It seems like we are learning something new in this area almost every day. For example, yesterday’s New York Times recently carried an article on how scarcity of dollars (poverty) and scarcity of time (the average overworked person in the US) can negatively impact thinking, and even IQ. As if the poor weren’t stricken enough, they get a double-whammy:

A quick question: What is the starting taxi fare in your city? If you are like most upper-middle-class people, you don’t know. If you are like many struggling people, you do know. Poorer people have to think hard about a million things that affluent people don’t. They have to make complicated trade-offs when buying a carton of milk: If I buy milk, I can’t afford orange juice. They have to decide which utility not to pay.

These questions impose enormous cognitive demands. The brain has limited capacities. If you increase demands on one sort of question, it performs less well on other sorts of questions.

Shafir and Mullainathan gave batteries of tests to Indian sugar farmers. After they sell their harvest, they live in relative prosperity. During this season, the farmers do well on the I.Q. and other tests. But before the harvest, they live amid scarcity and have to think hard about a thousand daily decisions. During these seasons, these same farmers do much worse on the tests. They appear to have lower I.Q.’s. They have more trouble controlling their attention. They are more shortsighted. Scarcity creates its own psychology.

And, regarding scarcity of time:

Princeton students don’t usually face extreme financial scarcity, but they do face time scarcity. In one game, they had to answer questions in a series of timed rounds, but they could borrow time from future rounds. When they were scrambling amid time scarcity, they were quick to borrow time, and they were nearly oblivious to the usurious interest rates the game organizers were charging. These brilliant Princeton kids were rushing to the equivalent of payday lenders, to their own long-term detriment.

The world-wide impact of these findings is staggering, given that almost half the people on this planet live on less than $2 each/day, and given that scarcity of time impacts almost everyone in the Western world. While I don’t know that any of us, individually, can do much to help those who have the problem of scarcity of time, most of us can do more to help those who are poor. One way to do this is through donations to organizations in your area that help the poor. Another is to use a trusted international organization, such as World Vision.

As to the broad topic of behavioral economics, Edge.org has a master class on the topic. I have yet to go through all of the items (it is extensive), but have been fascinated by what I’ve learned from it so far. Of course, the books referenced above are also excellent resources.

The first birthday that really made me focus on my age was my 30th. I had always thought I would be a millionaire by my 30th birthday, and when that did not happen, it really impacted me. Realizing that I had not achieved that dream was a real letdown to me. I realized that it was not too late to become a millionaire, but I also realized I would never turn 30 again. Hence my dream could never come true.

• Insight: Thinking is not doing. Dreams and aspirations never come to life unless they are turned into goals with action plans and corresponding actions.

That is not to say that I did too much thinking and not enough doing. Rather, it is to say that I just did not do enough doing.

In fact, many of the top-selling books today emphasize that we do not do enough thinking. David Allen certain makes a point of that in his newest book, Making It All Work. He notes within it that GTD is about mind management, not time management. The book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness also notes that so much of our actions are just us “operating in the automatic mode,” without really doing any quality thinking.

Anyway, I guess as a consequence of my being so bummed out at turning 30 without becoming a millionaire, I entered a long period in my life in which I did not think about my age. It got to the point that, when people asked my age, I would actually have to figure it out. My view was “I cannot change my age, so why think about it?”

• Insight: Although being obsessed with your age is probably unhealthy, mentally, I’d say being as flippant about it as I was can be unhealthy, too.

I don’t remember my 40th birthday being a very big deal to me. I did not have an overwhelming desire to enter my second childhood, as so many do who turn 40. I’d say my general disposition was that I was pretty content.

My 50th birtday had a bit of an impact. It did not depress me, but it did cause me to realize, solemnly, that I had lived for a half-century. Moreover, it caused me to realize that more than half of my life was gone.

Then, a couple of years after Vickie died (my wife), I decided that I wanted to retire at 57. So, age finally became important to me again. It became a part of my plans and my tracking spreadsheets.

• Insights: Vickie’s death drove home to me, in a very hard way, the fact that life is short, and we never know when it might end for us. Realizing this caused me to get my estate in order, to have my will prepared, to literally plan my own funeral, to sign my DNR and other directives, and so on. If you have not done these things, you should not put them off.

