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December 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

December 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

AI stocks aren't like the dot-com bubble. Here’s why

Today’s craze over generative artificial intelligence is different, Godes said. He now teaches at Johns Hopkins, and his students aren’t leaving for Silicon Valley any time soon. They’ve got a healthy skepticism of the emerging technology, he said. That’s just one reason why he sees excitement about AI as entirely unlike the early internet era.

Survivorship Bias

There's a huge difference between a team that asks, "What went wrong with the failed trials?" and a team that only asks, "How can we repeat this success case?" Failed trials reveal what we lack and what we need to fix. Successful ones show a few of many ways things can work well.

Family offices now rival hedge funds as a way for the ultra-rich to hoard their wealth

The richest families in the world are projected to see their wealth grow even more – ultimately reaching $9.5 trillion by 2030 – as single-family offices continue to grow and expand their assets, according to a new report from Deloitte.

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November 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

November 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

Wisdom is a Virtue, But How Do We Know if Someone Has It?

Our team explored who is considered wise in cultures with contrasting philosophical traditions. The results surprised us Imagine you’re facing a life-altering decision. You have been offered a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity abroad, but it means leaving behind your partner who can’t relocate. Torn between your career aspirations and your commitment to the relationship, you start wondering what the wisest way would be to make such a decision. Should you approach the dilemma with a cold mind and weigh all the pros and cons in an analytical and logical manner, or would it be wiser to tune into your feelings and make a decision in line with your heart? Moreover, which one of these ways to handle the dilemma would your friends and family perceive as wise?

How to Think About Risk with Howard Marks

Oaktree co-chairman Howard Marks explores the true meaning of risk in a new ten-part video course.  He discusses the nature of risk, the relationship between risk and return, misconceptions about risk, and much more.

Thinking Set Free
We take it for granted that thinking helps us to understand the world and make good decisions. And to think is to reason. But there is a risk this is not the whole story. Studies into flow states where individuals are single mindedly focussed on a single task, without self reflection or reasoning, have identified that less deliberation rather than more leads to better performance.

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October 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

October 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

I worked hard for 17 years to find 1 success
I did well enough financially in my 20s and 30s to save money, invest, look after my families expenses, start a business, get married and travel the world. At 24 I had all the basics that a middle class South Delhi boy usually has - an education, a roof over his head, plenty of food to survive and unconditional love (thank you mom and dad!).

The U.S. Equity Market is Special
For starters, the U.S. economy is the largest in the world by GDP, and it is powered by a huge breadth of industries. It is highly developed, highly productive, and highly innovative. The U.S. also has multiple attractive conditions that provide domestic companies with competitive advantages. It’s not perfect, but we have a well-connected and reliable infrastructure and transportation system across the country. We have abundant natural resources. And we have (mostly) established legal and regulatory frameworks that make it possible to (mostly) reliably conduct business, and by extension, understand and forecast the value of those businesses.

Kenneth Stanley - Greatness Without Goals
My guest today is Ken Stanley. Ken is a Professor in Computer Science and a pioneer in the field of neuroevolution. He is also the co-author of a book called, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, which details a provocative idea that setting big, audacious goals can reduce the odds of achieving something great. We discuss that revelation in detail and how to apply it in our day-to-day lives. Please enjoy this great discussion with Ken Stanley.

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September 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

September 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

Why toilet paper keeps getting smaller and smaller
These days, a regular Charmin Ultra Soft roll, if you can find one, has 56 sheets. Even the roll they market as “Double” doesn’t have 170 sheets — it has 154. And the 1992 rolls are hardly the largest — the back of the package includes a note from parent company Procter & Gamble explaining these rolls have fewer sheets than a previous version.

How Will You Measure Your Life? By HBR
One of the theories that gives great insight on the first question—how to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.

Brain-driven prosthesis marks scientific advance for people with amputations
It’s a scientific advance that allows for a smoother gait and enhanced ability to navigate obstacles.
“This is the first prosthetic study in history that shows a leg prosthesis under full neural modulation, where a biomimetic gait emerges. No one has been able to show this level of brain control that produces a natural gait, where the human’s nervous system is controlling the movement, not a robotic control algorithm,” says Hugh Herr, a professor of media arts and sciences, co-director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT.

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August 2024 Roundup of what I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

August 2024 Roundup of what I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

Dr. Jim Loehr: Change the Stories You Tell Yourself
What if reaching the next level of success wasn't determined by another skill, degree, or course but by something that changed on the inside? 

