It’s nice to greet people as they walk in to your store.If your head is down, you are not paying attention to that person, and you don’t make eye contact… are you achieving the effect of a greeting?In the United States/Americas, the greeting has evolved. From Indigenous rituals from first nations, to “how do you do” by European colonizers, to “hi” and “hello” in the 1800s. Different regions of the United States have different greetings — “howdy” for instance. I’m imagining we maintain these norms for social cohesion, etiquette, cultural expectations, respect for others, and perhaps to help reinforce a customer’s belief that they will extra value from their purchasing experience. Regarding eye contact — direct eye contact for too long is not considered a norm, and it’s not an absolute requirement in our culture. That said, it shows respect, demonstrates attentiveness, and establishes a connection. The greeting impacts our wallet now. Greetings are commercialized — greeting cards, digital greetings, and personalization reduce the formality and perhaps the meaning of the greeting itself. As consumers, perhaps we no longer expect being truly welcomed, but we expect the superficial act of welcoming.The paradox between engaging in a ritual to establish connection and demonstrate cultural etiquette yet remain distant and inattentive.Such is my experience at Starbucks.

Gabriele Steinhauser, Andrew Barnett, and Emma Brown of the WSJ write that Africa Has Entered a New Era of War.. Excerpts:This corridor of conflict stretches across approximately 4,000 miles and encompasses about 10% of the total land mass of sub-Saharan Africa, an area that has doubled in just three years and today is about 10 times the size of the U.K., according to an analysis by political risk consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft. In its wake lies incalculable human suffering—mass displacement, atrocities against civilians and extreme hunger—on a continent that is already by far the poorest on the planet.Yet, these extraordinary geopolitical shifts in sub-Saharan Africa have been overshadowed by higher-profile conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. That has led to less attention from global policymakers—especially in the West—grossly underfunded humanitarian-aid programs and fundamental questions over the futures of hundreds of millions of people…. Africa is now experiencing more conflicts than at any point since at least 1946, according to data collected by Uppsala University in Sweden and analyzed by Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo. This year alone, experts at the two institutes have identified 28 state-based conflicts across 16 of the continent’s 54 countries, more than in any other region in the world and double the count just a decade and a half ago. We hear plenty of news about conflicts around other parts of the world. But do we hear enough about the African continent? Perhaps the conflicts in Africa are too complex, historical in nature, and the nature of conflicts changes so dynamically that our existing media infrastructure may not know how to produce news we’d consume? Perhaps there are other narratives that we are adapted to trust more? See yesterday’s post. Maybe those are narratives are more efficient ROI-wise for news producers?Perhaps we’re too used to knowing that there are problems? We’ve become fatigue, or numb. I’m not a media expert, and I imagine this is a complicated topic to report on. At the same time, I wonder about the tradeoffs — by not giving light to Africa’s narrative, what do we end up giving light to instead?