So, what about my 60th birthday?

I was very saddened by the passing of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. My insights from thinking about the deaths of these national treasures are as follows:

• So many people die with so much talent and potential still inside of them. I realized from this that I am wasting a good of my own talents, and that I need to get back to using them more. This is something you should reflect on, too. I suspect that many of you have talents you are not even aware of. Perhaps that is true for most of us. But, I do know for sure that a lot of talent is never fully used.

Also:

• I was saddened by how I had labeled Michael Jackson as a weirdo and possible child molester. He did have some strange ways, of course, but who in his shoes would not have had some eccentricities, being in the spotlight continuously since he was 4 years old? In thinking back on the news stories of him, none of them had any real evidence that he molested children. Yet, I labeled him as such, and many of you probably did so, too. One thing I now know is that I want to stop being so judgmental about people, and I want to stop allowing the media have such an influence on my thinking.

I hope there are some insights in here that you can and will use. And, I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.

• Almost 3,500,000,000 years have passed between the first known (microbial) life and our present-day form.
• The transitional form from the lemur line to the primate line, the missing link, occurred about 47,000,000 years ago. The History Channel on TV has an interesting documentary on this, as it interviews the scientists who examined the fully-preserved skeleton of “missing link” Ida, a fossil of a ~6 year-old transitional life form. Ida’s species appears to have been the one which introduced some of the skeletal structure needed for upright walking.
• What we call “human” apparently did not fully evolve until a few hundred thousand years ago.

But, according to the theory of the technological singularity, the rate at which humans evolve is about to become very rapid. With exponential growth rates in our development of nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, bioengineering, and the mapping and understanding of the brain, it is going to be possible, in the near future, for us to develop superintelligence. Ray Kurzwell and other futurists are predicting that this can occur in as little as 25 years. I’ve also seen estimates of 40 years … either way, it is the near future.

In fact, there is now a Singularity University, supported by NASA and Google (and others), with Kurzwell being one of the principle founders. He introduces this university in this TED video (about 8:40 minutes long), and discusses several of the trends that support the conclusion of the nearness of the technological singularity.

In case you are thinking so what?, let me just inject that this is not guaranteed to work out well (depending on your point of view). For example, let’s go back to the story of Ida, a ~6 year-old creature that died prematurely, possibly from falling into the lake in which she was found. Now I can’t say that Ida’s mother missed her, or even that Ida’s mother was still alive, but I speculate that Ida may have been missed. Perhaps you have seen a pet mourn the loss of another one.

I cannot go back in time and prove that love existed within the minds of our ancestors of 47,000,000 years ago, but love didn’t just pop into existence a few thousand years ago. It has been a part of “our” nature for a very long time. Yet, it seems to me that it is very possible that love, compassion, generosity, and other traits we admire, could well fall by the wayside as we start “redesigning ourselves.”

Of course, good things would likely occur, too. Maybe we could eliminate all of our cognitive biases (such as the confirmation bias). And, personally, I would like to see this result in the elimination of the need for religion. (I recognize that many of you take an opposite view on that, but I invite you to take the time to read God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.)

So, what do we do? Well, even if we fear some of the outcomes, we should not seek to put a stop to our advancement. There is too much good that can come of it.

However, we can stay informed, and we can get our children and grandchildren to take an interest along with us. By staying informed, perhaps we can ensure our government does not allow monopolies to become dictatorships in this process. And, perhaps we can do this without letting government have too great of an influence, because our government has shown itself to be fully capable of screwing up a bowling ball.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this important subject.

On reflection, I realized that exactly such a statement had already been penned, centuries ago, and that its wording transcends religious boundaries. People of any faith can say these words.

So, without further delay, I present to you the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, a prayer I recommend we all pray:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

(Note: I am grateful to Anne Rice for including this prayer in her lovely book, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, which served not only to remind me of the prayer but was also an excellent read.)

