June 2024 Links
Welcome! For an explanation of the motivation behind this project, check out “Intro - The Motivation Behind ‘Nick’s Links’”.
This month’s categories: Wisdom; Culture; Business / Career; Technology / Science; Websites; Misc.
Wisdom
Daily run, part one and part two (Derek Sivers) - A short, insightful piece about belief systems and motivation. Spoiler: the run is a metaphor.
“What works for others might not work for you. What you needed yesterday might not be what you need today. Life is nuanced. Choose your goals and beliefs only for how they help you now.”
Lazy Work, Good Work (Morgan Housel) - A lot of modern work is about solving hard problems, often by coming up with good ideas. But our current way of working - essentially applying a factory mindset where you’re expected to work continuously, often in one place - ignores how idea generation works.
“[W]e’re stuck in the old world where a good employee is expected to labor, visibly and without interruption.”
“Good ideas rarely come in meetings, or even at your desk. They come to you in the shower. On a walk. On your commute, or hanging out on the weekend. I’m always amazed at the number of famous ideas that came to people in the bathtub. But tell your boss you require a mid-day soak, and the response is entirely predictable.”
“Look at famous thinkers who didn’t have to impress anyone by looking busy, and you see a theme: They spent a lot of time doing stuff that didn’t look like work, but in fact was stupendously productive.”
Jung’s Five Pillars of a Good Life (Arthur Brooks) - Many of Carl Jung’s theories are controversial - but his five pillars of a good life are good: (1) Good physical and mental health; (2) Good personal and intimate relations, such as those of marriage, family, and friendships; (3) Seeing beauty in art and nature; (4) A reasonable standard of living and satisfactory work; (5) A philosophical or religious outlook that fosters resilience.
Also, his contributions to popular psychology are remarkable: he coined the terms complex (as in you have a complex about something), extrovert, introvert, persona, and archetype.
Culture
The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it (Max Roser) - This article walks through the remarkable progress we have made in improving global living conditions over the past ~200 years - much of which has come in the last ~75 years.
The graphs below provide a good summary, but highlights include:
In 1900, 65% of people were living in extreme poverty; today it’s less than 10%.
In 1900, 40% of children died before they turned five; today it’s 4%.
Part of the reason this data is rarely discussed is because we’re drawn to negative headlines.
Based on the data, the number of people living on more $10 increased by 250,000 every day of the last decade - but we don’t see that in a headline.
Another reason many are hesitant to discuss progress is because they fear it will make us complacent - or that it ignores the millions of people living in unacceptable conditions.
But I think we’re taking a bigger risk if we don’t discuss the progress we’ve made. We need to believe that we can make progress on these issues - and the data clearly shows that we can, and we have. And we’ve only been attacking these problems in a systematic way for a small fraction of human history. Focusing primarily (or exclusively) on the negative is very demotivating (and doesn’t create an accurate picture).
Yes, there are major risks in the world that threaten progress (nuclear war, climate instability, etc.) - and progress won’t happen on its own - but, given the progress in recent history, we should be very hopeful.
The Spread of Improvement: Why Innovation Accelerated in Britain 1547-1851 (Anton Howes) - In ~1550, Britain wasn’t creating much technology. But by ~1850, it was the world’s technological leader. In what has been described as a “wave of gadgets,” innovation accelerated in nearly all industries, including “agriculture, medicine, brewing, furniture-making, photography, and even gardening.”
Why did this happen? This paper, which surveys ~1,500 innovators at the time, comes to a fascinating conclusion: people adopted, then spread, an “improving mentality.”
“The [improving mentality] was not a technique, skill, or special understanding, but a frame of mind: innovators saw room for improvement where others saw none. The mentality could be received by anyone, and it could be applied to any field - anything, after all, could be better”
“But what led to innovation’s acceleration was not just that the mentality spread: over the course of the eighteenth century innovators became increasingly committed to spreading the mentality further - they became innovation’s evangelists. By creating new institutions and adopting social norms conducive to openness and active sharing, innovators ensured the continued dissemination of innovation, giving rise to modern economic growth in Britain and abroad.”
Even the word improvement as we come to understand it may have developed during that period.
