Read: Willpower - Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Information loaded introduction. The very first paragraph was very interesting, saying the two traits psychologists have found to strongly correlate with success are intelligence and willpower, but that while they haven’t been successful in finding any way to increase someone’s intelligence, willpower is trainable. 

It had a brief history of willpower from when it was at a peak during the victorian era to how it has been declining since WWII as the self help movement moved to a feel good approach focusing on the alleged benefits of self esteem and “empowerment.”

It was the famous Marshmallow Study that really discovered the important of self control. They found that the four year olds who resisted the urge to eat the marshmallow for the full 15 minutes scored 210 points higher on the SAT than those who caved within the first 30 seconds. They also had better grades, were more popular, earned higher salaries, were less overweight, and had fewer drug problems. This was really huge, as he said it was very rare for things measured in early childhood to predict anything adult statistically significantly. Self control is a better predictor of grades than IQ or SAT score, which makes sense to me, sense grades are more about being a hard worker and conscientious than being brilliant, but I would bet that IQ is a better predictor of SAT scores than self control.

People with self-control are rated higher by coworkers and subordinates, are more stable mentally with less behavioral/mental disorders, are less likely to be domestically violent, have fewer STDs, are less likely to be alcoholic, are more likely to own a home, are less likely to have children as a single parent, and are less likely to go to prison. Obviously these things are also correlated with intelligence and socioeconomic status and race, but their relationship to self-control remained statistically significant after taking those into account. I’d be curious what the relative strengths of the correlations are for IQ vs self control, but he didn’t say. 

There is now a mountain of evidence that people have a finite amount of willpower that depletes as it’s used and that all kinds of different tasks use the same stock of willpower.

The radish experiment showed that those who exerted willpower to resist the temptation to eat cookies had lower levels of perseverance working on puzzles than those who hadn’t previously used their willpower.

People also subconsciously will conserve willpower  When warned that their will be another round of (willpower depleting) exercises after this one, participants performed worse on the current one, saving willpower for later, and when surprised with an extra round they weren’t expecting, people performed terribly  

People with depleted willpower (fancy psychological term: ego depletion) have slower brains, specifically in the anterior cingulate cortex, which watches for mismatches between what you are doing and what you intend to do. 

Students have extreme ego depletion by the time final exams roll around. 

Ego depletion seems to be tied to glucose. Doing ego depleting tasks can significantly reduce your blood glucose levels, and studies have repeatedly found that giving someone a sugared lemonade restores their willpower after an ego depleting task, compared to giving them lemonade with an artificial sweetener, which didn’t help at all. Studies have also shown that diabetics and hypoglycemics have more outburst issues, again possibly tied to their blood glucose levels.

The craziness of women while PMSing may be tied to a scarcity of glucose, as their reproductive systems require more than normal, starving the rest of the body. This also explains the stereotypical crazing for chocolate. However, in the real world, it is better to eat something that will break down into glucose slowly over time than have a quick sugar hit, except maybe in the case of emergencies. 

There was one chapter on Decision Fatigue, the phenomena of us being less able to make decisions the more decisions we make. Interesting example of car companies that can increase the cost of car options bought with a new car by $1500 by having more expensive default options near the end of the choices after customers had already made many mentally taxing decisions. Another example of judges being less likely to parole prisoners who aren’t the first case of the day (or the first case after a meal/snack).

A study of korean employees showed that focusing on what you’ve already accomplished causes contentment and increases current satisfaction, but focusing on what you want to achieve in the future stokes motivation and ambition.

Now on to improving self-control. They did studies where students were tasked with working on 1 thing for two weeks (and logging how they did) such as standing up straight instead of slouching. When their willpower was tested after two weeks there was significant improvement. But interestingly, the improvement was not mostly in the absolute amount of willpower, that was about the same, but in its resistance to ego depletion, or stamina. Even just having students log what they eat for 2 weeks caused the same improvement. 

Basically, working on changing a habitual behavior will increase your willpower overall. This can be as simple as brushing your teeth with your left hand or cutting out phrases like “like” or “you know” from your vocabulary. Or it can be something ambitious like regularly exercising. 

One note, I don’t know if it’s necessary, but all the students mentioned also involved the subjects keeping a log or diary to monitor progress. This ties in with one of the findings he discussed that self-awareness (such as having a mirror present) will increase people’s self-control. 

There is a crossover with this willpower improvement into other areas of people’s lives. Studies have shown those following a fitness program will study more diligently, those following a study-discipline program exercised more often and cut excessive spending, etc. People successfully exercising self-control in one area have it improve in all areas of their life: They smoke fewer cigarettes, drink less alcohol, do laundry more often, don’t leave dishes in the sink, & eat less junk food.

It takes willpower to establish patterns of healthy behavior, but once the habits are established, life can proceed smoothly. 

