#81 - Selected ideas from 2022

Nuggets of thought from the year

Dear Curiosity > Certainty subscribers, it’s been a year where many of us have had the good fortune of coming out from the shadow of a pandemic. We’ll probably—hopefully—not have such a year again in our lifetimes. It can be easy to let this realization slip by. But let’s not, and cherish what we have today.

Welcome to issue #81 of Curiosity > Certainty. I’m Satyajit and this year I’ve served up 52 weeks of this newsletter. Just for showing up, I’ll be opening a cold one.

Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash

For this last issue of the year, allow me to round up a selection of inviting thoughts.

Psycho-logical selling

Human beings are low-trust creatures. We expect to be hoodwinked. We’re used to asking ‘What's the catch?’ when sizing up an option. 

No wonder that logical thinking when put to use to persuade us fails miserably.

This soap is eco-friendly, so what's the catch? It probably smells like compost.

Two drops of this washing liquid concentrate are enough? I’m sure it cleans nothing.

Marketers fail if customers think what they’re selling is too good to be true. Between reality and perception, marketers pick perception to sell to. The rest of us pick reality. And wonder if we’ve got it all wrong.

Indicatorism

Everything that can be counted doesn’t count, and everything that counts cannot be counted.

Names 

Names are one of the most under-indexed aspects of selling something. 

Great protocols can be buried under meh names. ‘Failure mode and effect analysis’ emerged in the military much before the world knew ‘pre-mortems.’ Only one choice of name for the protocol was spot on.

Permissioned economy

One big reason permissioned gate-kept institutions turn people off is because of the negative emotional outcome of the action--write a paper/book/article; submit; and then what? Nothing at all! No pat on the back, no confetti, not even an acknowledgement sometimes.

No wonder the premise of the permission-less economy is so attractive--preprints, self-publishing, social media posts. Even though current versions of such systems are suboptimal, the emotional release is enough for some to prefer it over the permissioned gate-kept systems.

Experience and memory

Our remembering self calls the shots. Our experiencing self has to live through whatever has been decided. You will decide to bungee-jump again because your brain remembers the thrill of it right after, not the dread you felt for the entire morning of the jump.

Deciding by consensus

Hiring for a position AND hiring for a position after submitting your choice for approval to a group of people who decide your salary are two very different propositions. 

In the first case, you make sure the choice of recruit best solves your problem. In the second, it is more important for your choice to appear rational. 

Success and excellence

All excellence is success.

Not all success is excellence.

Be careful what you chase.

Digital leverage

If the future is about infinite digital leverage such that the best math teacher teaches the whole world and the best habit book writer (James Clear?) corners the habit self-help market, will a market with several solutions mean that none of them work?

Mindset

After failure, 

Fixed mindset people: ‘This is the best I'll ever be’ 

Growth mindset people: ‘This is the worst I'll ever be’ 

One takes charge of their growth and the other explains problems away as bad luck, innate ability, or some such thing carved in stone. 

Mindset matters.

Social media advice

The problem with doling out advice  on social media is that you really hope people know their trash from their treasure. Or else, for example, you end up with battle cries for work-life balance vs hustle culture because you assumed that trash and treasure are the same for everyone and it really is not that.

Invention and innovation

It’s no use inventing sliced bread until you invent good packaging for sliced bread--according to @mattwridley. Innovation is making invention reliable and feasible

Perfection and progress

Perfection disrespects the fact that we have a finite amount of time. Whereas progress respects finiteness. Sometimes, you gotta behave like something’s the only thing worth doing. Other times, you gotta do something and be ready to move on. The trick is knowing the difference between the two, and not letting your brain convince you to go one way when the other way was right.

Life before the Internet

The difference between village and city life before the internet was that one rejected monotony and boredom and the other accepted it.

New categories

A completely bald head has no insecurity. A balding head does.  

Likewise, a hermit has no relationship issues. You and I do.

The bald head or hermit hasn’t solved their original problem. Just created new categories to avoid feelings of inferiority.

Climate change 

The problem with effectively dealing with climate change is that the lawmakers have much less to lose than the voters. Voting rights open up past 18y, yet from among those alive today the ones who’ll be most affected by climate change are all below 18.

Introverts

The one thing in their favor introverts may overlook is that there are people in the world who love to talk and share as long as there’s someone to lend them an ear. It should not be an effort for anyone to seek their help. You’re doing them a favor by offering them your attention.

Quitting

Quitting means:

Admitting you aren’t good enough

Ignoring new information

Killing hope

Quitting also means:

Cutting your losses

Responding to new information

Letting yourself explore better opportunities

Barbell strategy

Be wrong when it rains, right when it floods.

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Thank you for your time! It’s been a pleasure writing for you! Let me know what would make this newsletter more useful for you in the coming year. Drop a comment or write to me at satyajit.07@gmail.com. Stay well and happy 2023!