SD#70: Harmony, growth, and luck
September 03, 2023
Welcome to the 70 edition of Seven Dawns, a weekly newsletter by me, Tomas Ausra, with a focus on getting better every day. A very warm welcome to the new subscribers who joined since last week. I’m glad you’re here.
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Hi friends,
Opposites. Do they attract? Or do they repulse? Like magnets with different fields, the nature of opposition can be beneficial and detrimental to what we do. Only after compiling today’s newsletter, I realised two pieces describe similar things from completely different sides. I’ll let you make your own view on which one to believe. After all, F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
🔎 Our seven ideas this week:
1. Reform movements bring out two types of bad actors within them – Baptists and Bootleggers Historically, every new technology that matters, from electric lighting to automobiles to radio to the Internet, has sparked a moral panic – a social contagion that convinces people the new technology is going to destroy the world, society, or both. The fine folks at Pessimists Archive have documented these technology-driven moral panics over the decades; their history makes the pattern vividly clear. It turns out this present panic is not even the first for AI. It is certainly the case that many new technologies have led to bad outcomes – often the same technologies that have been otherwise enormously beneficial to our welfare. So it’s not that the mere existence of a moral panic means there is nothing to be concerned about. But a moral panic is by its very nature irrational – it takes what may be a legitimate concern and inflates it into a level of hysteria that ironically makes it harder to confront serious concerns. Economists have observed a longstanding pattern in reform movements of this kind. The actors within movements like these fall into two categories – “Baptists” and “Bootleggers” – drawing on the historical example of the prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920’s “Baptists” are the true believer social reformers who legitimately feel – deeply and emotionally, if not rationally – that new restrictions, regulations, and laws are required to prevent societal disaster. For alcohol prohibition, these actors were often literally devout Christians who felt that alcohol was destroying the moral fabric of society. For AI risk, these actors are true believers that AI presents one or another existential risks – strap them to a polygraph, they really mean it. “Bootleggers” are the self-interested opportunists who stand to financially profit by the imposition of new restrictions, regulations, and laws that insulate them from competitors. For alcohol prohibition, these were the literal bootleggers who made a fortune selling illicit alcohol to Americans when legitimate alcohol sales were banned. For AI risk, these are CEOs who stand to make more money if regulatory barriers are erected that form a cartel of government-blessed AI vendors protected from new startups and open source competition – the software version of “too big to fail” banks. 👉 A16z |
2. Pursuing a goal is more fulfilling than attaining it During the Trojan War, the Warrior King Odysseus left his cushy life in Ithaca and sailed to Troy. The entire voyage took him a decade and he hit every red light, pothole and traffic jam you can think of. Shit hit the fan when Odysseus was nearing the end of his voyage. He was so close to Ithaca and his beloved wife Penelope that he could literally see the smokestacks from his family’s bonfires. So, Odysseus decided to lie down for a snooze. Somewhere along the way on Odysseus’ journey, a god by the name of Aelous gifted him an oxhide sack that housed the adverse winds. While the king was counting sheep, a jack-ass got the bright idea to open Odysseus’s oxhide sack, certain the King was stashing away gold. And so the moron slashed open the oxhide and the adverse winds whipped out like sprawling serpents, sending the sleeping Odysseus and his crew skirting back across the planet to Troy. Imagine waking up from your nap, thinking you’re about to make love to your wife whom you haven’t seen in a decade, only to find you are thousands of miles away, back at the place where you had first begun your journey on the other side of the planet? When deep in the throes of a creative endeavour, it’s only human to let off the gas when the finish line is in sight. The reason we do this can be explained through psychology. Psychologists have found that pursuing a goal is more fulfilling than attaining it. Artists, writers, creatives, musicians and entrepreneurs are notorious for taking a project 70%, 80% and sometimes 90% to the finish line and then abandoning it suddenly for another project. We can’t simply shrug this behaviour off as “quitting”. There’s more at play than this. The reason creative people struggle with finishing creative projects isn’t because they’re “quitters” but because they are more incentivised by the process than the completion. 👉 Honey Copy |
3. From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony. The cosmos works by the harmony of tensions If a guitar string is wound too slack, it buzzes and makes no note. If it’s wound too tight, it’ll snap. Either way, no music. There is a proper tension that makes the string sing. And so it is with tension in creative work: we can’t avoid it, we can only find the proper tension. “Paradox” is a term that has, surprisingly, been used more in business books than creativity books. In Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis’s book, they differentiate and define tensions, dilemmas, and paradoxes. They see most of the dilemmas we come across as made up of tensions that are the result of underlying paradoxes. The way to get through these dilemmas is to set aside the forced choice of either/or thinking and embrace “both/and” thinking, by acknowledging the tension and understanding the paradox beneath it. They had two metaphors that are interesting solutions to some dilemmas. First is the mule: you take two opposites and breed them together to produce a weird hybrid. Second, is the tightrope walker, who moves forward by shifting ever so slightly in opposite directions. Sometimes these two overlap: while tightrope walking, you discover a mule, etc. 👉 Austin Kleon |