Interesting section on the “hot-cold empathy gap,” our inability, during cool rational moments to appreciate how we’ll behave during the heat of passion or temptation. Brought up in the context of the fall into savagery of Englishmen doing their expedition through Africa. Study proof of concept: Men were asked to answer questions regarding what they would be willing to do sexually, once in a normal state, and once while aroused, and they rated all possibilities, including many “deviant” things, as much more likely when they aroused. 

Ultimately, to achieve lasting change, you have to get to the point where the thing you’ve changed no longer requires willpower to do; it has become a habit. Once your self-control has established a daily habit, you’ll produce more with less effort in the long run.

Establishing orderly habits can carry over, improving other aspects of your life. 

Alcohol reduces self-control. And it does this via 2 processes: lowering blood glucose and reducing self-awareness.

Peer pressure aka social support is extremely influential on our behavior, both for good and bad. Resolutions made in the presence of others are more likely to be followed, especially if the other person is their significant other. Women who regularly received feedback on how their saving compared to their peers saved significantly more money than those who did not. 

Religious people have higher levels of self-control because of all the ways religiosity requires it. Social pressure, the belief that God is watching, etc. The social pressure caused changes that make people more outwardly moral are the people with an appearance of godliness but denying its power. However, interestingly, researchers found that those who attend church for extrinsic reasons, like wanting to impress others or make connections, don’t have the same high levels of self-control as believers. 

Interesting concept of the “Bright Line” as a necessary rule when significant levels of self-control are going to be required. Saying you’ll drink “moderately” is not a bright line, it’s fuzzy and there’s no obvious point where you go beyond it. Zero tolerance however is a bright line. When you commit to following a bright line rule, it will actually help your self-control by increases your belief that you’ll follow it, since you know exactly what it is. This concept has obvious applications to Christian dating, where many have no clear idea what is acceptable, outside of the obvious “no sex.” But regarding kissing vs kissing vigorously vs whatever else, people don’t have clear cut offs so often are pulled along farther than they would have wanted in hindsight.

It’s chapter on parenting was really good. Up to this point I had been noticing that this book, while including some research, relied much more on individual stories than hard data, compared to the Against Empathy or Lifecycle Investing, the last 2 books I’d read, but this chapter was chock full of useful information.

The huge emphasis put on self-esteem started based on research that showed low self-esteem was associated with bad grades, unwed pregnancies, drug addiction, and criminality. This kickstarted the push to improve people by making them think they were better. The participation trophy, emphasis on “being unique.” Unfortunately, it turned out that high performance predicted later high self-esteem, but not vice versa. So what ended up happening was students across the whole country had their self-esteem go up as their performance went down. While the correlation between low self-esteem and bad behavior does exist, the causality goes one way. His quote, “Being a sixteen-year-old pregnant heroine addict can make you feel less than wonderful about yourself.” The only real benefit of high self-esteem is that it prevents depression.

One interesting study, narcissists were initially rated as people’s favorite person in weekly meeting groups, but after a few months they dropped to the bottom. They wear on you. Narcissism has increased over the past few decades in America. 

He argued Asians turn out great because of their exceptional parenting. They couldn’t care less about “self-esteem,” rather they heavily promote self-control and discipline. Asians overperform professionally relative to their IQ because of their discipline. They give things to their children, but as rewards for accomplishing things. In studies on mother’s attitudes on how to contribute to their children’s academic success, immigrants from China mentioned setting high goals and enforcing tough standards. American white women mentioned not overemphasizing academic success, stressing social development, and pushing the idea that “learning is fun,” as well as promoting their child’s self-esteem.

For children, the speed of the punishment is important, delayed punishment doesn’t have the same effect, but the punishment doesn’t have to be draconian. But the single most important thing is consistency, rules and punishment must be consistent. You cannot punish based on your mood and whether you want to deal with the hassle right now. Parents must exercise self-control to consistently discipline for bad behavior. This will make their lives much easier in the long run. 

Children from single parents perform terribly. Some may be genetic, their parents often don’t have much self-control, as witnessed by their behavior. But children with fathers stationed overseas still underperform, though to a lesser extent, suggesting that with this, as with pretty much everything. Genetic and environmental causes both play a role, building upon each other. 

Dieting is a double whammy, because avoiding unhealthy foods for dieters requires willpower, which exhausts blood glucose, causing cravings for unhealthy foods. Keeping unhealthy foods out of sight is big, as the closer the food is, the faster your willpower is exhausted resisting it. Another good technique is “implementation intention” where you predetermine responses in certain situations. “If x then y.” “If I have a strong craving for x I will immediately go and eat y” is a good way to avoid the unhealthy food and minimize the depletion of willpower. 

One topic he’s mentioned throughout the book that I haven’t written about yet is “precommitment.” Precommitment can be pretty effective. An example of precommitment related to food would be to not go to a get together where there will be unhealthy food. You are precommitting to not eat the food, and thus conversing willpower. 

