Hedonic Escalators, Neuro Rights, And More
5 ideas that'll make you think
Hello there,
Check out my latest videos on the carrot-eating myth, Mumbai’s crazy origin story, and how brands trick us.
Now, let’s dive into 5 illuminating ideas from last month:
Hedonic Escalators: We know hedonic treadmills- our tendency to adapt to something after attaining it, such that it becomes a new normal (buying a luxury car isn’t enough, we need more because the car we buy becomes the baseline for us). Invert the idea and you get a recipe for what one must rather seek out: hedonic escalators. Activities in which the more you do them, the more fun it gets (rather than cultivating ever more craving). Reading, getting into flow states, or staying close to friends are all things that don’t adapt to the baseline- and continue to increase our joy since we don’t adapt to a previous high. They’re always enriching, and the fun never stops.
Neuro Rights: As we build scary tech that can access our thoughts, people are advocating for neuro rights that’ll be critical to safeguard ourselves in the face of such unprecedented advances. It’s an interesting concept and includes some fundamental rights like the right to free will, mental privacy (protecting our brain data from sale to private parties), and the right to personal identity. We’ve seen what psychographic data in the hands of corporations can do to us: this time, we must prepare better as data mining gets even more invasive and our bare thoughts become accessible (and potentially turn into commodities).
Feynman’s Filter: Legendary physicist Richard Feynman would often get invited for physics talks that’d attract large audiences who weren’t interested in his physics lectures and came just because he was popular. Was there a way to attract only the bespectacled nerds who were genuinely interested? Ever the genius, Feynman devised a simple trick for this. He got the institute to announce that a certain “Prof Henry Warren” from the University of Washington would be giving a lecture on the structure of the proton. A typical boring-sounding name would act as the perfect filter and ensure that only the folks who genuinely wanted some physics gyaan would turn up…and then Feynman would appear, saying that Prof Warren was busy and he’d be taking the lecture instead. Ingenious!
Crazy 2024 Possibilities: Given the number of Black Swan events that have happened in the 2020s, a bunch of intellectuals were asked what other crazy (but plausible) events could sucker-punch the world in 2024. The answers aren’t very appetizing and are best avoided if you’re the kind who gets a panic attack while watching action scenes from CID. Some possibilities include extraterrestrial contact, China’s invasion of Taiwan while the US is distracted with elections, or even a virus that causes a digital apocalypse (think COVID but for our computers)!
New Technology: Some fairly dreamy technology was displayed this year at the CES. My favorites: flying cars and Hyundai air taxis (reminds me of the popular book “Where Is My Flying Car?”), a smart toilet, toothbrushes that clean our teeth in 10 seconds, and AI devices like Rabbit that are trying to upend the smartphone model by building voice-first AI companions that are reminiscent of pagers! Let’s see how this plays out.
That’s it for today! Did you learn something new this month? Share it in the comments/respond to the email and if it’s interesting, I’ll feature your discovery next month.
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