I looked back at my 2023 and one theme that describes it well is āawarenessā. I āintendā to make the theme for this 2024 to be āintentionā.Ā What does it mean for me, and how does it change anything here? More on it in the coming days.
For this post, Iāve an eclectic mix of ideas & stories to cover.
There is one concept to learn, a few life & career advice, some lessons on urban planning & a couple of quirky discoveries to leave you with a smile at the end.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
Letās jump right in.
š« Understanding Ergodicity
If you know the game of Russian Roulette, you know the surest way to win this game is to not play the game itself. But if thatās not the option in hand, then you better understand ergodicity.
Taylor Pearson does a good primer on understanding ergodicity and how we can make our decisions āantifragileā by making them more ergodic.
He speaks of two strategies - the barbell & the Kelly criterion that are useful in making yourself ergodic. Worth a read.
š§āš Value of college education
Ted Gioia raises the question: are Harvard graduates better than Harvard dropouts? And shares his perspective. This is a debate that can be done for any institute, and will garner passionate supporters (at least for now).Ā
I am not concerned about this question (or any other variation of it) as such. But I like this post for Tedās articulation around what college education does for anyone.Ā
I found that Iāve arrived at similar conclusions in my experience. And like Ted, I got to them only in retrospect. Thatās the challenge, and the reason we should share these with whoever can benefit from the learnings.
š° Different Types of Goods
Are all good things always that way? A naive person may say āyes, a good is always a goodā, most of us will probably add āmay beā and talk of diminishing returns or ātill a limitā perspective.Ā
Spencer Greenberg suggests that a problem with putting something in the "good" bucket of your mind, though, is that this can lead to the belief that the more of it there is, the better. But most goods donāt work that way. Itās far more common for goods to diminish in value as you get more of them, or to be good up to a certain point and then stop being good at all, or even to harm you when you have too much!
And then he goes on to define 4 types of goods. Hereās a snapshot visualizing their value graph.
Source: Clearer Thinking Blog
Read his post āthink smarter about what's "good"ā to know more and see how we can use this knowledge to think better about our goals and source of pleasures.
Is this relevant for you? Now? Well, the postās subtitle gave me good enough reasons to think so.
āWhat to do when your life is so routine that youāve run out of stories? Embark on a series of tame, achievable, eye-opening challengesā.Ā
Just go for it, his stories are astonishing and will give you a ZNMD kind of rush!
š An unusual leadership advice
Michael Loppās āan unreasonable investmentā is a touching story and a message worth your attention. I have seen great leaders & mentors do this in an effortless way.
In this New Year, I am asking to find one human; itās a non-obvious human. Itās not a direct report or a human where you are paid to invest. Find this non-obvious human and invest in them. Unreasonably, consistently, without expectations. While achieving their dream is a goal, your goal is to help without hesitation.
You want some free leadership advice? You build yourself by buildingā¦ by helping others. The selfless act of helping humans will teach you more about being a credible leader than any book.
Whatās so interesting about Danish life? Hereās what DHH calls out in the start: Education is state-funded, and students are even paid a stipend to go to university. Health care is equally free of individual charge, and thereās generally a robust social safety net for unemployment, maternity leave, and the like.
How is this possible? DHH makes an attempt to understand the Danish story better.
To generalize broadly, Danes are content paying high taxes for high services, as long as the recipients look like them, and all do their outmost to pitch in. Thereās no tolerance for loafers, not even in high society. Itās a sin to sit idle for too long in Denmark.
The point is that the Danes understand that they canāt both have a safe, open society where young children can be out alone at night, take the metro by themselves, and enjoy the play parks by themselves, if they also allow druggies, vagrants, beggars, and the mentally ill to roam the streets on their own accord. A strong civil society relies invariably on strong norms that are judiciously enforced by both customs and cops.
ā² Fountain SocietyĀ
What a humble drinking fountain can tell us much about a societyās attitudes towards health, hygiene, equity, and virtue, and about its understanding of public goods and civic responsibilities.
Clearly the drinking fountain and the water bottle are more than two different options for quenching thirst. Theyāre embodiments of two different systems, two different sociopolitical narratives, about the provision of water. The fountain is an exemplar of public infrastructure and collective responsibility. The ubiquitous bottle of branded water is an accoutrement of consumer culture ā a small but telling instance of the triumphant market mentality that has in the past half century remade so many aspects of our lives.
šļø How to cool down a city
This brilliant visual essay from NY Times talks of how Singapore is dealing with the challenges of rising temperature in urban areas. It covers a couple of highly ambitious projects (including Marina Bay) that are playing an active role in this crusade.Ā
One bit that provides a good hint towards of a universal solution:
āIf you wanted to invent the most effective kind of climate management technology from the ground up, you could spend a lot of time trying to do that. You would just engineer a tree.āĀ
How Lego builds a new Lego set. A fun story covering behind the scenes of Legoās official version of the classic rainbow stripe Polaroid OneStep SX-70 instant camera.
Designers always want more frames for their sets, May says. But he explains those constraints are just part of the process. When designers donāt have as many frames as theyād like, they have to get creative ā just like any other Lego fan.
A parliament of owls and a murder of crows: If you think this post is about some thriller story, you are like me. But let me clarify, it has got nothing to do with what those words mean to most common junta. This story talks about how groups of birds got their names. There is a good bit of trivia and super cool visuals for you waiting behind this link.
And yes, āparliamentā and āmurderā are common nouns used to describe a group of birds.Ā
That's all for this week, folks!Ā
I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.
Please leave a comment or send a message with your feedback. Itās highly helpful & encouraging. If thatās too much of an effort (or not required), at least hit the ā¤ļø at the start or end of the post to show your love.Ā
Ergodicity is fascinating. It's main message is that path matters more than probability.
Say there are 100 grapes, one of which is poisonous. It will cause you to froth at the corner of the mouth and die. You don't know which grape is the guilty one. The probability of getting that one grape is only 1% but will you take that chance? As you say, the risk of death kills all cost-benefit analyses. On paper you acted irrationally (not taking a 1% risk) but what is rational is what keeps you alive.
Nassim Taleb (Skin in the Game) is another good source to learn about ergodicity.
Brilliant edition ā¦some really great pieces of information from
Such diverse perspectivesā¦
Ergodicity is fascinating. It's main message is that path matters more than probability.
Say there are 100 grapes, one of which is poisonous. It will cause you to froth at the corner of the mouth and die. You don't know which grape is the guilty one. The probability of getting that one grape is only 1% but will you take that chance? As you say, the risk of death kills all cost-benefit analyses. On paper you acted irrationally (not taking a 1% risk) but what is rational is what keeps you alive.
Nassim Taleb (Skin in the Game) is another good source to learn about ergodicity.