The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
navalmanack.com
navalmanack.com
By way of comparison, one of his idols, Nassim Taleb, enthusiastically credits the sources of any thought or idea that is not his own, but which has informed and enriched his own original ideas. He makes that distinction clear in his tweets, papers, and books, the latter two extensively throughout the text, footnotes, and appendices.
It would be cool and admirable if Naval were using his platform to similarly boost his sources by crediting them more, and showing how their ideas have informed his own. Rather than commingling their and his ideas and implicitly taking credit for all of it.
That his ‘cult’ or followers don’t seem to see this suggests they either haven’t read extensively enough to recognize the sources, or they have and simply gravitate to someone like Naval confirming things they already believe.
I've always been interested not just in the ideas per se (which are often useful, no doubt) but also how they came to be, and I've had more than one instance where I wanted to trace back where they adapted the idea and I can't find it that easily.
That said, it may be the medium's fault, as the inherent character limit only allows for so much information that references and relevant information are considered way lesser in terms of priority... which in turn I think says something about the nature of ideas themselves.
Naval is an exceptionally wise person and speaks with amazing clarity. I think people would enjoy him if they took some time to listen to him talk.
Podcasts are of course unpaid and solely made to promote the speakers.
Mike Tyson or Bernie Sanders or any other guest on Joe Rogan's podcast doesn't need further promotion.
If you're a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast you already are a celebrity.
To state the obvious: people listen to Joe Rogan podcast because they are interested in what the guests have to say about things they are experts in and Joe Rogan is a good interviewer who asks good questions and lets the quests talk.
Not to mention that interviews with people are just a subset of podcasts.
A podcast isn't solely self-promotion, that's like a TV show only with ads. Of course they give you "content" as well. But the purpose, from the perspective of the participants, is to grow your audience. Ie. increase your celebrity. Which is why I thought his advice to avoid celebrity while at the same time actively trying to obtain a greater level of it was p funny.
> Mike Tyson or Bernie Sanders or any other guest on Joe Rogan's podcast doesn't need further promotion.
Yet they go on for specific promotional purposes. Mike was returning to fighting, Bernie was in the middle of his campaign for President.
> If you're a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast you already are a celebrity.
Again, this has nothing to do with seeking further recognition / celebrity.
> To state the obvious: people listen to Joe Rogan podcast because they are interested in what the guests have to say
Ok you're just repeating the same thing over and over.
I think people with advice tend to really emphasize one and demphasize or even demean the other. Like if I hear someone advocating for meditation it seems to frequently come along with some kind of money is evil message (certainly not always)
Naval speaks about money sometimes and he tends to speak about it as a neutral tool. He also speaks about a wide range of other things and doesnt seem to need to wrap every other point into something financial.
This is something I do t feel like I hear a lot of and he again just seems to have exceptional clarity on these types of issues.
This is really true. During covid, I think a lot of us parents are learning that with our children. The subjects we know really well we can explain to them in easy to understand language, even advanced topics like programming and math.
- Rational
- Buddhism
- Rational Buddhism
- Meditation
- Habits
- Accountability
- Happiness is a choice
- Prioritize
- Sapiens as a top 'recommended book'
- And, to top it all off: Foreword by Tim Ferriss.
Yep, I think we've covered them all.
> Paul Graham, News.YC’s moderator emeritus, says that “The defining quality of the middlebrow dismissal is that it’s a cache dump of the writer’s prejudices…” This probably explains why they’re so common. It’s natural to see any news story as confirmation of your existing prejudices—but it’s easy to read confirmation where it’s not there.
http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
If Silicon Valley (the satirical TV show) had a book version, it would look something like this.
This can't be farther than the truth. I advise you at least try to peruse it a bit before resorting to such commentary. The point isn't to make money at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-TZqOsVCNM
Right off the bat, he makes some pretty silly arguments, such as: people/journalists only criticize the rich because they're playing a status game and want to be rich too. That's it. It really is that simple according to Naval.
His entire oeuvre has the same level of intellectual calibre.
why just the lifeless artifacts for the disk or the dead-tree?
why can't we read the almanack on the web like a clean blogpost or a series of short chapters?
edit: we can. it was down low on the scroll on my mobile. tx!
“Productize” and “yourself.” “Yourself ” has uniqueness. “Productize” has leverage. “Yourself” has accountability. “Productize” has specific knowledge. “Yourself ” also has specific knowledge in there. So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words.”
It’s telling that this is what passes for wisdom in Silicon Valley. You’d be better off reading some Aristotle.