New anti-ageing therapy extends life of mice by 25%
Scientists have discovered that deactivating a protein called IL-11 can extend the healthy lifespan of mice by nearly 25%, raising the potential for similar benefits in humans.

The Folly of Certainty
Sometimes things go as people expected, and they conclude that they knew what was going to happen. And sometimes events diverge from people’s expectations, and they say they would have been right if only some unexpected event hadn’t transpired. But, in either case, the chance for the unexpected – and thus for forecasting error – was present. In the latter instance, the unexpected materialized, and in the former, it didn’t. But that doesn’t say anything about the likelihood of the unexpected taking place.

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July 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

July 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

Howard Morgan: Insights from an Uber Successful Tech and VC Legend
Howard Morgan’s inimitable career began with his early and prescient interest in computers. In fact, Howard has been on email for 51 years! He is currently the Chair and General Partner of B Capital. He is considered one of the pioneers of early-stage investing, having co-founded First Round Capital alongside Josh Kopelman, which was the first professional seed stage fund and the first institutional investor in Uber.

Prior to First Round, Howard helped found Idealab with Bill Gross, and served as President of Renaissance Technologies, which he co-founded with Jim Simons. Renaissance Technologies is the best performing investment firm of all time, and its mysterious and famous Medallion Fund is considered to be the most successful fund ever.

A.I. Revolution
Can we harness the power of artificial intelligence to solve the world’s most challenging problems without creating an uncontrollable force that ultimately destroys us? ChatGPT and other new A.I. tools can now answer complex questions, write essays, and generate realistic-looking images in a matter of seconds. They can even pass a lawyer’s bar exam. Should we celebrate? Or worry? Or both? Correspondent Miles O’Brien investigates how researchers are trying to transform the world using A.I., hunting for big solutions in fields from medicine to climate change.

AI can restore the middle-class jobs lost to automation
AI is indeed changing the labor market, see the flood of news articles on layoffs happening in part due to companies’ priorities shifting to AI. Now a new working paper from Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor says that the shift presents a unique opportunity: AI could enable more workers to perform higher-stakes, decision-making tasks that are currently relegated to highly-educated workers such as doctors and lawyers.

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June 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

June 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening To

How Markets Respond to Geopolitical Crises - A Wealth of Common Sense
According to a survey by the CFA Institute, more than two-thirds of global investment professionals expect the geopolitical climate to affect investment returns over the next three to five years. And a full 70 percent of respondents expect these changes to negatively affect market performance. 

The Keys to Life
In 2014, Google acquired a little-known artificial intelligence (AI) research company. It paid around $600 million. It was considered a large sum at the time… especially for a startup that had only been around for a few years, had no real products, and very little revenue.

AI and Quantum Computing: Glimpsing the Near Future
Catch a glimpse of the near future as AI and Quantum Computing transform how we live. Eric Schmidt, decade-long CEO of Google, joins Brian Greene to explore the horizons of innovation, where digital and quantum frontiers collide to spark a new era of discovery.

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May 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

May 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

“Everything That Moves Will Become Robotic”
Horsepower. Raw horsepower. After watching NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech at NVIDIA’s GTC conference, I couldn’t help but think about it. 

While all of the GTC conferences have centered around artificial intelligence since 2015, this year stood out. It’s all about power this week — computing power… and having the “horses” to accelerate even faster.

Three things to remember in times like these
The key takeaway for me is that the economy is too good to expect a rapid cooling off anytime soon. The faster disinflationary fall we’d been enjoying since the middle of 2023 has now trampolined on us and the data is coming in warmer and warmer. When people are working, people are spending. Almost everyone is working. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Ed Thorp: Survival of the Fittest Mind
Are you incentivized to chase deals and put money to work, or is there time to follow curiosity and investigate thoroughly? What are you optimizing for: short-term returns or making good decisions?

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April 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

April 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

Should you confront your worries or try to banish them?

If you have a distressing thought, shoving it out of your mind will only work for so long. It will camp out in the unconscious, biding its time until it can emerge again, often through physical sensations, behaviors, emotions or dreams.

This Investor Raised Billions by Making Complicated Ideas Simple
Want to build influence with great ideas and simple writing? Look no further than Howard Marks. Most smart people use big words and plastic jargon to reinforce the barrier between themselves and “the common folk.” Howard, on the other hand, breaks down this barrier, and that’s why his ideas are so influential.

What is a Family Office and Why Does it Matter? by Ron Diamond
There are roughly 15,000 Family Offices around the globe which currently control approximately $10 trillion in assets. In comparison, there is only $6.5 trillion globally in the entire hedge fund world. But even more important than the size Family Offices currently are, we are about to experience the largest transfer of wealth in history.

