Escaping Mediocrity Alex Buxeda

Today, I had a conversation with Fengzheng Gao. Fengzheng is a researcher specializing in Microalgal Biotechnology, and he holds two doctorates, one in Bioprocess Engineering and another one in Aquatic Product Processing and Storage Engineering. He has contributed to over 20 scientific publications.



We talked about the potential of microalgae in optimizing the food chain in order to provide abundant food to the poorest at an accessible cost, how microalgae can supplement the iron intake of the people suffering from iron deficiencies better than conventional iron supplements, the vastly promising future of algae strains in solving any nutritional problem we might face, bioengineering as a solution to climate change and much more.



Check Gao's

Linkdn

Google Scholar Profile⁠

Abel Abelson, a neurodivergent writer and YouTuber, has navigated the unique challenges of being distinct from the majority, on which our conversation focuses mainly. He was recognized by Mensa with an IQ of 133, which places him in the 98th percentile in terms of cognitive ability.



Today we talked about whether every problem can be solved through further understanding, how one can be content with the fact that one will be discontent, the apparent incompatibility of acceptance and performance, how to define happiness, the need for enough similarities between two people to have a successful relationship, the pursuit of transcendent threads of logic, how the reason you like football has nothing to do with football and all to do with the fact that you are an ape, the huge variance among people in curiosity and intelligence and the best way to approach it, disgustingness of the anti-egalitarian nature of the massive differences in intelligence across the population, the leverage of your actions as a measure of your intelligence, the nature of trauma, the power of mindfulness, the self-fulfilling effect of believing that you have a problem, progressive voluntary exposure as a solution to fear and trauma, the incoherence of free will as uncaused behavior, the need for immediate regulation of our emotions after a dramatically negative event to avoid trauma, the need to update our knowledge faster than every 1000 years, the perpetual ability to establish dialogue if you criticize the antibodies of the incendiary ideas, and the incoherence of the Naturalistic fallacy.



You can find Abel on YouTube

Buy Abel’s books on Amazon

Today I am joined by my friend Abdi.

In this conversation we talked about: that what causes suffering is the interpretation of the facts, not the facts themselves, framing free will as the ability to ditch a vice, how we don't choose to choose-proving the inexistence of free will as unconstrained decisions, how uncaused behavior is an incoherent concept as a round square, how 99% of the cost of vice is in the creation of future vice, the end of history illusion, how the misalignment between feedback and reality is THE civilizational problem, how we are drowning in information-related to the paradox of choice that emerges from more abundance than one can handle, the explore-exploit tradeoff, how we should be open to being surprised, how as Aristotle said the sweet spot is in the mean between the extremes, how morality is a navigation problem, how trying to falsify stereotypes can be extremely valuable, how we should treat others as if we could learn something from them, the need for both conservatism and progressivism, how blaming is mostly useless, how virtue is always in our hands.

Today I had a conversation with Lukas S, he is a personal coach that focuses on human performance and mindset training. Check him out on Instagram at ⁠⁠otokstrength⁠⁠ or online at ⁠⁠otokstrength.com⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠theprotocol.life⁠⁠


We talked about how complaining is useless but it feels good to us, how finding common ground with people who believe opposite ideas is what allows your or others' minds to be changed, the importance of self-awareness to not be fooled into the fake things that the status quo advocates for, distinguishing what furthers our long-term objectives and what does not, how getting rid of what does not contribute to the long-term objectives maximizes our potential, how we have agency but admitting so requires taking responsibility over our mediocre lives, how doing less is the key to perform more (via negativa), how enduring through long periods of time without positive feedback is what suck feels like and it is the thing that differentiates success from mediocrity, the importance of keeping promises to ourselves, and how all levels of well-being (like relationships, finance, and health) should be taken care of in order to have a good life and how it is hard to dismiss one without doing so with the others.

Today I had the pleasure to have a conversation with Harvey Silverglate, he is an American attorney, author, and civil liberties advocate. He is best known for his work in defending individual rights and freedom of speech. Silverglate has been involved in numerous high-profile cases and has written extensively on issues related to civil liberties and the criminal justice system.

He co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in 1999, an organization dedicated to protecting free speech and due process rights.

He has also written several books, including Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent⁠, ⁠Conviction Machine: Standing Up to Federal Prosecutorial Abuse⁠ and ⁠The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America's Campuses⁠.



We talked about The similarities between free speech, the scientific method and traditional liberal values, How the decentralized marketplace of ideas is better at finding truth than centralized power, How interests are aligned in the long term, How intolerance to opposing ideas fuels censorship, The impossibility of China overcoming the US as the world's superpower due to the internal corruptness of its system, The primacy of freedom over material abundance even if they are complementary, The need for the smallest units to be subjected to a process of natural selection so that bigger ones can prevail as in ‘‘The purpose of dialogue is to let ideas die instead of us’’, How dogmatism forced Larry Summers to resign his position as president from harvard, Harvey’s marriage advice, That a Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his actions, How administrators drain colleagues' resources, The counter productive and racist nature of affirmative action, The role of freedom of speech in allowing non-mainstream opinions to be voiced, Meritocracy, And how we have nothing apart from dialogue as an alternative to violence.

Victor Dover is an innovator in city planning, neighborhood design and street design, he serves as president of the Parks Foundation of Miami-Dade and as a board member of the National Recreation & Parks Association.


We talk about how the cost of car dependency is hidden from the individual by governmental subsidies, how the promised ‘’car freedom’’ in the 50s became car dependence which newer generations are rejecting, how maximum flow of cars occurs at medium speeds, the evil of minimum parking lots because it causes car dependence, that 0 is an absurd price for parking, that people will use the infrastructure that is built, the bankrupting nature of highways and the huge contrast of the big return on investment of bike lanes(both in financial and healthcare terms), how unbundling the price of apartments from that of parking spaces would make people realize how expensive cars are, the overprescription of both parking and opioids in the US, how reducing population density increases traffic due to increased kilometers driven, how new businesses like Uber and Cabify are diminishing the amount of parking demanded & how dynamic parking pricing according to demand is optimal.



Buy his book Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns

Check his web page at doverkohl.com

Check his YouTube channel at @DoverKohl