The common notion that you shouldn’t weigh yourself everyday is actually wrong because of the larger principle the book discussed about self-monitoring/self-awareness leading to more self-control. Those who weigh daily actually are more successful. 

Perhaps the biggest overarching point is that those with more willpower are not more successful because they use that willpower to better resist huge temptations all the time, but because they use that willpower to structure their life in an ordered way where they aren’t being bombarded with temptation.

Read: Lifecycle Investing

This one was really interesting. I didn’t take any of these notes while I was reading it because I just tore through it and was done in a day. So unfortunately my notes my not be the most detailed. 

The basic idea of this book is that people should be diversifying across time in the same we diversify across asset classes. Diversification has been shown to be beneficial in that it reduces the unit risk (volatility) for a given expect return. 

People are significantly overexposed to stocks in their last few years of working, and significantly underexposed at the beginning of their working life  This is true even if they have an “aggressive” 100% stock portfolio when young and a more conservative 50-50 portfolio as they approach retirement. The reason for this is that they have so few absolute dollars to put in the stock market at the start  100% of $10,000 is $10,000, but 50% of $1,000,000 is $500,000, 50 times as much, a significant stock market hit near the end of their working life will have a much more significant impact on the value of their portfolio at retirement compared to one at year 2, even though they are proportionally less exposed to equities  They quantify this by the idea that your future income is very much like a bond, and its value should be taken into account when allocating investments. If someone has $50,000 that is 100% stocks, but 30 years of working left where the present value of their future savings is $450,000, they’re really only 10% invested in stocks. 

Their proposal for ideal time diversification would be to have the same percent of your total assets, including the value of future savings, invested in stocks every year  This is the concept of the Samuelson Share, it is the percent of your lifetime portfolio you want in stocks.  So if you are a conservative 50% Samuelson share and have $500,000 in current investments and $500,000 in present value of future savings, you should actually be 100% invested in stocks that year  

Now where their proposal gets the most controversial is they actually advocating taking on leverage in an attempt to get closer to your Samuelson Share during the early years of your working life, up to a maximum 100% leverage, which they cap to avoid margin calls. This sounds crazy, but they analyzed historical market performance and showed that, even taking into account interest expense on margin, the Lifecycle investing strategy they propose outperforms traditional investing strategies, with the outperformance growing stronger the larger the number of working years it is applied.

I took their data and have been analyzing it myself, adding the ability to easily change the number of working years and also checking with increased margin interest rates to see how durable this strategy is. My early results have been pretty favorable, as with timelines of a decade or more it comes out ahead in almost every way even with slightly increased margin rates from their calculated ones.

For achieving market leverage they discuss either using margin or buying deep in the money LEAP options expiring 1-2 years in the future. They would like to see funds set up to do all this for people, but it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen anytime soon.

Unfortunately, achieving this leverage is harder to achieve then it sounds for the average smart saver. You can’t leverage investments or buy options in a 401k and margin is also prohibited in IRAs, though they do allow option purchasing. Unfortunately, from my analysis, right now at least the option method is significantly less attractive as margin is easily available at about 2.5% interest but the implied interest of a 50% in the money S&P 500 LEAP option is closer to 4%, high enough that the strategy likely would loose most of its benefits, especially once you take into account the difficulty of rebalancing with options, as their unit sizes are huge. Regular rebalancing is quite important for this strategy, particularly to avoid getting wiped out during downturns. 

Read: Against Empathy

It argues that empathy is a poor motivator for moral decision making, and that rational judgment should be used instead.

One important note to make is he makes a distinction between “cognitive empathy,” or what I might call sympathy, or intellectual understanding of what someone is feeling, and empathy proper, which is actually feeling what they are feeling. He sees value in the first, and empathy below always refers to the second.

Empathy can hijack your decision making. Example of the study of people told the story of a girl waiting in line for a medical procedure involving a transplant, and when people were told her story and made to empathize with her, they would say to move her up in line for the procedure, even when told that the people in front of her were more in need of the life saving procedure. Empathy didn’t pursue justice, but rather it increased special concern for the target of the empathy despite the cost to others. Those told not to view the story empathetically but to remain objective did not say to move her up. Empathy is a spotlight, illuminating one thing but obscuring all else.

Example of cop who shoots a black man, and liberals want you to empathize with the trials the black guy faced and conservatives argue we need to empathize with the difficulty of being a police officer and being put into life or death situations, but neither is a good way to analyze the situation. 

We experience empathy to different amounts for different people. People we identify with or feel sorry for we will have more empathy for. Studies have shown people have more empathy for fans of the same sports team, and for those suffering from an illness if the illness was not a result of their actions.

To be fair and impartial we have to escape empathy and instead apply rules and principles and the calculation of costs and benefits.