For me, it is humility. And, by that, I mean true humility, such that people retain it even when they become very successful. I’ve seen people who I thought were fairly humble, until they reached a certain threshold of success. Then, it was like they changed overnight. I suspect that, in reality, only then was I seeing the true person … they wore a disguise until they became successful.

Fortunately, I have also seen people become very successful and still retain their humility. That’s when you know it is genuine.

People who have humility always seem to have other good traits, such as honesty and integrity. But, I have seen people who I believe have integrity without humility. Interesting how that works.

Your thoughts?

I suppose it’s better than being in a position where you cannot do anything you want. But, it sure has its downsides, too.

This testimonial from Christopher Parkening really hit home with me. Parkening, arguably the best classical guitarist on the planet, accomplished what he always wanted to do: he retired at 30, got a ranch, and spent his time trout fishing. But, after four years of that, he felt empty and purposeless (my paraphrasing). He ultimately dedicated his life to Christ and went back to playing guitar, but this time to honor God.

After being retired for a little over two years, I can certainly identify with Parkening. It’s great for a while to do only what you want to do. But, after a while, a sort of emptiness sets in. You begin to wonder “is this all there is” and to wonder how you can feel some sense of purpose again.

So, this is the situation I must deal with, and I will deal with it. I mainly wanted to let you know that your day-to-day challenges may be something to be thankful for, as well as to grumble about.

I didn’t watch all of the video, because most of the points being made were ones I had heard many, many times. However, Professor Dawkins did make an observation that grabbed my attention: he noted that he could have been born into different circumstances, including being born into a Buddhist or Muslim family instead of one with an Anglican heritage.

Of course I had also thought of this sort of thing before. I think we all have. Perhaps you think of it fairly often, and doing so helps you to be grateful for your circumstances. Or, perhaps, like me, it doesn’t cross your mind often enough, so that we maybe take our circumstances a little too much for granted, and maybe even think of our blessings as all being deserved.

Although these are difficult times, Dawkins reminded me that we have much to be thankful for (although that was not his intention). Any of us could have been born into extreme poverty, or deformed, or with cancer, or with an addiction to the drugs our mother took, or …

Just sharing this with you in case you need the reminder like I did.

We are witnessing a self-fulfilling prophecy come true. All the talk of gloom and doom has worsened a bad situation and is continuing to do so.

I have lived long enough and known enough people to have seen self-fulfilling prophecies fulfilled many times, and to know that our thoughts and attitudes do impact what we have and don’t have.

There are people I love who have virtually nothing because their attitude is that “something will always go wrong,” and, for them, it does. I can do very little to help them (and I have tried), because their attitudes have such a great impact on their lives.

And, of course, I know and love people who have an opposite situation, in part because of their attitudes that things will always work out.

Zig Zigler used to say “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” I love that saying because it sums up such a powerful truth in such a succinct way.

Something to think about as you go about your business.

• Jill Tarter shares her TED Prize wish. Dr. Tarter is director of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life (SETI) Institute.
• Rick Warren discusses a life of purpose. Dr. Warren is a pastor and NYT best-selling author of The Purpose-Driven Life. Thanks go to Ruud Hein for the link to Dr. Warren’s TED video.

Each video runs about 20 minutes, so you may want to bookmark this page for when you have the time available for viewing.

The talks are as different as night and day. Dr. Tarter notes that “hydrogen and helium evolved for such a long time that it began to ask where it came from” (my paraphrasing) and shows some graphics that emphasize what a small portion of the universe we occupy. Dr. Warren, on the other hand, talks about life having purpose and meaning, stating that life is not an accident.

You may ask “since Dr. Tarter’s view sounds negative, why bother telling us about it?”

Simple: it has a lot of truth in it … we do live in a universe that is so vast that it stretches our imagination to its limits. And, intelligent life has only existed on our planet for a very short amount of time on the cosmic scale.

I don’t think of this as negative. In fact, it humbles me when I think of the magnificence of our universe, and I appreciate life more when I realize how short my lifespan is on the cosmic scale of billions of years.

Of course, I cannot say for sure that you will enjoy either video. But, I think there’s a good chance you’ll like both.

My, my, how things change! Wouldn’t it be nice to be back at the market levels I was complaining about in 2007?