We'll get through this, together 🤝
In the midst of alarming infection rates in India, some insights on how the world is, how it could be, and the human condition. This is Issue #013 of Forward.
Hi. If you’ve found the time to read this, we hope you and your loved ones are currently safe. We understand that a significant portion of our readers are based in India, and given the alarming increase in COVID19 cases and the corresponding strain on the country’s medical infrastructure, we hope you’re taking every precaution possible.
Please look after yourself, your loved ones, and your immediate community. And most importantly, get vaccinated as soon as possible.
We’ll get through this, together.
Tell them you’re ‘languishing.’
If you’re in a part of the world where the pandemic is making life difficult, it must be difficult to capture how you feel and express it to others. Still, putting a name to your state of mind and vocalizing it is more important than ever. The New York Times helpfully defines the joyless, uninspired existence many currently dwell in as ‘languishing.’ A term you can use to answer when someone asks “How are you?”, and perhaps find a common connection.
It’s okay not to be “excellent” or “thriving” sometimes. It’s okay to be “languishing.”
Build worlds, not products
All this time in isolation has led to an extraordinary outburst in creative endeavor. More people are building than ever before, and aided by more technological leverage than ever before. If you’re building too, Alex Danco has some pointers on how most things worth building (and selling) are not singular parts, but complex systems. To sell a system, whether it’s a new product feature or that new e-book, you need to build a world around it that captures every facet of how its inhabitants — the stakeholders you’re selling to — will interact with it. It’s a fascinating, complex idea worth thinking about, so we’ll leave it to Alex to explain it.
“Dancing on a knife’s edge.”
Stock market hype groups, YOLO (You Only Live Once) investing, and speculative bets based on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) are all around us. It’s easy to get the impression that there’s easy money to be had everywhere, and anyone not diving in headfirst and making a killing is an idiot.
While there’s probably never been an easier time to invest in the capital markets, doing so without paying heed to the state of the economy [11 min video] is not something we recommend. Unless your friendly online stock hype group does the same level of market research as Ray Dalio, that is.
While Dalio is raising concern about the economy, Michael Burry — whom you may know from The Big Short — has been specifically hinting that the hype-fuelled market may be “dancing on a knife’s edge.”
Burry — who accurately predicted the housing crisis fuelled market fall in 2008 — even cryptically changed his Twitter name to ‘Cassandra,’ the Greek goddess known for making accurate prophecies that no one heeded, before deleting his account entirely. Take from that what you will [11 min]. 🤷♀️
An antifragile system
We’re sometimes asked why there is cause to be bullish about Bitcoin. Hopefully, the two videos in the section above provide some answers. That’s not to say that Bitcoin is the silver bullet that’ll solve everything, but it is based on some strong fundamentals, like the distributed ledger — or blockchain, as it’s popularly known. To begin with, here’s an interesting insight into ledgers:
Now that we’ve established the fundamentals of the blockchain, it’s probably a good time to tune into this conversation between Patrick OShaughnessy and Chris Dixon on the potential of the blockchain: This podcast covers Chris's overall thesis for investing in the cryptocurrency space, the opportunities and limitations of blockchain applications, and why this is the most interesting area for investing and building over the next 10 years.
Looping it back to the previous section about the economy, we can safely say that such a centralized, trust-based system is ‘fragile.’ Bitcoin as a system, on the other hand — debates about transaction costs, network speeds, and ecological impact aside — is largely ‘antifragile.’
Something to think about, isn’t it?
Will the ‘rich’ leave us behind?
It’s easy to see the grand exploits of the world’s billionaires — attempting to colonize Mars, upload consciousness to computers, or reverse aging — as steps forward for humanity as a whole. But there’s also the sobering thought to consider that maybe, just maybe, all of us regular folks are not part of the larger plan.
“The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively.”
In a related thought experiment, Noah Smith argues that Bitcoin, in some ways, could be a hedge against this eventuality as well.
🔗 Bitcoin is upending the world of the rich [Paywalled article 🔒]
“When the phone was tied with a wire — humans were free.”
Stuff we loved this week
We love interesting, well-articulated thought experiments about plausible futures (this newsletter is named Forward for a reason). The latest comes from the ever-reliable Balaji S, on… starting a new country. “The network state is built cloud-first, land last. Rather than starting with the physical territory, we begin with a digital community.” We’re not even going to try and summarise this one. Just grab a cuppa, and give it a read.
Jeff Bezos is an under=appreciated writer. His 2020 letter to Amazon shareholders contains many nuggets of wisdom most of us could do well to incorporate into our lives. Here’s one we liked:
The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen. — Jeff Bezos
"If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with." — Jeff Bezos
We have a book recommendation this week — Richer, Wiser, Happier by William Green. We’re all in this to build wealth, and in his interviews with some of the world’s best investors, Green unlocks great models to think about money… and life.
"There are no prizes for frenetic activity. Investing is mostly a matter of waiting for these rare moments when the odds of making money vastly outweigh the odds of losing it."
Food for thought
Yuval Noah Harari did not really tell readers anything new about anthropology in his bestseller Sapiens. He just told it better than anyone else. Morgan Housel believes whether you’re explaining something, or building worlds like we explained in the first section of today’s newsletter, stories are helpful tools. And as Game of Thrones taught us in the most long-winded way possible — the best story wins.
By this point in this newsletter, we wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve begun to question the meaning of life and what the future holds. To help anchor you in place, here are Kevin Kelly’s 68 bits of unsolicited advice.
We’re never trusting all-purpose glue again.
In these tough times, we’re reminded of a striking excerpt from anthropologist Margaret Mead found in palliative care physician Ira Byock’s book The Best Care Possible. This famous excerpt captures Mead’s response when a student asked her what she considered the first sign of ‘civilization’ in culture:
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink, or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety, and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts. We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.
We’ve done this before. We’ll get through this, together.
That’s the end of this issue of Forward. Please remember to take precautions and prioritize your physical and mental health.
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Until next time,
Your friends at NEO