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March 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

March 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

Why you, personally, should want a larger human population

Resources are not static. Historically, as we run out of a resource (whale oil, elephant tusks, seabird guano), we transition to a new technology based on a more abundant resource—and there are basically no major examples of catastrophic resource shortages in the industrial age.

Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out
Something’s changed in the past few decades. After the 1970s, American dynamism declined. Americans moved less from place to place. They stopped showing up at their churches and temples. In the 1990s, the sociologist Robert Putnam recognized that America’s social metabolism was slowing down.

Ancient Greek antilogic is the craft of suspending judgment
In Syracuse, 2,500 years ago, there was a famous teacher of rhetoric named Corax. This new discipline was in high demand: mastery of persuasive speaking, it was hoped, led to fame and wealth.

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February 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

February 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

Scientists Destroy Illusion That Coin Toss Flips Are 50–50
“We can be quite sure there is a bias in coin flips after this data set,” Bartoš says.

What happens to the brain during consciousness-ending meditation?
There’s a meditative state described in ancient Buddhist scriptures that is hard to imagine because it is not something – but nothing. Referred to as nirodha-samāpatti, it roughly translates as ‘the cessation of thought and feeling’, and it is the highest meditative state possible in Theravada Buddhism

This vibrating diet pill may trick the stomach into feeling full
Device cuts food consumption in pigs by 40%, but some experts say it’s unclear whether it will work for humans

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January 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

January 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What Will Happen In 2024
As we enter 2024, the capital markets have found their footing and are moving higher. The Fed has taken interest rates as far as they want at this time and inflation has come down. It seems that a “soft landing” is likely. That is good news for the innovation economy because healthy capital markets are a necessary support system.

Ice baths boost sex drive
A group of 17 male and 8 female Czech Army soldiers who participated in 2 min freezing cold water immersion, followed by light exercise for rewarming, reported improvements in sexual satisfaction, reduction in waist size, and reduction in anxiety, compared to controls.

Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You
From social disruptions like economic recessions, pandemics, and new technologies to individual disruptions like getting married, career transitions, and becoming a parent, we undergo change and transformation—both good and bad—regularly. Change is not the exception, it’s the rule. Yet we endlessly fight it, often viewing it as a threat to our stability and sense of self.

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December 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, and Listening To

December 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, and Listening To

The Roman Empire Fallacy - by Frederik Gieschen
Have you ever looked at the US and thought 'man, this looks a lot like the late stage Roman Empire'? Powerful but divided. Rich but corrupt. Glamorous but dysfunctional. A source of marvelous technological achievements but unable to build things as it used to. Ruled by incompetent politicians, owned by a small elite, its masses trapped by unsustainable debt and distracting themselves with endless mind-numbing entertainment.

Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes by Morgan Housel
Every investment plan under the sun is, at best, an informed speculation of what may happen in the future, based on a systematic extrapolation from the known past. Same as Ever reverses the process, inviting us to identify the many things that never, ever change. With his usual elan, Morgan Housel presents a master class on optimizing risk, seizing opportunity, and living your best life. 

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November 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

November 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results
Rationality is wasted if you don't know when to use it. What I've learned from watching real people in action is that, just like the angry CEO, they're often unaware circumstances are thinking for them. It's as if we expect the inner voice in our head to say, "STOP! THIS IS A MOMENT WHEN YOU NEED TO THINK!" And because we don't know we should be thinking, we cede control to our impulses. In the space between stimulus and response, one of two things can happen. You can consciously pause and apply reason to the situation. Or you can cede control and execute a default behavior.

Why a Failed Startup Might Be Good for Your Career After All

Go ahead and launch that venture. Even if it fails, the experience you gain will likely earn you a job that's more senior than those of your peers, says research by Paul Gompers.

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October 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

October 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:
How to Live an Asymmetric Life
Graham Weaver's narrative unfolds as a profound exploration of both investing and life, with a focus on the four essential principles that shape an asymmetric existence. Central to his message is the notion of writing one's own story – envisioning and pursuing dreams with unwavering determination. Living an asymmetric life, according to Weaver, means breaking free from fear and playing for the asymmetric upside in every aspect of existence

What I Am Watching:
The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics

Entropy is the tendency of energy to disperse and create disorder, and is intricately linked to Earth's existence. This video vividly explains the vital role played by the sun, which provides Earth with an invaluable stream of high-quality low entropy energy that allows for structure and temperature variations, fostering the conditions for life to flourish. It's a captivating journey into the science behind our planet's sustainability.

