A Few Things: Predictions on Future of Tech, Why Do So Few People Want Children, ILTB & Lee Ainslie, Secrets of Happy Families, How Not To Be Stupid, Making Good Decisions, Gartner AI Hype Cycle....
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A Few Things: Predictions on Future of Tech, Why Do So Few People Want Children, ILTB & Lee Ainslie, Secrets of Happy Families, How Not To Be Stupid, Making Good Decisions, Gartner AI Hype Cycle....
August 25, 2023
Hi, I’m Ahmed Husain, curator of A Few Things. Every week, I share my view on developments across markets, technology and being a better human. I advise and work with global family offices and investors looking to understand the world and find investment opportunities.
You can check out last week’s edition here: Galloway on the Future, Saudi and Sports, Hyper Individualisation, 4K Weeks on Peter Attita, Kuppy on Markets & Inflation, Meta's Chatbots, Future of Manufacturing, News You Missed....
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Have a great weekend!
Quotes I Am Thinking About:
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
- Will Rogers
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
- Steven Covey
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.
- Stephen Hawking
We don't rise to the level of our dreams, instead we fall to the level of our training
- Plutarch
It's never to late to give up your prejudices
- Thoreau
A. A Few Things Worth Checking Out:
1. I am a Scott Galloway fan. He presented his Provocative Predictions for the Future. It’s probably the best thing I’ve seen in a while so sharing it a 2nd time.
Lots of content and my 3 takeaways are:
Income inequality has reached epidemic proportions. Great example of Disney's parks highlighting what’s happening worldwide. Their dated theme parks are turning into high margin businesses by people who pay $5,000-7,000 for the VIP tours and get to cut the line and go on the rides as many times as they like.
And related analogy of luxury and companies like LVMH and the artificial scarcity prevalent in the industry or same scarcity created by the higher education industry. All of this drives value to the incumbents versus the new. You can build huge businesses targeting the 0.1%.
Loved the bit about Tesla not disrupting the auto industry but the gas station industry which was just a poor customer experience even though the typical US consumer spends a cumulative 10,000 hours at the gas station in their life time.
AI isn’t hype. The usage drivers for most us will be Convenience and Personalisation.
He thinks the biggest opportunity for AI is inside Healthcare….the largest disruptable industry and goes through a lot of examples. But equally AI could really screw up our relationships particularly the romantic kind.
Sports brands are going to be even more global. The top sports franchises will become more & more valuable as they tap into emotions, benefits from live viewing.
Worth checking the Economist piece last week on Saudi Arabia and sports and how countries are getting in on the game is usually played by the ultra rich.
Caveat: I wouldn’t follow Scott’s market predictions, but he’s got an eye for social dynamics since he’s a marketing professor.
2. Malcolm Collins is a pro-natalist, Stanford MBA graduate, venture capitalist and an author. He asks some big questions. What would the world look like if the global population was only 500 million people? Given the current birth rate projections, we’re approaching a massive collapse. If you think a planet with too many people on it is bad, a planet with too few is even worse.
He was on the Modern Wisdom podcast, discussing big questions such as:
Why do so few people actually want to have kids in 2023?
Are prosperity, equality, education and fertility are incompatible with each other
Is there a moral obligation to have children, and what are the implications of using new technology for gene-editing & birthing via artificial wombs and much more...
He wrote this deep and thoughtful book, I skimmed through it and don’t agree with all of it.
But I did get the following thoughts from it:
Think deeper about the intergenerational future of my family. What should be the culture of our family to maximise for human flourishing? Do we believe in descendant or ancestor worship?
What is the information we are embedding into our culture and customs that will be passed down across generations. How is it being communicated? Or is each generation starting from scratch or swayed by the ideas of the time?
I actually find richer, more affluent families who have lasted across generations think about this stuff a lot more than others.
3. Love reading articles where someone has packed in acquired wisdom from a life lived, and this one is packed with goodies - 100 things I know.
I know the value of tangible memories. Print photos and send them to people. (Such a nice thing to slip into a thank you note, as I learned from my newlywed friends who sent pictures of me & guests from their wedding)
If you’re in an argument that’s going in circles, suggest switching roles: “I make your point, and you make mine.” It helps with empathy, yes, but also brings humor and levity to a strained situation.
I know that finding time to read won’t happen as long as you have your phone handy. a book wherever you go. For unexpected wait times, it beats scrolling around your phone (and you can feel superior to those who do so ;)
4. Invest Like The Best spoke to Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital. Lee started his investing career at Tiger Management where he worked for Julian Robertson. In 1993, he left to start Maverick and has built the firm into one of the top-performing hedge funds of the last 30 years.
Lee doesn’t speak in public often so this is a fascinating insight into what it takes to build an enduring investment business - both psychologically and operationally.
It’s full of wisdom, including how they discovered Nvidia early.
The best bits are:
(00:07:22) - The concept behind investment talent
(00:13:08) - Steps he takes to hire the right individuals for his team
(00:25:16) - How Maverick maintains its edge over other comparable firms
(00:28:31) - Features of a business that get his attention in a unique way
(00:38:21) - The difficult aspects of portfolio construction
(00:59:33) - Things he tells his team to watch for
(01:12:38) - Advice for senior executives trying to pass on responsibilities to others
(01:17:54) - What the next ten years for Maverick Capital look like
(01:20:42) - Things Lee and Warren Buffett disagree on
(01:24:11) - The components of a great investment pitch
5. If you are trying to be healthier or lose weight, here are easy ways to expend energy according to NPR.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) refers to energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise.