4. Don’t let good luck put you on a pedestal, but don’t let bad luck knock you down either Stephen King used to write some of his books under a different name. They barely sold until his secret got discovered and the books skyrocketed in sales. King’s foray into undercover writing reveals (as well as J.K. Rowling’s) a harsh truth about success and social status — winners keep winning. This idea is formally known as cumulative advantage, or the Matthew effect, and explains how those who start with an advantage relative to others can retain that advantage over long periods of time. This effect has also been shown to describe how music gets popular, but applies to any domain that can result in fame or social status. The Matthew effect explains how two people can start in nearly the same place and end up worlds apart. In these kinds of systems, initial conditions matter. And as time goes on, they matter more and more. When you realise the magnitude of happenstance and serendipity in your life, you can stop judging yourself on your outcomes and start focusing on your efforts. It’s the only thing you can control. 👉 Of Dollars and Data |
5. Meeting strangers and experiencing novel environments is fundamental to human growth The comfortable and the familiar are the harbingers of weakness and fear. Without rejection and awkwardness, you won’t experience victory or true satisfaction … that you’ve achieved something. Greatness is in the agency of others, as is true reward. A common saying in youth: “Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.” This was mostly true, as the “after” part usually involved (more) alcohol and chasing a high and an environment that peaked at midnight. The chase, if repeated too often, can begin to impair your ability to register progress during the day, which is key to your success at night. Simply put … it’s all about what you do during the day. I believe this should be modified for a post-Covid world to “it’s all about what you do outside of the home.” The point of differentiation between those making a living and those having a significant impact will, I believe, be a function of their success in the physical presence of others. The only way you will be loved by others, get to love them, and live the life you deserve is to take uncomfortable risks. Today the risks are mundane but offer greater returns. Say yes, go to the second place, and be promiscuous when it comes to expressing your regard, interest, and love for others. You will experience disappointment, sore muscles, hangovers, and awkward moments. And looking back, you will regret none of it. Say yes. 👉 No Mercy / No Malice |
6. Is it too safe? When most people think about war, they think about senseless killing, brutality, violence and horror. But when journalist Sebastian Junger thinks about war — even though he has witnessed first-hand how war is all of those things — he also thinks about meaning, purpose, brotherhood and community. It’s why, he posits, so many veterans miss war when they return home. As Junger argues, war gives people all of the things that religion aspires to impart to people and often fails. War, he says, delivers. Junger was a war correspondent for many decades. His reporting on the front lines of Afghanistan was captured in his best-selling book, War, and was made into an Academy Award winning documentary, Restrepo, which follows a platoon of U.S. soldiers in one of the bleakest, most dangerous outposts in Afghanistan. Through his raw, unfiltered, on-the-ground reporting, perhaps no one has done more to illuminate the full picture and reality of war. One of those realities is that men seek and need danger. They have a deep desire to prove their valour. They find community and meaning in crisis. And yet, much of the Western world lives without any kind of high-stakes, high-risk danger at all. It is, of course, a great blessing we don’t live in constant crisis. But our comfort, safety and affluence, he argues, come with unexamined costs. 👉 The Free Press |
7. Some of the most vicious traps occur when two admirable traits mix in the wrong way and create something dangerous A little cool air from the north is no big deal. A little warm breeze from the south is pleasant. But when they mix together over Missouri you get a tornado. Two calm water currents are not a problem. But if opposing currents meet, you get a deadly whirlpool. This same thing happens with personality traits. Bubbles happen when confidence (a good trait), optimism (a good trait), and trust (generally good) mix to form greed and delusion. The reason bubbles are so common is that the inputs are mostly innocent, even if the output is lunacy and destruction. So many things are like that. Some of the most vicious traps occur when two admirable traits mix in the wrong way and create something dangerous. They’re the hardest flaws to identify and fix. Take patience and confidence. They both sound great. But mixed together they often form stubbornness, which is a disaster. Confidence that you’re right permits you to ignore signs that you’re wrong, and patience gives you permission to extend that denial indefinitely. Or curiosity and boldness. They are wonderful on their own, but combined can easily create impulsiveness. 👉 Collab fund |
👨🏫 Quote of the week:
“Our ability to make the most out of uncertainty is what creates the most potential value. We should be fueled not by a desire for a quick catharsis but by intrigue. Where certainty ends, progress begins.”
Ozan Varol
Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.
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Speak soon,
Tom