Today marks the start of another year of the dragon, according to Chinese tradition.  I was just about to go find out what that might mean, but decided better of it.  That decision was influenced by the man in the picture to the right (click it for his bio) and what he said in this brief but moving response to the Annual Question that Edge puts to very smart folks (his response is the second one, so scroll down to that).

It is a fundamental principle of economics that a person is always better off if they have more alternatives to choose from. But this principle is wrong. There are cases when I can make myself better off by restricting my future choices and commit myself to a specific course of action.

There is not enough time to do everything, so we need to constrain ourselves from getting lost in options and lost in too many pursuits. Smart. (And that is why, for now, I will remain ignorant on what Chinese tradition would tell me to expect in a dragon year; do feel free to share on this in the comment section below if you know more than I  on that topic.)  But for every smart idea by every smart person, there seems to be a smart exception. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, had a great one-liner that comes to mind:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

I have given that credence, practically to the level of making it a credo, for many years. The keyword, of course, is foolish (and Emerson is often foolishly misquoted as “consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds), because consistency is part of what Thaler is recommending we have more of; he would likely have no problem with Emerson’s quote.

The year of the dragon, whatever it may mean according to Chinese tradition, is beginning for me in India.  This country, like China, is developing rapidly in many ways–economically, educationally, technologically.  It is a country full of vibrant, sometimes chaotic, colors and sounds and tastes.  Still, some constraints are needed here and I plan to share more ideas on this.  I took an unintended break from posting on this site for the last two months, but the hiatus is over.

It seems a fitting time to commit to commitment.