Empathy is different and distinct from caring about people. One response to empathy is trying to alleviate a suffering. But another, just as common response is to try to remove the suffering from your vision so you “don’t have to think about it.” Example of the woman in Nazi Germany writing a letter asking the concentration camps to either stop committing in humane acts, or else do them where they aren’t seen from over the wall.

The conclusion of many studies on empathy and good behavior is that high levels of empathy have either no or just a very weak correlation to being a good person. And even more surprisingly, very low levels of empathy don’t predict aggression or bad behavior. 

Chapter 3 has a lot of interesting points on how empathy causes useless/harmful charity. Examples of adopting 3rd world children & actually increasing the demand for such children that orphanages start intimidating single parents to give their kids up, donating food to 3rd world countries and putting their local farmers out of business or enable wars or child slavery to continue, and many more. I am becoming fairly convinced that the real best way to help a 3rd world nation financial is to start/support businesses there, in a capitalist way.

On politics, he wants to present being against empathy as something nonpartisan, that everyone can get behind. And he talks about conservatives who were empathetic like Reagan and liberals who present themselves as problem solvers like Al Gore. And liberals care more about climate control, which isn’t an empathetic argument. Both parties often couch their arguments in empathetic ways. Often the debate is over who to really empathize with, Ex: gun control, immigration. But he does concede that their are on the average empathetic differences between liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to be more empathetic. They care about the moral values of “fairness” and “reducing harm” above things like purity, loyalty, and authority, while conservatives care about all of them more equally. Most interestingly, he mentioned research that concluded that if men were as empathetic as women their would be no gender gap in party affiliation (as women are more empathetic than men). I definitely will remember that point when discussing women’s suffrage and the decline of society.

Shockingly to me, he argues empathy is bad even when applied to intimate relationships. He makes a distinction between empathy and compassion. “In contrast to empathy, compassion does not mean sharing the suffering of the other; rather, it is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other’s well-being. Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with the other.” Uncontrolled empathy makes you suffer when faced with those who are suffering, which can make you less effective at helping. Compassion and empathy show up very differently in brain scans; they are distinct. We can care for people without feeling what they are feeling. Good example of a therapist who would be useless to her clients if she felt hopelessly depressed with every client who suffered from depression. Rather she should have a concern and care for her clients. A similar example is available with doctors. This unempathetic compassion is not coldness or heartlessness.

He argues empathy can be a negative for parenting, as feeling your children’s feelings makes it hard to cause them to suffer now for their long term good. He also says that empathy could be “evolved” primarily for mothers and their children. He didn’t spend enough time on the topic to flesh it out.

He discusses the issue of giving preference to your friends and family over strangers, and whether that is wrong. If one impartially weighed every life as equal, we wouldn’t spend such an inordinate amount of our time and money on ourselves and even our families. He (and I) doesn’t that caring more about your family is wrong. It is reasonable to be willing to do more for your child than a stranger. Blood is thicker than water. (This is the principle that is applied for Nationalism by the way.) But even conceding that, he doesn’t think that validates empathy. Their can be a rational compassion that prioritizes family over strangers, while still caring about strangers. 

Empathy causes violence. Some politicians today say the solution to wars and violence is putting ourselves in the other side’s shoes. More empathy. But ironically, wars are often if not always motivated by empathy itself. When we bomb Syria, we hear tales about the atrocities of Assad, When Israel attacked palestinians, it was in response to the murder of Israeli teens, Nazi hatred of jews started from stories of jewish pedophiles molesting german girls. Empathy is a spotlight, and it is wired to shine on those closest to you. On top of that studies have found that people with higher levels of empathy will actually select harsher punishments for criminals. An interesting tie in to empathy being designed for mothers and their children, a huge effect of empathy is the desire to protect, violently if necessary, those one feels empathy for. 

Good quote on IQ: “Scores are correlated with all sorts of good things, such as steady job performance, staying out of prison, good mental health, being in stable and fulfilling relationships, and even living longer. A long time ago people said things like ‘IQ tests just measure how good you are at doing IQ tests,’ but nobody takes this seriously anymore.”

Read: Cuckservative - How Conservatives Betrayed America

 Interesting book. Written with a general audience in mind. I think it would probably be fairly convincing to the average person on the issue of immigration.

It talks about magic dirt and the melting pot and how people don’t just change their culture and values when they move to a new place. It talks about how migration is really just warfare by other means as it results in a foreign people taking control of a nation and its resources. It has some interesting history talking about migration preceding the fall of Rome and the expansion of Islam through migration and war. It has an interesting, if short and simple, chapter arguing against free trade on nationalist grounds. I have a friend of mine I’d like to read that chapter just to see what he thinks of it. I’ve been growing more skeptical of completely free trade over the last year or so, but it’s an uneducated skepticism that hasn’t really read enough on the subject to defend itself.