The biggest mistake investors make is that they think about technology adoption as linear, when in reality it follows an S-curve. The early part of the S-curve looks like nothing is happening, and then suddenly everything happens at once, and then it plateaus. Most investors are either too early and give up, or they extrapolate the steep part of the curve forever.
The failure mode that I've seen in technology investing over my career is people who are trained on a particular way that technology markets work, and they can't break free of it. They have a very successful decade, typically, where they nail one cycle, and then the next cycle they try to map the old framework onto the new one, and that's where the mistakes get made.
The feeds on Instagram are often driven by algorithms and what you search. So here I am, I've been a physician for 20-plus years, I know the data on statins, and I'm starting to think maybe I don't need a statin. And then I'm getting more doctors' feeds that are saying you don't need to be on a statin.
For many of us, forgetting a name or losing your keys feels like a small failure. But what if forgetting is actually one of the most important things your brain does?
Most people assume that creativity is a fixed trait — you either have it or you don't. But research suggests that creativity is less like a gift and more like a muscle: it can be developed, strengthened, and yes, sometimes exhausted.
Information isn't knowledge. Remember the phrase TMI? Do people still say that? Too much information. Typically, we would say it about what? We'd say it about someone's giving you too much personal information. Makes you feel awkward. Maybe a little anxious. Well, TMI also is around health. Too much information, when you're searching for your symptoms, actually can create anxiety, can actually be dangerous.
Most people think about creativity as something that just strikes you — like a bolt of lightning. But research suggests that creativity is less about sudden inspiration and more about the associations your brain makes between concepts. The more unusual and distant those associations, the more creative the idea.
Most people think about creativity as a gift — something you either have or you don't. But research suggests that creativity is less like a trait and more like a muscle: it can atrophy if you don't use it, and it can grow stronger with practice.
I think the most important lesson I've learned is that the ability to change your mind is probably one of the most important traits an investor can have. People confuse consistency and stubbornness, and they also are worried about how they look if they change their views.
Psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis explores the hidden mental processes that lead to these moments of inspiration, and why breakthroughs often emerge when the mind is at rest.
Most people think that creativity is something you either have or you don't — that it's a fixed trait, like eye color. But researchers who study creativity say this belief is not only wrong, it may actually be preventing people from thinking creatively.
I think there's a lot of conformity bias in investing and in life generally. If you look at most investment committees, most investment letters, most investment frameworks, they look the same. And I think that there's a reason for that — it's career protection. If you're wrong and you're wrong the way everyone else is wrong, then you're not singled out.
We worry so much about the blank page or the blank canvas. But research suggests that placing too high a premium on originality can actually be a creativity killer. When we feel we have to be original, we become self-conscious, and self-consciousness is the enemy of creativity.
For centuries, people have described creativity as something mysterious: a flash of insight, a whisper from the muse, a sudden idea that seems to arrive out of nowhere.
Most people assume that creativity is a trait — you either have it or you don't. But research suggests that creativity is less like a fixed ability and more like a muscle: it can be strengthened with practice, and it can also atrophy when it goes unused.
Some people are good at putting themselves in another person's shoes. Others may struggle to relate. But psychologist Jamil Zaki argues that empathy isn't a fixed trait.
People are really comfortable with the number of people who die on the roads. 40,000 people dead, 1.2 million globally and avoidable in many cases, isn't something upon which we share collective outrage or even moderate discomfort.
If only we allowed it to. But what generally gets in the way is something called repugnance, which we'll get to. And um and that we that we should overcome our a priori ideas when they're wrong, which is what science is all about.
Reason and empirical evidence should be applied to public policy and could make the world a better place if only we allowed it to. But what generally gets in the way is something called repugnance
I think that we've enshrined a lot of cultural assumptions about women and their reproductive capacity in the terms for their organs and terms for things happening in pregnancy and their reproductive decisions, I guess. It's like a really messed up form of metonymy where the organ, like the incompetent cervix, the hostile or geriatric uterus, is standing in for how our culture is stereotyping women.
If you think you're a stock picker, just keep in mind you're competing against an algorithm that looks at millions of points of data designed by a ton of PhDs making a lot of money all in a room who do nothing but try and pick up on signals. And you're watching CNBC or deciding because you see a long line outside of Chipotle that you're somehow informed on the markets.
Stress is less about what you're facing and more about believing you can cope. This isn't positivity. This is regulating your nervous system, framing stress as an opportunity for growth and accepting sensations, even knots in your stomach, lowers cortisol and allows you to persevere.
91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors.
During his trial, Wayne made a truly bizarre argument that forced the jury, and all of us, to stare straight at our complicated, sometimes uncomfortable relationship with animals.
The fact that it took Galileo to redefine our thinking about motion and intelligent people from Aristotle and onward had thought about how things moved in the world and gotten it totally wrong suggests that motion is not so simple.
Software brain is powerful stuff. It's a way of thinking that basically created our modern world. But software thinking has also been turbocharged by AI in a way that I think helps explain the enormous gap between how excited the tech industry is about the technology and how regular people are growing to dislike it more and more over time.
Pop culture and conventional history often teach us that violence is the most effective way to produce change. But is that common assumption actually true?
Many pilots rely on self selected enthusiasts, vendor methodologies, and rough time saved calculations rather than robust measures of service quality or error rates.
History books say they caused the Black Death — although recent scientific evidence disputes that claim. In an updated episode from 2025, we ask: Is the rat a scapegoat?
You always have the power to have no opinion. Things are not asking to be judged by you. Don't turn this into something. The fewer opinions you have, the fewer judgments you make, the more you're able to just leave things as they are, the happier you will be, the more productive you will be, the more focused you will be, and the easier you will be to get along with.
What's happened in the US over the last many decades is that these really important identities like racial and religious identities have become associated in our minds with our party identity. So when we go vote in an election, we're not just feeling like our party wins or loses, we're feeling like our party and our racial group and our religious group and all these big parts of what makes us who we are, all of those things get wrapped up in the outcome of the election also.
Zemblanity is when something unlucky, unwanted or undesired happens by design because it's already built in. It seems unexpected and like bad luck, but in hindsight it was to be expected and avoidable.
What if the problem is not so much about how unreliable eyewitness memory is, because of how easily contamination can create false memories, and more about how and when we test the witness's memory.
Jones wasn't necessarily explicitly telling us to lie. I think if he was doing that, he wouldn't have as many people working for him because there was this pretend idea that we were searching for the truth. He more so undermined us, made us question our own findings, made us question our own abilities, our own competence.
It's really amazing that he doesn't want other inputs like that may vary from his rich friends. It's just I find it it's just not good policy not to have people who doubt each other and debate it.
Our brain is like our very own Stradivarius. When our emotions are triggered out of proportions, that's akin to me trying to play a Stradivarius violin. It can cause enormous pain for both the player as well as those around us.
Our minds are black boxes to each other. I think if we actually switched consciousnesses, if we had like a Freaky Friday situation, initially we'd be totally lost in the wilderness.
What I think this whole milk craze really boils down to is this philosophical belief that what is natural is best... the push for drinking whole milk is tied to this much broader view that the Trump administration espouses, which is that America can be great again if we can go back to this imagined historical era where the cows were roaming in the pastures.
2mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