“The historian Paul Slack argues that over the course of the seventeenth century the word ‘improvement’ emerged uniquely in England, particularly with its meaning as something that was generalizable to anything - even a hundred years later continental Europeans failed in their attempts to find a direct synonym.
This piece really blew my mind. Step one to improving something is to believe it can be improved. It makes me think that, while this “improving mindset” is certainly more widespread today, there are still areas where we generally don’t adopt an “improving mindset” (the delivery of legal services is top of mind for me…).
Thomas Kuhn’s Skepticism Went Too Far (John Horgan) - This piece - a reflection on the author’s conversation with famous American philosopher Thomas Kuhn - has insights about truth, science, and how a message can be interpreted in ways the creator didn’t intend.
Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most influential books about science and its limits.
It also popularized the term paradigm.
The most interesting part of this to me is how people interpreted Kuhn’s work in ways he did not intend, and in many cases did not approve of.
In the book, he (very generally speaking) questions whether science can declare anything as “true.”
Many people took this as a rallying cry to reject science.
This is a good example of how “followers” of a movement often proceed based on misinterpretations of the leader’s views - and how difficult it is for the leader to regain control of the message.
“He concedes he may be partly to blame for anti-science interpretations of Structure. After all, he compares scientists in the thrall of a paradigm to brainwashed characters in Orwell's 1984 and to drug addicts. But Kuhn emphasizes that he is pro-science, because science produces ‘the greatest and most original bursts of creativity" of any human enterprise.’”
She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all (Jenny Kleeman) - A reminder that we shouldn’t rush to judgment - particularly when new technology is involved. When we see a story that’s so ridiculous we want it to be true (in this case that a cheer mom created a deepfake of her daughter’s rivals to get them kicked them off the team) - we should proceed with extra caution.
“Either a woman with no background in digital technology had made a sophisticated deepfake on her iPhone 8, or a 16-year-old had panicked and lied to her mother about vaping, or mother and daughter had decided together to explain away behavior they knew would get [the daughter] in trouble…The police chose to believe the first explanation.”
Business / Career
In 40 years as a founder-CEO, Michael Dell turned his dorm-room PC company into a tech giant. Can he cash in on the AI boom? (Geoff Colvin) - A nice profile of Michael Dell, who is potentially the longest-sitting tech CEO. His story tracks the history of technologies since the 80s. He started tinkering with computers in his dorm in 1984 and took Dell public in 1988 (he was 27 at the time). The ups and downs since then make Dell one of the most interesting companies in the Tech Era - and a poster child for the power of reinvention.
This piece is, in part, a testament to the benefits of being a private company (vs. a public one).
“Over the five years that it was privately held, Dell was able to truly diversify from selling laptops and desktops. Away from the market’s obsession with quarterly earnings, Dell consolidated and expanded his company, creating a behemoth provider of infrastructure tools for corporate customers.”
I Went To China And Drove A Dozen Electric Cars. Western Automakers Are Cooked (Kevin Williams) - This piece - a first-person, on-the-ground description of the author’s experience attending the Beijing Auto Show - taught me more about the competition between the West and China in the EV market than anything I’ve seen (much of the coverage is high-level and impersonal).
This is a complicated situation, but based on the descriptions in this article, one thing is clear: the West is playing catch-up, and we are really behind. Our hope is that by imposing tariffs (Biden just announced 100% tariffs on China-made EVs) and using subsidies, we’ll give our companies a chance to catch up. But, until and unless that happens (and it’s far from clear that it will - particularly given that tariffs remove the pressure to compete on price), Americans will pay more for lower quality cars.
“The real story is far more nuanced than a simplistic “Us vs. Them”; a story of a China that has fraudulently over-invested in electric cars and is desperately seeking a space to dump their inferior products. That narrative is false. Western automakers are cooked. And a lot of this is probably their damn fault.”
“Now that I’ve seen a glimpse of what’s going on in China, the Western manufacturers, particularly the American ones, don’t seem like they’re trying at all.”
We may decide we’re willing to accept inferior products in the name of national security (we may want to avoid becoming reliant on China for EV tech and/or we may fear that China will use EVs to spy on Americans). But we should admit that our cars are inferior.
