The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.

-Eric Hoffer

I consume vastly more information than I use. I do this because insight physically feels good. Each new connection is like a hit off the crack pipe. It doesn't matter if I ever use the info I'm smoking; it feels good just to learn it.

While it takes a conscious effort to direct learning towards the goal of producing something, learning will occur anyway in the absence of conscious direction simply because it feels good to understand new things. Browsing the web is for the most part undirected learning, which feels as good if not better than directed learning. This is why the internet is interesting.

Undirected web browsing is like having protected sex. It feels good, but nothing will come of it.

(Warning: If you are ultra-confident in your programming skills, this post is not for you.)

I want to program faster. As such, I've spent some time analyzing my thought process during the day, trying to figure out where I'm spending the most time. I have come to the realization that I spend a good deal of time deciding what to do next.

I believe that the root cause of this indecision is fear. I am afraid of choosing a path that will fail.

Here are some examples of things that scare me:

• If I choose this option, it might be too hard.
• If I use library X, I might run into a bug that I can't figure out.
• If I write this myself, it might take too long.
• A better programmer than me would already have figured this out.

My mind loops through these fears again and again, all the while not making a decision and thus not making progress.

So, how to solve this? Perhaps my fear is rooted in ignorance. Any time I encounter a bug or am required to implement a new feature, I am necessarily ignorant of the cause or solution. If I could get more comfortable with that ignorance and just set it on the table and start chipping away at it instead of being afraid of it, I might be able to work more quickly.

Although every problem is different, each time one arises, the situation is always the same; there is a problem for which the solution is unknown. The problem will be solved one way or another, there is no use wondering whether or not I can do it.

A while ago I posted a prediction that in the future there would likely be a world religion. Here is John McCarthy's take on a slightly different topic -- world government:

You say the only alternative to nuclear war is world government. There is only one possibility worse than nuclear war for the survival of modern civilization, and that is world government. Civilization might recover from the damage of a nuclear war, but judging by past static empires in Egypt and China, it might never recover from world government, there being no chance of external intervention. As it is, present governments are only prevented from becoming dominated by crazy ideas that will suppress all opposition by the existence of other governments. The only way a people can be sure that their government is substandard is that it does worse than those of other countries.

I like how he specifically references China, which I had in mind while making my prediction for a world religion.