Hi friends,
January has been an incredible month. Apart from writing down new year resolutions with utmost positivity that shall soon be the reason for downright negativity, I’ve had a great time learning about some incredibly insightful ideas. I’ve decided to catalog them here along with links for deep-dives. Thanks to the kind response to my previous post (10 Ideas from 2021), I’ve thought of chronicling my learnings every month instead of massively reducing a treasure trove of concepts to a very watered-down annual piece.
I’m doing it for 2 reasons. One, it makes me more accountable. The reason I instinctively preferred reading books over other forms of learning (until a few years ago, when I started getting more into podcasts and long-form articles) is that I take them very seriously: focussed sessions, notes, reading reviews & interpretations, revisiting the concepts at a later date and whatnot. This also ensures that I at least am able to synthesize a little bit of what I end up reading. I want to extend the same level of seriousness to other sources of learning too, and hence this attempt at documenting and summarizing some key ideas every month. Secondly, it shall also act as a nice repository for me to revisit from time to time- so these public posts are nothing but ‘notes’ for me.
Here are some really cool insights from Jan 2022 with sources for further exploration:
For all our ingenuity, we’re all deeply flawed. Marketers, especially those who’ve studied behavioral economics, know exactly how to profit from those flaws without us finding out. For example, if you buy a Ferrari (supposing you’re in the EU), they can either ship it to your local dealer for free or, or, or…by paying a measly 500 Euros extra, you can fly down to their HQ, take a “tour of the factory” and drive back with your Ferrari. Many people love doing exactly that. And therein lies the genius of the person who came up with this idea. By framing it this way (tour of the factory sounds rather exotic, doesn’t it?), they have just saved on their shipping costs AND made an extra 500 bucks just so you could go to their location at your own expense and pick up the product! Talk about giving less and earning more, purely with the psychological trick of framing! To understand numerous such delightful examples and learn other tools in the behavioral economists’ arsenal, watch this brilliant presentation by Rory Sutherland. It is pure gold.
In a 4-hour podcast, I heard Balaji Srinivasan hazard a guess that by the mid-21st century, we’ll probably graduate to drone vs drone warfare, with much less involvement from humans. Given that this can shift the battlefield to the cyber-realm and probably result in much lesser or probably even no bloodshed might be too optimistic but it did sound like an interesting thought. The transition to such a time (human vs drones) will be bloody, and we have a historical precedent for this: cavalry charges being shredded to pieces by machine-gun nests at the onset of World War 1. I also loved his thoughts on pseudonymity- living in a world where our real name isn’t tied to our work and how names themselves were introduced as a way to make it easier to bunch people into lists who could then systematically be conscripted or targeted for property confiscation. The idea density on this podcast is too damn high and you’d do well to listen all the way to the end.
How do you think life would be if you could feel no pain at all? Won’t that be a superpower? Wouldn’t it be just great and enable you to do so much more? No, actually. Gabby Gingras is a little girl who was born without the ability to feel pain- and you can’t even begin to imagine what a nightmare it is. Without the input, she can’t differentiate right from wrong in the physical world and this has resulted in some rather painful occurrences. She has bitten her fingers till they bleed, chewed her own tongue real bad, and rubbed her eyes so much they had to be sewed shut. Pain is bad, but life without pain is a complete disaster. This is one out of the many thought-provoking anecdotes that I liked in this piece by Morgan Housel.
I am a sucker for science fiction books. I recently watched Arrival and really liked it. I was looking forward to it, considering how I just loved Ted Chiang’s short story (and the entire book). I’d analyzed that story quite a lot and watching this movie made me think that science fiction is such an excellent way to philosophize- to question ideas, to project ourselves into the future, and paint out the vivid details so we can ponder what kind of future we want. So it was naturally a matter of delight for me to read this article by a professor of philosophy on the link between the two fields- and how so many works of Sci-Fi so thoughtfully paint out scenarios and engage our imaginations. If you’ve always thought a) “Sci-Fi is so nerdy and fantastical, I don’t know what value I can derive from it apart from some entertainment” or b) “Philosophy is so boring man, how do I even engage with it?”- just read this article. It also comes along with a solid set of recommendations: books that will help you engage with the bigger questions in an entertaining format. If you’re scared of books, pick up the short stories. I can’t even begin to describe how entertaining they are!
Given the continued fascination with what Bitcoin managed to do, I read some very interesting articles on its philosophy and design trade-offs. To begin with, this piece on how bitcoin is the war on war was just great. Really good thoughts packed in a simple 5-minute piece. Loved the analogy that futile wars are the imperialist’s proof-of-work which allows countries to arrive at a consensus on who owns what (and hence the might of the US Army is what essentially backs the dollar) and how Bitcoin allows us to walk out of that nasty arrangement for the first time. Then there was this banger of an article that I haven’t grasped fully. It had some really big ideas on how money is a medium to enable us to constantly order and re-order our individual hierarchies, that religion is the search of the ideas that are closest to the truth- and in many ways, Bitcoin enables us to achieve a higher degree of truth and changes the way humans function when they come in contact with such a technology. Just fascinating. I realized how awful my 2-line synopsis is, so please go ahead, take out 2 hours from your calendar and explore the connections between Bitcoin, consciousness, and religion.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. And if you learned something in the last few weeks that blew your mind, please share those juicy links with me. Cheers.