“So, when automakers, tech companies and regulators push back on China, the sentiments that they’re just protecting our market from unsafe or security-challenged products feel hollow. Instead, it feels like grandstanding, and a tacit admission that they have no intention of trying to do better. Instead of competing, they’d rather just shut out competition entirely. The concerns about cybersecurity don’t address the elephant in the room here: Your product sucks, compared to what China is putting out now. It doesn’t go as far. It’s not as well-made. It’s not as nice. It’s not as connected.”
I’m not a car enthusiast so the details about the cars didn’t really interest me, but it was interesting that he was particularly impressed with the interior and exterior designs of the cars.
The traditional (stereotypical?) view is that China exceeds at manufacturing, but that the West exceeds at design (e.g., “Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China) - but that is clearly changing.
Also, this is also a look at the future - a world full of EVs.
“The arrivals area was just as busy as any airport in any cosmopolitan world city, but the engine and exhaust noises I’d typically hear back home, or even in Europe, just weren’t there.”
Trademark Design Codes (Jon Keegan) - The US Patent and Trademark office has 1,400 “design codes” that it uses to categorize trademarks (trademarks are things that identify the source of a good or service - it can be a brand name, logo, or even a smell).
This is a fun analysis of that data, including an interactive tool where you randomly generate two codes to see which trademarks have both of them. Here’s an example:
Inside China’s unexpected quest to protect data privacy (Karen Hao) - China’s approach to privacy is more complicated than it seems. At its core is a question that is relevant in nearly all countries: “Can a system endure with strong protections for consumer privacy, but almost none against government snooping?”
While Western countries generally have some protection against government surveillance, we repeatedly find out our governments routinely disregard those protections (typically in the name of national security). So, while China’s government is less shy about collecting and using vast amounts of data, the difference may not be as great as we think.
This piece also reinforces my belief that the desire for (at least some level of) privacy is core to being human; it transcends culture. And a society in which people don’t have basic privacy protections is inherently unstable.
Aflac CEO Dan Amos gave us that obnoxious, genius duck and changed the insurance industry. Now, he's facing his aging customers' mortality—and eventually his own (Maria Aspan) - A profile of the fifth-longest serving CEO in the Fortune 500. There are a lot of fun facts about Aflac (including that it gets 70% of its profits from Japan and cancer insurance is at the heart of their business). But I’m really including this piece because of this fantastic tidbit:
“It was late 1999—almost a decade after he had become CEO, after his uncle John died of lung cancer—and Aflac needed a boost. Its advertising agency presented Amos with two different potential TV commercials: One involved a traditional, sober testimonial from the sitcom star Ray Romano. The other featured a duck squawking out the ungainly acronym that gave Aflac its name.”
Imagine having to break it to Ray Romano that he lost the gig to an animated duck…and to learn over time that it was definitely the right decision.
What Precious Things Does The Corporate World Steal From Us? An Australian engineer who stepped back from a full-time job in the white collar world reflects. Thought-provoking.
Technology / Science
How Aristotle Created the Computer (Chris Dixon) - This piece is a very cool overview of the ideas that led to computers, which began with the OG - Aristotle “inventing” logic. It’s a beautiful example of ideas combining and building on each other over centuries - and a reminder of the power of a willingness to push forward in areas in which people assume there is no further discovery possible.
“Trying to improve on the logical work of Aristotle was an intellectually daring move. Aristotle’s logic, presented in his six-part book The Organon, occupied a central place in the scholarly canon for more than 2,000 years. It was widely believed that Aristotle had written almost all there was to say on the topic. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant commented that, since Aristotle, logic had been ‘unable to take a single step forward, and therefore seems to all appearance to be finished and complete.’”
What Do Plants Know? (Willa Köerner) - This piece, which is primarily an interview with Zoë Schlanger about her forthcoming book about the emerging field of plant intelligence (The Light Eaters), has insights about how politics within the scientific community shapes the direction of research.
In 1973, a popular book called “The Secret Life of Plants” surveyed “discoveries” about potential plant intelligence (you may have heard of some of its “findings,” including that plants like classical music more than rock music). Although the book was popular, scientists panned it. As part of the backlash, the idea of plant intelligence was strongly rejected in the scientific community.
“Federal funding agencies simply stopped funding a lot of plant research if it gave off any whiff of being related to plant intelligence, and the field as a whole went underground for a good thirty-plus years.”
