Circle Three 78 / Love Again
Thursday night’s entertainment was dinner and a comedy show in Philly. I find myself still chuckling remembering one-liners. I’ve always laughed hardest at self-deprecating humor.
This week, How to Get New Ideas and Differentiation both attack <ideas> from different sides — how to get ideas, why ideas are increasingly valuable, and how ideas will help us change the world.
As always, reply with any thoughts or recommendations.
Contents:
brain bites: Psychology & Health
How to Get New Ideas
The 7 All-Time Most Controversial Psychological Experiments
brain bites: Business & Investing
Your Weekend Reading: Multi-Strat
Differentiation
brain bites: Technology
Amazon NFT Initiative Coming
Lyric: Love Again by Dua Lipa
brain bites: psychology & health
How to Get New Ideas. Someone put Paul Graham’s essays into an AI program and asked it “How to get new ideas?” He published his own response (the AI was just “ok”). Here’s a key quote:
Knowledge grows fractally. From a distance its edges look smooth, but when you learn enough to get close to one, you'll notice it's full of gaps. These gaps will seem obvious.
The 7 All-Time Most Controversial Psychological Experiments. I, like many, find these studies equal parts disturbing and fascinating to understand human nature. Even having these studies shows something about our desire to understand. Includes experiments on social media, the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, and others that reveal the nature of fear, power, feedback, and obedience.
brain bites: business & investing
Your Weekend Read: Multi-Strat. Hedge funds have earned a bad rap since 2008. It makes some sense — the S&P was tough to beat with an annual average gain of 8.5% per year.
But Erik Renander lays out three reasons to be positive on the industry as well as diving into how the industry has evolved: (1) it’s contrarian right now as capital flows to PE and VC, (2) finding value might now be starting to work, and (3) funds are now consistently making money the past three years, outperforming the market in 2022. I tend to agree with Erik that with uncertainty dominating the market, hedge funds might have a leg up in the coming years.
Differentiation. From Not Boring by Philly-native Packy McCormick. The publication sparked a few tangential thoughts. True differentiation can be intangible: it can merely be in customers’ minds that a product or service is different from a competitor’s. And differentiation is getting more difficult yet more important in companies, careers, and ideas.
“As the value of things you can teach or copy trends towards zero, the value of fresh new ideas increases.”
Scott Galloway also wrote recently on why new ideas are important:
“We aren’t going to shrink our way out of climate change, income inequality, or any crisis. The solution is more. Specifically, more people who generate ideas that make the world more productive — ideas that let us do more with less. Stanford economist Charles Jones has shown that what generates prosperity is, ultimately, ideas — and ideas are the product of brains. More brains, more ideas.
Appropriately, I saw this tweet this week that spoke to personal differentiation:
brain bites: technology
Amazon NFT Initiative Coming. The company announced the launch of a digital asset enterprise on Avalanche, a Layer 1 blockchain. Initial market reactions are positive, so we’ll see how a juggernaut like Amazon can establish a user base among the web3 crowd. It’s not entirely surprising after the recent hires and statements.
Lyric: Love Again by Dua Lipa
Love Again was featured on Netflix’s Song Exploder series. Anyone who has heard my thoughts on the show/podcast knows how I’ve loved both. For Dua Lipa, the interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and musical creativity revealed surprising layers beneath the pop music singer and songwriter.
The song includes three nuggets: Dua Lipa’s favorite line she’s ever written, a sample from Bing Crosby’s 1932 “My Woman,” and a non-standard structure (almost no structure).
Live version performed with Elton John here. Refrain below.
I can't believe, I can't believe
I finally found someone
I'll sink my teeth in disbelief
Cause you're the one that I want
I can't believe, I can't believe
I'm not afraid anymore
Goddamn, you got me in love again
Stay Curious,
Dan