P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #355
To make good decisions, avoid bad ones
my story 🚀
i’ve been thinking 💭
On January 1st, I woke up hangover-free and mostly recovered from a brief illness. I had a nagging thought. For several weeks since Charlie Munger died, I had a desire to find my copy of Poor Charlie’s Almanack. It had been packed away in a box some years ago during our move to Texas. When I found it, I also accidentally committed to spending several hours with it that day. It was The Psychology of Human Misjudgment that I was really excited about. Munger had, for decades, done his own study of the various ways that humans consistently make wrong-headed decisions. If this sounds like the field of behavioral economics, it’s because it kinda is — except that he seems to have developed it independently from folksy wisdom rather than quantitative research. Later on, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky would provide the foundational research that formed the basis of the field. Munger’s approach grouped human misjudgments into 25 tendencies, which he chronicles with his witty style and plenty of examples. In discussing the Authority-Misinfluence Tendency (#22), he writes:
Other versions of confused instructions from authority figures are tragic. In World War II, a new pilot for a general, who sat beside him in the copilot’s seat, was so anxious to please his boss that he misinterpreted some minor shift in the general’s position as a direction to do some foolish thing. The pilot crashed the plane and became a paraplegic.
Well, naturally, cases like this one get the attention of careful thinkers like Boss Buffett, who always acts like an overquiet mouse around his pilots.
While I decided to fish out my paper book to read it, the full, revised, Psychology of Human Misjudgment is available online. I found it a delightful way to start my year.
fun facts 🙌
How pirates of the Caribbean hijacked America’s metric system. In the late 1700s, America needed standardized weights and measures because each state was running its own wild show. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote to his contacts in France requesting a standardized kilogram weight. The ship it was on blew off course and was captured by pirates. ~ learn more
Ocean shipping is getting wild again. This is a LinkedIn post by Flexport founder Ryan Petersen. “85% of container ships that would’ve transited the Red Sea are now going around the southern tip of Africa as of this morning.” ~ learn more
Spite houses. Humans are funny. “A spite house is a building constructed or substantially modified to irritate neighbors or any party with land stakes. Because long-term occupation is not the primary purpose of these houses, they frequently sport strange and impractical structures.” ~ learn more
The hourly costs of entertainment. Take the monthly cost and the monthly number of hours and you get average cost per hour. Xbox Live is estimated at $0.25/hr while Spotify is $1.57/hr. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
You are not late. This was written 10 years ago and is likely just as true today. “Right now, today, in 2014 is the best time to start something on the internet. There has never been a better time in the whole history of the world to invent something. There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside, than now. Right now, this minute.” ~ learn more
Massive step in democratizing venture capital. Balaji Srinivasan, crypto pioneer and venture investor at a16z, launched a new venture fund. It’s relatively unique because it’s a, “506(c) fund (an alternative to Rule 506(b)) which means you can raise your fund in public and leverage press in advance to help attract Limited Partners to invest.” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
Information and entropy, and why data is not information. I’ve always struggled to truly understand Information Theory, and this article helped me get a bit closer. “Before finding my way to startups, I was a quantum physicist. One of the most fundamental concepts we learn in physics is entropy. Computer scientists often call entropy by another name – information. Importantly, information is not the same thing as data.” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
Marilyn's guide to a healthy old age. “Over the years I have been blessed by good health. I am 92 and did not really have any illness until a few years ago. In addition, I have always been very active and energetic all these years. IN RESPONSE TO THE REQUESTS OF MY BELOVED CHILDREN, GRANDCHILDREN, AND GREAT GRANDCHILDREN, I feel the obligation to share my success with the many people who have requested the “secrets” of my endurance, positive recovery and healthy aging in light of my age as of this writing.” ~ learn more
Why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about it. “In 1953, aged 27, Paul Janssen set up the research laboratory on the third floor of his parents’ Belgian drug import firm from where he would grow his eponymous pharmaceutical company. In the years between the 50s and 90s when he was most active, Janssen and his team developed over 70 new medicines, many of which are still in use today. Such prolificacy is unlikely to be repeated any time soon; if current trends hold, a drug discovery scientist starting their career today is likely to retire without ever having worked on a single drug that makes it to market.” ~ learn more
Dexcom’s new CGM for non-insulin users. What started as a lifesaving device for insulin users is continuing to become more accessible. “Dexcom is unveiling Stelo as competitor Abbott has launched a direct-to-consumer program using a CGM for people without diabetes. The program, called Lingo, is currently available in the U.K., but Abbott has said it planned to file in the U.S. by the end of 2023.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
Drone delivery coming to Walmart customers in Dallas, TX. “We’ve been delivering to homes throughout Pea Ridge, AR for 2 years in partnership with Walmart, and have been blown away by how much customers love being able to get anything they need in just a few minutes.” ~ learn more
Rory Sutherland interview. The author of Alchemy built a career applying the practical outcomes of behavioral economics. “Join Daniel and Rory for a fascinating conversation exploring Rory’s key learnings from a lifetime in marketing, why he co-founded a behavioral science unit at the agency [Ogilvy], and how the small changes can make the biggest impact.” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Wound healing affected by perception of time passing. This is a wild research study that found participants’ wounds healed faster when the clock ran slower. Everybody had 28 minutes of real time. “More than a third of participants had almost completely healed by the end of the time period when they believed the session had lasted 56 minutes - more than double the percentage of those who experienced the same healing by the end of what they thought was a 14-minute session.” ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
Why Tic-Tacs can claim to be sugar-free. It’s not because they have no sugar. It’s because they’re formulated with just the right amount of sugar to round down to zero and make the claim. ~ learn more
Are we heading for a shortage of cocoa? “Heavier-than-usual rainfall during the past three to six months in the main cocoa-producing countries of West Africa … could impact the chocolate industry due to a shortage of its main ingredient…” ~ learn more