What I Am Listening:
"The Formula" by Albert-László Barabási

Too often, accomplishment does not equal success. We did the work but didn't get the promotion; we played hard but weren't recognized; we had the idea but didn't get the credit. We convince ourselves that talent combined with a strong work ethic is the key to getting ahead, but also realize that combination often fails to yield results, without any deeper understanding as to why. Recognizing this striking disconnect, the author, along with a team of renowned researchers and some of the most advanced data-crunching systems on the planet, dedicated themselves to one goal: uncovering that ever-elusive link between performance and success.

A conversation with Renaissance Technologies CEO Peter Brown

In this special episode, Peter Brown, CEO of Renaissance Technologies, talks about his career and building the hedge fund company. He also recounts how the firm navigated market crises such as the “quant quake” and the Global Financial Crisis, and describes how computer models and algorithms have long played a role in Renaissance’s growth.

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September 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

September 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

The Surprising Science of “Manifestation”
According to Oprah, manifesting is bringing something tangible into your life through attraction and belief. It encourages people to bring a goal to life by making vision boards, writing in manifestation journals, and speaking it into existence. Cue eye roll. However, as much as I hate to admit it, manifesting may have benefits—but not for the reasons self-help gurus say it does.

What I Am Watching:

DO IT TODAY: My philosophy for success, health, wealth, and happiness
Are you tired of putting things off and ready to make a change? Darius shares relatable anecdotes, practical tips, and actionable advice to help you overcome procrastination and start taking massive action. He shares strategies to boost productivity, improve well-being, and create a life filled with purpose and joy.

What I Am Listening:
Hexapodia L: Why Is Such a Good Economy Seen as Bad?

An episode on the puzzling disconnect between the U.S. economy's strong performance and the lackluster confidence of American consumers and voters. They explore various factors and they share insights from past economic experiences and discuss potential explanations for this discrepancy. Tune in to unravel the mystery of why many Americans are feeling down about an economy that, on paper, appears to be thriving.

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August 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

August 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

The hottest new programming language? Biology

mRNA is just one example of a synthetic biology technology. As we speak, people around the world are bending biology to all sorts of precise, ambitious, and (at times) controversial ends. A quick list: resurrecting wooly mammoths, reversing disease, growing meat in a lab, editing genes, producing waste-free materials.

The Secret Tool of Elite Athletes for Achieving your Career Goals

The difference between those who succeed and those who fail in their goals is the transformation of identity. "The act of stepping into a new identity that you're unfamiliar with is a surprisingly effective brain shortcut to change. The human mind is wired to protect its identities, even in the face of irrefutable contradicting facts…

The case for reading all of your emails, according to Tim Cook

“I religiously start looking at customer notes every morning, starting around 5 am or so,” he says. It’s not uncommon for him to forward them to other Apple employees, the feedback having sparked an idea.

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July 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

July 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

Scientists Reconstruct What You're Looking at by Enhancing Reflection in Your Eye

Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed an eerie technique that can reconstruct 3D images from the reflections in your eyes, by building on a neural network model called neural radiance fields (NeRF).

Astronomers detect largest cosmic explosion ever seen

The explosion is more than 10 times brighter than any recorded exploding star - known as a supernova.

The Impact of Stress on the Well-Being of Startup Founders

Startup Snapshot's insightful and provocative research sheds light on the big picture of founder mental health needs and solutions.

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June 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

June 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

Octopus time

“We humans are forward-facing, gravity-bound plodders. Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time?”

For when someone says “I’ve seen this before, it didn’t work”

“If you’re a founder you’ve probably heard someone say “oh, I’ve seen this idea before - it didn’t work” or “isn’t this just like that other thing that person/company X tried?”

As a founder, I heard this dozens of times. It’s likely to come from investors, but you hear it from other founders, potential employees, advisors, customers, even family members. Like it or not, pattern matching is strong.”

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May 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

May 2023 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently

Perception is the foundation of human experience, but few of us understand why we see what we do, much less how. By revealing the startling truths about the brain and its perceptions, Beau Lotto shows that the next big innovation is not a new technology: it is a new way of seeing.

In his first major book, Lotto draws on over two decades of pioneering research to explain that our brain didn't evolve to see the world accurately. It can't! Visually stunning, with entertaining illustrations and optical illusions throughout, and with clear and comprehensive explanations of the science behind how our perceptions operate, Deviate will revolutionize the way you see yourself, others and the world.

With this new understanding of how the brain functions, Deviate is not just an illuminating account of the neuroscience of thought, behavior, and creativity: it is a call to action, enlisting readers in their own journey of self-discovery.