[Learn] Compare - Not Necessary

For us to determine the 'right' value of an object, the methods of comparing/contrasting would make the whole process easier. Human beings are not completely competent in judging the correct absolute value of any given object, and the need of a second object as a reference point is often necessary for us to put a price tag on different things. 

On the other hand, in our culture a lot of times people advise us to compare ourselves with others.  "You should be like your father," "You can win; the others aren’t as good as you," "You must be the best of your class," etc., and this is not always the best way of thinking. There are many reasons to change this way of thinking and begin to compare ourselves only with ourselves. This is the way it should be, and in this paper I will discuss some of the most important reasons for this.

The first reason to avoid comparing yourself with others is that there will be always someone better than you. It doesn’t mater in which aspect, but it is always true. Therefore, you could feel inferior to others and maybe without a real reason. For example, you can be an incredible architect and the best of your generation, and this can make you feel incredibly good, but if someday someone is better than you are, you could feel sad although you are still the same incredible architect that you were before.

The second reason to elude this kind of comparison is that you will always find someone worse than you, but as opposed to the first reason, this can make you feel better than the others, and this feeling can turn into a horrible pride. For example, if you are the second best student of your class, and one day the very best student leaves the school, you will then be the best one although you are still only as good as you were before.

These two first reasons leads us to a third one: If you want to be better than the others, you don’t need to improve yourself; you only have to make the others look bad. If I want to be the leader of the group, but you are the leader now, what I need to do is to make you look like a traitor or stupid and then I can take your place. Then I will be better than you.

A fourth reason to stop comparing ourselves is that the one who compares him/herself with others is judging, and this doesn’t help us develop as human beings. Nobody knows the internal reality of the other; nobody knows his/her story and his/her most deep intentions, and when we judge it’s harder to accept the others.

The last but most important reason to avoid comparing ourselves with others is that when we do, we can be tempted to copy them, to do the same things, and to act and think like them. The problem with this is that if we copy someone, we will never know who we really are and what we really want, and then we will never grow spiritually.

For all these reasons and because we are unique, we should not compare ourselves with others, only with ourselves. The only comparison pattern that we really have is our consciousness. So, if we use this pattern we will not feel less or more than others; we will not try to make others look bad; we will not judge so much; and we will accept ourselves as we really are. In other words, we will live happier.

[Share] Coordination

Coordination

Our economy is almost entirely based on a Darwinian competition--many products and services fighting for shelf space and market share and profits. It's a wasteful process, because success is unpredictable and unevenly distributed.
The internet has largely mirrored (and amplified) this competition. eBay, for example, not only pits sellers against one another, it also pits buyers. Craigslist makes it easy for buyers to see the range of products and services on offer, making the marketplace more competitive. Google, most of all, encourages an ecosystem where producers can evolve, improve and compete.
I think the next frontier of the net is going to use the datastream to do precisely the opposite--to create value by making coordination easier.

A pre-internet pioneer of this: the method residents are assigned to hospitals after med school (the Match). The competitive way to do this is the same way we do college--we tell students to apply to a ton of schools, and perhaps you get into four, perhaps you get into none. Perhaps someone else gets into your favorite and chooses not to go... while you're left behind.

The Match coordinates instead. You tell the system your favorites, in rank order, and it uses application feedback from the hospitals to maximize the happiness of the largest number of applicants. No sense wasting scarce acceptances on people unable to work in two places at once.
Consider the way Logos is determining which books to bring out. They challenge readers to indicate the most they'd be willing to pay for a particular title, and then, based on the number of people voting with their dollars, can bring out titles at the lowest possible price for the largest number of people.
In both cases, the system works because it can become aware of buyer preferences in advance. Kickstarter takes this to an extreme, allowing producers to pre-sell items before making them. But this is not nearly as nuanced as it could be, and a lot of effort is wasted in acquiring the attention of potential purchasers.

Any wasting asset--a restaurant table, a seat at a conference, a wasting box of fish--can be efficiently used instead of wasted if we use technology to identify and coordinate buyers.

Synchronizing buyers to improve efficiency and connection is a high-value endeavor, and it's right around the corner. It will permit mesh products, better conferences, higher productivity and less waste, while giving significant new power to consumers and those that organize them.