Even now, the idea of plant intelligence seems like such pseudoscience that scientists are hesitant to associate themselves with it.
“We know that there’s something highly intelligent going on with plants, and I almost feel like, if people could really understand that, it might alter our collective worldview to such an extent that scientists don’t want to be responsible for taking us down that path.”
The whole “plants may be intelligent” thing is, of course, also interesting - and raises a lot of questions about intelligence and consciousness.
“The ‘brainless mind’ is the most exciting possibility that I think will become basic knowledge in the next ten years. Much of the debate in plant science revolves around the fact that plants don’t have brains, so, ‘How could we consider a brainless organism intelligent?’ But when you think about how plants evolved, always rooted in place, we realize it makes sense for them to evolve to have sensory capabilities throughout their bodies.”
Also fascinating: the line between living beings (including humans and plants) is fuzzier than we imagine.
“About half the cells in our body are genetically ours, and half are foreign DNA—but we wouldn’t be ourselves without them. They’re causing so much of our lives to happen, and then when you think of that in the context of intelligence, what does it mean that our brain is not controlling most of these organisms? They’re part of a diffused network of less-centralized intelligence that is affecting our mood, aiding digestion, and much more. We like to draw a line between rote reflexes in the body and behaviors that are influenced by our own conscious will—but what happens when microbes are causing depression, or attraction? It starts to really blur the boundary between mind and body, and opens up space to think about other forms of intelligence that completely sidestep the structure of the brain.”
AI is not like you and me (Zach Seward) - This speech from the editorial director of AI initiatives at the New York Times is a short, interesting look at the history of giving new technology human characteristics to make it more palatable (e.g., ATMs, search engines).
“Anthropomorphizing AI not only misleads, but suggests we are on equal footing with, even subservient to, this technology, and there's nothing we can do about it.”
Stephen Wolfram on the Powerful Unpredictability of AI (Katherine Mangu-Ward) - Stephen Wolfram is undoubtedly one of the most interesting people alive. He left Eton and Oxford early because he was bored, got a doctorate in theoretical physics from CalTech at 20, then left and created legendary research tools (Mathematica, WolframAlpha, and the Wolfram Language). So it’s unsurprising that he has interesting thoughts on AI.
On whether humans can avoid bringing their “baggage” into technology: “The point to realize is the technology itself has nothing. What we're doing with AI is kind of an amplified version of what we humans have. The thing to realize is that the raw computational system can do many, many things, most of which we humans do not care about. So as we try and corral it to do things that we care about, we necessarily are pulling it in human directions.”
On how we might not fully realize the potential of AI: “The first thing to realize is AIs will be suggesting all kinds of things that one might do just as a GPS gives one directions for what one might do. And many people will just follow those suggestions. But one of the features it has is you can't predict everything about what it will do. And sometimes it will do things that aren't things we thought we wanted. The alternative is to tie it down to the point where it will only do the things we want it to do and it will only do things we can predict it will do. And that will mean it can't do very much.”
Websites
Parallel Lives - Really cool website where you scroll through history (starting in 3345 BC) and see when various leaders and scientific discoveries appear.
This is a teenager - Beautiful visualization of the data from a survey of hundreds of teenagers over 24 years. It explores the effects of childhood experiences on them as adults.
Meow.camera - Livecams of cats eating.
Birdify - Listen to bird sounds from around the world.
Great Brandlines - Great taglines and the story behind them.
Misc
The sad reality of a “boy room”. From 1912 to 1952, the Olympics gave out medals for art. The dumbphone boom? Bad user interface design leads to people accidentally running for president of Iceland. A history of the swipe. Scientists make discoveries about Alpaca Sex - and it’s weirder than you thought. The UK loves Mr Brightside. A brief look at the history - and future? - of streaking. Inside the modern miracle of chip manufacturing. Fun data about Uber’s lost and found. The rise of bee theft. Zyn’s old school points-based reward system. Ugly Muppet toy awards. 80% of new members of pigeon racing clubs are 20 or younger. A 3,800-year-old letter from a son to a mom complaining about the quality of his clothes. The Tennessee Worm Tuggers win the worm charming championships by charming 32 worms. Kyles fail to break the world record for gathering of people named Kyle.