Examples of NEAT includes using a standing desk, walking to work or parking far away from buildings, cleaning the house, or fidgeting while sitting down.
6. The Secrets of Happy Families
This is a great quick read about having happier families. My kids are 10 and 12 now and I think about maximising this often.
We used some of the tool and techniques on our holiday and the kids enjoyed it.
Three ideas I got out of it:
Good weekend conversation with the kids: What went right this week, what didn’t, what will you work on next week?
Great vacation discussions: What words describe our family, what’s important to our family, what are the strengths of our family, what saying best capture our family?
Language and Space: Know your love languages (important even as a couple), ask kids how they would want to improve their room, how can you re-arrange the home to bring the family closer together?
B. How Not To Be Stupid
Adam Robinson is one of my favourite people and I’ve shared his work before.
Adam has done many things. In his youth he was an accomplished Chess player (a US Chess Federation life master!), he co-founded the Princeton Review, then spent a lot of time in AI and today he advises the heads of the large hedge funds on markets.
His unpublished book: How Not To Be stupid, which he wrote as a birthday gift for Warren Buffett even has a quote from Buffett, which is rare for Buffett to give.
He said: “How Not to Be Stupid is loaded with good ideas, and appropriate warnings.”
What is stupidity and how do we avoid it?
Adam’s definition: “stupidity is overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information”.
In other words, if something is crucial, it’s very important. If it’s conspicuous, it’s easily available and probably I already know it. Therefore it is stupid if I overlook or dismiss very important and easily available information which I already know.
In his research Adam Robinson identified 7 factors which cause errors or stupidity. These are:
being outside of your circle of competence, or outside your normal environment,
physical or emotional stress, or fatigue,
rushing or a sense of urgency,
fixation on an outcome, or doing a task that requires intense focus,
information overload,
being in the presence of a group, where social cohesion comes into play, and
being in the presence of an authority or expert, even if you are the expert.
Alone, each of these factors influence us powerfully to make mistakes. When the factors are piled together there is a dramatic increase in the odds that “you are unaware that you’ve been cognitively compromised,” according to Adam Robinson.
How can we avoid being stupid:
To start, be particularly aware of the risk of error when one or more of those 7 factors are present. For example, defer decisions until rested, and not rushed.
Create habits, routines, systems that prevent cognitive overload and lead to stupidity. For example, to-do lists for the following day prepared the night before, or writing things down rather than trying to remember them.
Limit multi-tasking.
You can start to go deeper with this Farnam Street decision Adam had with Shane Parrish.
C. Confidence and Decision Making:
Most of us are paid to make decisions. Ideally good ones and hopefully great ones.
How can we make better decision? Step 1 is to not be stupid, and we discussed that above. The next is to see the world clearly.
Peter Atwater is a researcher, speaker (you might have seen him on CNBC), and author known for his work on the relationship between confidence and decision-making, especially in the context of financial markets and social behaviour. He’s also an adjunct professor of economics at Williams and Mary University.
His work seeks to understand how shifts in confidence impact our preferences, decisions, and actions. This is particularly important if you want to behave rationally and take advantage of the market’s irrational behaviour and manias.
He’s written two books: The Confidence Map and Moods & Markets.
Based on his latest book, here are a few suggestions to make better decisions:
Awareness of Confidence Levels: Recognise that your mood and confidence level can influence your decisions. Be self-aware, so you can attempt to counterbalance any overly optimistic or pessimistic biases that might skew your judgment.
Expand Time Horizons: In times of low confidence, our perspective can become short-term and myopic. Try to think long-term, to can prevent making decisions purely based on immediate emotions or circumstances.
Seek Diverse Opinions: Surround yourself with people who have different viewpoints, especially if you're at an extreme end of the confidence spectrum. By considering diverse opinions, you can counteract some of the natural biases that come with high or low confidence.
Review Past Decisions: Reflect on past decisions, especially those made during periods of extreme confidence or lack thereof. Understanding the outcomes and the mindset you were in can help calibrate future decisions.
Avoid Herd Mentality: Recognise societal and market-wide confidence levels when herd mentality prevails. Being aware of this can allow you to step back and assess whether the prevailing sentiment is leading to rational or irrational decisions.
Limit Emotional Reactivity: Emotions influence decision-making, especially during periods of low or high confidence. Practice mindfulness or other emotional regulation techniques, to make decisions that are less influenced by immediate emotional reactions.
You can get a good idea of his work on this Hidden Forces podcast titled: How Confidence Determines the Choices We Make.
D. The Technology Section:
1. If you have a large body of work, and want to have your chat bot trained on your writing, Chatbase is a good starter option. I tried it on A Few Things. Its fast and easy to use.
2. This is from the Mid-Year Memo from my friends at Innovius Capital. Makes you wonder how many down rounds lie ahead:
3. What’s new in AI according to the Gartner Hype cycle.
Believe it or not, that “♡ Like” button is a big deal – it serves as a proxy to new visitors of this publication’s value. If it was helpful to you, if you got value out of reading it, please let others know.