Reading Time: 2 min The pace of content on the internet already seems to be at a blistering speed. Twitter sees roughly 350,000 tweets per minute. Users watch roughly 4.5M YouTube videos every minute. Add in other social networks like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and the numbers are unreal. With that we haven’t even talked about web content. Sites […]
If you feel dumb, you just got smarter
Reading Time: 2 min For most people, most of the time, if they find themselves in a situation where they feel dumb, they likely just got smarter. It can happen two ways: First, it might be that you’re immediately corrected with more factual information. This happened to me a few years ago with a bit of info about Matt […]
Learning is easier when you don’t have to rush
Reading Time: 2 min I wasn’t a very good student in high school. I got decent test scores, but a pretty weak GPA. If I could go back and do it again, I think I’d handle things much differently. However, the way you need to learn in high school is much different than how I learn now, and I […]
What does AI-generated art mean for our future?
Reading Time: 3 min AI-generated art is an area that is growing incredibly quickly. In most cases, these tools allow you to type in a short description of what you want and the system will create the image automatically. A recent episode of the Cortex podcast got into it quite a bit, and it opened my eyes to some […]
What is a “personal invitation”?
Reading Time: 2 min A few weeks ago, a buddy of mine sent me a text inviting me to a trivia night with him. That was a personal invitation. Before that, a friend reached out inviting me to play a round of golf with him. That was a personal invitation. More and more, though, I’m getting emails that are […]
Make your operating system irrelevant
Reading Time: < 1 min It’s often easier said than done, but the more you can make your operating system irrelevant, the better. This came up while I was listening to a recent episode of the Cortex podcast, and the hosts were lamenting a problem in getting something to work between a Mac and a Windows machine. Their system relied […]
My understanding is…
Reading Time: < 1 min In a recent episode of the “Hidden Brain” podcast, host Shankar Vedandam had Adam Grant on as a guest. They were discussing some details in the history of the Vietnam War and how things unfolded, and Adam said something that I thought was fascinating, but it was right in line with how he thinks. He […]
The refs aren’t out to get you
Reading Time: 2 min With football season once again in full swing, out come the people that are sure that the refs are biased against their team. It doesn’t matter what team they pull for — the refs are seemingly against every team, which doesn’t really make sense. Certainly refs are imperfect at every level; ideally a bit closer […]
Thought Experiments
Reading Time: < 1 min The last mental model that I’m going to unpack, before going back to my normal cadence of blogging, is the idea of “thought experiments”. While these mental models were presented in alphabetical order, this one is a perfect one to end on, as it’s a great way to tie all of the rest together. Sometimes […]
The Map Is Not the Territory
Reading Time: < 1 min The best map you’ve ever seen is imperfect. It has to be. If a map were to contain every bit of information about the area it represented, it’d be a cluttered mess. Every map has some degree of imperfection, and a large degree of omitted information. As the Farnam Street blog says, “A map with […]