Circle Three 68 / How Dare You Want More
It was a volatile week. Crypto collapsed, rebounded, and re-collapsed, projects started, some projects wrapped up, and I enjoyed a family reunion in Illinois.
At least the Phillies losing the World Series means no recession, right?
A few key thoughts from the week below.
Contents:
brain bites: Psychology & Health
Can we Make This Work?
brain bites: Business & Investing
FTX Collapsed
brain bites: Technology
What to Watch in AI
Lyric: How Dare You Want More by Bleachers
brain bites: psychology & health
Can we Make This Work? From Thoughts From a Bench, on working more than necessary. Here’s a key quote:
This often happens when we subconsciously believe that more hours = more value. We give ourselves more hours thinking we’ll get more done, but really what happens is we do about the same amount of work at a slower pace. It’s the inevitable outcome of Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
brain bites: business & investing
FTX Collapsed. Sam Bankman-Fried is no longer the hero of crypto. He is now the fastest person to lose $15 billion. There are plenty of posts — from the ludicrous to the infuriating to the informative — you can read, but here’s a blurb from our memo this week:
FTX was one of the leading companies in crypto globally, with its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried viewed as a figurehead of crypto, making an appearance on the cover of TIME and regularly lobbying in DC. Behind the scenes — and to the shock of even the most seasoned crypto veterans — it appears that FTX mismanaged customer assets, losing on the order of $10 billion by loaning customer funds to high-risk counterparties. This week when customers rushed to withdrawal funds, FTX couldn’t meet the withdrawal requests. New details come to light each day. At its core, FTX’s collapse is an unfortunate story of fear and greed.
brain bites: technology
What to Watch in AI. AI is a trend that’s worth following. After many years of promise, AI feels like its time is now. “The past year has seen a blossoming of new models and startups, along with increased public interest.” Of the ten trends to follow, the ‘digital twins’ (a topic from Circle Three v11) intrigued me most most:
“Digital twins” offer a transformative solution to this challenge. The basic concept is simple: generative machine learning models can simulate placebo outcomes for patients in clinical trials. This can be done at the individual patient level: a digital twin can be created for each human trial participant in the experimental arm of a trial, simulating how that individual would have performed had they instead been in the control arm.
Lyric: How Dare You Want More by Bleachers
I’m surprised it took me this long to have a Bleachers song here. Jack Antonoff is the lead singer and songwriter for Bleachers. He also formed FUN and is the genius behind today’s synth-pop sound, writing songs for artists from Taylor Swift to Lorde.
A friend told me this week “it’s okay to want more.” It reminded me of this song. Watch the live version here. It served as a helpful reminder: find a balance between wanting more and being grateful for what I have. But neither is wrong.
Who am I without this weight on my shoulder?
Oh God, I'm dying to know
But how dare you want more?
How dare you want more?
Preacher, preacher's callin' from the floor
Stay Curious,
Dan