5 Amazing Ideas In 5 Minutes

Losing wealth, Smartphone plateau and more

Hello there,

A warm welcome to all the new readers in the house.

Every 1st Sunday of the month, I share an article with 5 interesting ideas to open your mind and give you something (apart from your hot colleague) to think about.

July was a great month; these ideas will surely teach you some new stuff.

Click on the title links to access the sources if you want to go deep, and not just say “Nice” and move the hell on.

Here we go:

1. Smartphone Plateau: Smartphone brands have some thinking to do because the data suggests that sales have hit a plateau. We’ve already reached a big % of the world's pop and it doesn’t seem like much can be done to grow the market. So these companies will have to do what capitalists do- invent shiny new toys to sell to those who’ve already purchased their phones if they don’t want to get punished by investors.
   
   
   

2. AI Overinvestment: After asking “What’s your AI strategy” and pumping billions into companies, investors are doing a 180 and saying “Bro where’s the ROI?”. Many have started questioning whether the AI hype has gone too far, and Big Tech CEOs don’t disagree. Pichai and Zuckerberg said that companies have invested way too much and may not have results to show. But the point is that they can afford to over-invest but NOT afford to under-invest: the latter will mean losing the AI race and getting locked out of a potentially multi-trillion dollar opportunity. So it’s classic game theory, where nobody thought it right to stop burning their sweet piles of cash.
   
   
   

3. Chance Rules Your Life: Incredible story. A man arrived late in NYC for a conference at the WTO on 11th Sept 2001. His colleague, who was accompanying him, gifted him a Monet tie. He was elated and decided to put it on, but she said his shirt looked rumpled and he’d look funny. So he decided to head back to the hotel to iron it and asked her to proceed. She went ahead, and 9/11 happened. She died, but he survived. Because he’d fallen in love with Monet at a museum 10 years ago, because he told the colleague about it, because she decided to gift him a tie, because his clothes were rumpled, because he was late- he survived and she didn’t! Imagine the enormous number of chance factors that govern our lives.
   
   
   
   

4. Losing Wealth: If you love bitching about rich kids who drive Ferraris in Goregaon, you’ll love this data. 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the 2nd generation and 90% lose it by the 3rd one. Why does this happen? The long-term psychological cycle (click and read point #2) offers a good explanation for sure. Moreover, the rich often fail to teach kids the importance and meaning of money and don’t have clear communication about how the family’s estate should be managed. Like a wise man once said: Mo’ money, mo’ problems.
   
   
   

   

   Real friends in the real world

   
   
   

5. The Value of Friendship: 60% of the difference in happiness between people boils down to having close friendships. And despite understanding this intuitively, we let our bros drift away and don’t take the effort to keep the friendship going. We’re as hesitant to reach out to an old close friend as we’re to talk to a stranger or pick up gargbage! If that’s the reistance level, it makes sense to not let them wither way in the first place, given the fact that it takes spending ~200 hours together to get close. Another doozy: meeting a friend regularly adds as much happniess as earning an extra $150k annually. You know what to do.

---

That’s it for the day, mitron. I hope you picked up at least 1 idea to think about as you head to the bathroom.

And if you totally loved this piece and want to read more mind-opening stuff, here are some recommendations:

• The Future Of Sex [Very popular, obviously]

• Some Amazing Books I Recommended [Great for book lovers]

• Dopamine Culture, New Millionnaires, And More