Moynihan's Law, High Quality Listening, And More
5 eye-opening ideas from February
Hello there,
I hope you read last week’s piece on how you can build your learning machine. If not, please take out 5 mins, it might just change the way you think.
That said, February was great, even though many hated it because they ran out of money on the 29th - nobody planned their finances for an extra day.
Regardless, I can assure you that you’ll never run out of cool new ideas with this newsletter. Here are 5 eye-openers from last month:
Moynihan’s Law: The more you hear complaints of human rights violations from a country, the better its human rights situation. That’s because, in a country where the situation is effed up (like North Korea), there’s a lesser likelihood of hearing any complaints in the first place. Censorship, crackdowns, and the threat of violence silence all dissenting voices. Loud voices themselves mean that there’s room for people to scream their assess off (and not get shot down before they can even think about it).
Roman Empire Fallacy: If you read the piece on our changing world order, you’d know that intellectuals keep yapping about an American collapse like it’s supposed to happen by next weekend. Yes, things might not be great. Yes, the empire has overextended itself. But that doesn’t have to mean that it’ll immediately turn to dust. These predictions might result from our yearning to witness a grand historical climax in our own lives instead of entering our graves with a cliffhanger. The point is that unsustainable things can go on for very long periods before they blow up. A good example is the 2008 crash, which people have been predicting since at least 2005. The party, as we now know, lasted a great deal longer.
Ain’t happening this weekend, son The “Women Are Wonderful” Effect: Both sexes tend to like the average Barbie more than the average Ken. This phenomenon is known as the women-are-wonderful effect, and it’s one of the best-replicated findings in social psychology. Research studies show that both sexes have a more favorable view of women than men. Men like women as much as women like women. But women like men less than men like men. If that’s giving you a migraine, know that women seem to be liked more by everyone as compared to men.
High-quality listening: One of the most underrated skills in the work world is the ability to listen. Studies show that HQ listening makes one’s opponents more receptive to their arguments, and more likely to be persuaded and change their minds. What are the key ingredients of this type of listening? Open body language, paying attention (as opposed to checking bikini reels every 10 seconds) maintaining eye contact, showing you’re genuinely listening by paraphrasing what they’re saying, and adopting a non-judgemental attitude.
Apple Vision Pro: An epic battle for the next generation of computing devices is playing out as Apple recently launched its Vision Pro device (and did a good job by calling it ‘spatial computing’), pitting it against Meta’s Oculus. The 2 giants seem to be approaching this market from opposite ends. Apple is building out cutting-edge capabilities with its new device and trying to work the pricing downwards till it hits mass adoption. Maybe this isn’t an iPhone moment yet- but we must remember that it took 15-17 years (from the 90s till 2007) for smartphones to explode, and connect 5B people over the next decade. Who knows, this might just be the start of something very big that’ll play out over the next decade or two.
That’s it for today, folks. If you liked this, consider spending a few more minutes on: