Nothing You Cant Do

As you know I tend to collect junk mail that I am randomly sent – I am always interested in what people have to say about various bits and pieces. I am particularly interested in the material sent out by professional money managers. It must be difficult to justify taking money off people when you…

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Entitlement

As you know I am a believer in luck being a powerful driver in the trajectory of one’s life. Matters out of your control such as which vagina you get shot out of and what colour you come out dictate the opportunities presented to you. Granted there are exceptional individuals who defy the odds presented…

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Innovating in Bets

Every organization, whether small or big, early or late stage — and every individual, whether for themselves or others — makes countless decisions every day, under conditions of uncertainty. The question is, are we allowing that uncertainty to bubble to the surface, and if so, how much and when? Where does consensus, transparency, forecasting, backcasting,…

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Against Cheerfulness

I once ended up at a Boy Scout ceremony in the northeast United States, where I inhaled the American spirit unfiltered. The boys’ uniforms had Stars-and-Stripes patches sewn on next to their badges. We recited the Pledge of Allegiance in front of an oversize US flag, and we prayed to America’s vague God, giving thanks…

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The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

The bet was on, and it was over the fate of humanity. On one side was the Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich. In his 1968 best seller, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich insisted that it was too late to prevent a doomsday apocalypse resulting from overpopulation. Resource shortages would cause hundreds of millions of starvation deaths within a…

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The Three Levels of Self Awareness

Self-awareness is like great sex: everyone thinks they have a ton of it, but in reality no one knows what the fuck they’re doing. The fact is that the majority of our thoughts and actions are on autopilot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Our habits, routines, impulses, and reactions carry us through our lives…

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