Part of the challenge of living is having the vision to see through things that are taken for granted but give you a false sense of reality. Below are some selections from Morgan Housel’s list of 100 Little Ideas on how to understand the world, and how I see them playing out in various ways.

Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.” The obvious inverse of the Pareto Principle, but hard to accept in practice.

When people tell me that contemporary music isn’t very good compared to music of the past, I give them the example of the Classical period: if this was such a high point of musical composition, why is it that the only music that we currently play from the years 1760 to 1820 is from essentially three composers: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven? Music from that period must have been dreadful if that is the case.

Ludic Fallacy: Falsely associated simulations with real life. Nassim Taleb: “Organized competitive fighting trains the athlete to focus on the game and, in order not to dissipate his concentration, to ignore the possibility of what is not specifically allowed by the rules, such as kicks to the groin, a surprise knife, et cetera. So those who win the gold medal might be precisely those who will be most vulnerable in real life.”

In music schools, those who are the most lauded and win the big competitions often don’t have viable careers. The ones who do are frequently the overlooked students who work harder than everyone else and have the street-sense to succeed in the field, often in unexpected ways.

Pollyanna Principle: It’s easier to remember happy memories than bad ones.

Hence the belief held by many that the classical music scene of yesteryear was better than that of the present. I’ve often written about how great it was to freelance in Vancouver in the 90s with the abundance of new music and radio engagements. However, the truth is that it was a hard life financially, and I could barely eke out a living.

On a much more serious note, the god-worship of musicians such as James Levine, Charles Dutoit and Placido Domingo created a willing blindness to the abuses that they perpetuated (and got away with, for a time) in the workplace.

Woozle Effect: “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.” - Daniel Kahneman.

Although frequently used by political leaders to hammer home an untruth through repetition, we often forget that this effect is used in other ways. With the constant mantra of excellence and accomplishment in music education, we often forget to impart to young musicians the the deep spiritual capability of music to communicate and inspire people through darkest times. This inner power of music as a path through trauma is what guided the creation of many of the greatest works in the repertoire.

Buridan’s Ass: A thirsty donkey is placed exactly midway between two pails of water. It dies because it can’t make a rational decision about which one to choose. A form of decision paralysis.

This happens to me in fountain pen stores.

I also like the Fact-Check Scarcity Principle. Read Morgan’s entire article and you’ll see that he cleverly lays out some false information to demonstrate this principle.

(Image courtesy of John Towner on Unsplash)