-esteem.

On the other hand, the idea of internal validation can also be a slippery slope if not defined properly. Too often I encounter people that claim to be internally validated but are really just affirmation-repeating dreamers that cannot sustain confidence for very long in the real world.

The very act of stating something as an affirmation implies that one is not entirely confident about that statement. Unsubstantiated self-talk, no matter how positive, is an act of resistance against reality, which means it cannot be effective in the real world. Positive self-talk is a symptom of self-esteem, not the cause.

So then what is the cause? Well if the search for external validation necessitates recalibrating oneself in order to be agreeable to other people’s standards, then a man (or woman) acquires internal validation by affecting his external environment in a way that is agreeable to his own standards.

However, this process requires an explicit understanding of one’s standards. This takes time, as well as true introspection. Without this understanding, you’ll just be fumbling in the dark – and then even when you find what you want, you won’t be able to tell if it’s what you’ve been searching for.

Internal versus external validation is the difference between being an infallible skyscraper and being a rickety Jenga tower. All that it takes to be the former is personal clarity and congruent real-world action.

The Law of E3

December 1, 2011

Devon Sampson Original Content, Philosophy , , , , Leave a comment

For the past year and a half I was a semi-professional poker player. While this was not a remarkably productive period in my life, I did learn some valuable lessons about variance and expected value.

The tangible effect that these lessons have had on my life is that I was able to cultivate the ability to think long-term and not be at the effect of the external circumstances of the moment. When others have been panicked about some sudden, unexpected event, I have been able to stay focused and rational. It’s an invaluable skill, and it is without question one of the qualities that distinguishes successful people the rest.

What’s especially fascinating to me is that there’s many people in my life whom I admire that do not possess this skill at all. I was once asked by one of these people just exactly how I was able to stay so composed, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to articulate the concept as well as I would have liked at the time. Since then, I’ve given a lot of thought as to how I could best describe it.

This led to the creation of what I call The Law of the Equalization of External Events, or The Law of E3 for short. In my daily life it’s much more streamlined and internalized but now that I’m putting it out into the world I feel the need to explain it with as much precision as possible. Here it is:

“Since nature can have no bias in favor of or against any individual, the expected value of all external circumstances is precisely zero. Therefore, while many positive and negative events will happen to all living beings over any given short-term period of time, the overall account of fortune and misfortune will approach a neutral equilibrium as time progresses.”

I really dig it.