And Robin answers the question by proposing we humans have adopted narrative styles that signal to us that the Rebels are good and the Empire is evil. Hollywood, the Bible, and other powerful and prestigious media channels gave us and reinforce these ancient narratives every day; we’re almost hard-wired for them. What if we were more skeptical? Robin offers us as way to assign a level of skepticism towards specific cultural expressions (he calls these “variants”) based on three tests. Is the variant ancient AND has it persisted through reinforcing social pressure? If Yes, then it’s possible that the least amount of skepticism required before adopting the variant.A group of people (society, family, community, etc.) are NOT required to adopt the variant for it persist. If a group of people are not required to adopt the variant, then it’s possible you’ll need more skepticism than test 1. Is the variant modern AND present in a winning culture — a culture that’s spread it’s influence across the world over massive amounts of time? If Yes, then it’s possible you’ll deploy the most skepticism. Using the idea from “Star Wars” that the Rebels are “good” and therefore must overcome all odds and overthrow the Empire “evil” we arrive at a variant — “good must triumph over evil”, I’ll refer to that as “good v evil.” Let’s go to the tests.Is “good v evil” an ancient idea AND has it persisted through reinforcing social pressure? Yes. This is an idea from ancient times, and it’s reinforced in political, religious, and other forms of rhetoric by influencers, mainstream media, clergy, and others. TEST 1 = PASS.A group of people are NOT required to adopt the variant “good v evil” for it to persist. We fail that test because groups of people must adopt the idea for it to persist. TEST 2 = FAIL.Is the variant “good v evil” a modern invention AND is it present in winning cultures? It’s an ancient idea and therefore does not pass. TEST 3 = FAIL. Because we passed the first test, I can choose to deploy the least amount of skepticism before deciding to adopt the idea. I can feel better about being less skeptical because ideas that are ancient and have persisted through our existence are likely culturally advantageous ideas. ALSO, If I want to be more rigorous, I can increase my level of skepticism because an ancient reinforced idea that does require group adoption may cause me to be more skeptical — what if we’ve gotten something wrong for a while and just don’t know it yet?As a takeaway, I tend to be more skeptical of ideas that are “group adopted” or “modern” because they have not been cross-examined enough by time. I prefer my wisdom robust… and robust timeless wisdom is in short supply, which increases its value and makes it easier to adopt — simple.HT and thanks to Robin Hanson’s blog, Overcoming Bias, for the inspiration.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being by Jieyu Zheng and Markus Mesiter offers an thought-provoking perspective on sensory inputs and how well your brain uses them — spoiler alert: slowly.Your wifi may send you information at a 100 megabits per second, that’s about 100 megabits/second, that’s ~100,000,000 bits. Of that 100 million bits, your brain can only process 10 bits/second. 10 bits/second is the speed of “being”. And within a factor of two it is the speed at which your brain can process motor functions, perception, and cognition. The median modern person would freak out if their internet became that slow. The paper’s authors said that our brain has the capacity to accept 50TB (vastly overestimated upper bound) of information. However, given nature (inputs that come from gene expression) and nurture (inputs that come from our senses), we can only store and use ~4GB —- the amount of information that can be stored on a thumb drive! Those overestimations are highly speculative and we still need more research.But what about all of this brain capacity that many think is untapped? What if we hooked ourselves up to a robot, would we be faster? The authors argue no because the rate of perception is only 10 bits/second, the speed of being limit is a threshold on the robot’s ability.I asked myself what happens to all of that information we take in but never use. The authors propose the idea of an inner and outer brain. The outer brain takes in all of the information and begins filtering and sifting through it. Some information is stored, some disregarded, and some is noise . The inner brain is where that speed limit comes in, the 10 bits/second threshold. The inner brain is responsible for grabbing only the most important information that it needs.I’m left with a few thoughts.Stop getting upset over slow internet speeds. We live in a 10 bit/second world — we’ve build our world that way.Life unfolds at a much faster rate and in powers of resolution greater than our ability to perceive and work with it —- it’s okay to slow down.Perhaps 2025 resolution? Knowing that our inner brain filters everything down to the essentials, perhaps we can learn to embrace slowness—trusting that we are already processing the most important parts of life.Thanks to Marginal Revolution for hipping me to the paper.

Happy 2025. Thoughts from the last year, what worked, what didn’t…I will continue…Blogging every day, continue.Aiming for >7 hours of sleep. Allowing myself 30 min to fall asleep. No distractions.3.5L of water per day.>30 minutes of exercise per day.Maximizing protein intake.>2 hours of piano practice per week.Write personal notesAim to read a chapter per day of a bookI will stop…I no longer see the value in specific eating plans. There’s enough evidence out there that energy deficiency is required for losing weight, and diets are simply a lever that can be pulled. Not saying what I think. I have the habit of hedging or softening my positions, I will stop that in 2025. In 2024, I got better outcomes by being more blunt. The tradeoff is momentary stress, but the long-run benefit is congruency. I don’t know if I will stop, but I may limit my consumption of general business books in favor of specific academic subject areas. Example — stop reading about leadership and start reading more about a specific industry or brand. I will limit, not stop, my time with others and prioritize my home life and my personal time. My time is finite, and I can’t be all things for all people. I need to more focus on that which brings me long-run utility and value over short term gains from making people happy at the expense of myself. I will start…I don’t know that I want to start anything at the moment. I’m happy with reductions for the moment. Sometimes life doesn’t need adding….Best Music EnjoyedThinking of You - Aaron FrazerYai Yai - Mohama SazPaper Doll - Kurt Eling & Sullivan FortnerPixingando - Amina Mezaache & MaracujaForever - MidlifeNo Death - Mirel WagnerElectric Energy - Ariana DeBose, Boy George, and Nile Rogers (I’m a sucker for that bassline)La Comparsa - Ernesto Lecuona played by Frank FernandezVaper Wipe - The Breadman (shameless plug, I did keys for their album… but I love this track, a nod to my influence, Richard Tee)Best Movies Enjoyed“Argylle”“Red One” - cackled non-stop“Conclave” - the skeptical and lapsed Catholic in me loved this one“Deadpool & Wolverine” - I waited for this movie all year, it did not disappoint“American Fiction” and “Am I A Racist” - Yes, I saw both, and loved both. I’m attracted to the controversy, I love satire, and I think it’s healthy to laugh at ourselves.“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” - watched multiple times. All and all — a good year. Lots learned, lots of music enjoyed, lots of enjoyable movies, and fun experiences. Looking forward to 2025.Happy New Year.

You can’t live a life without considering tradeoffs. To inform your boss you want a raise or sit quietly. Or in poker, to hold or bet. Or in nuclear war, to use aggressive rhetoric or to allow cooler heads to prevail. My working belief about what drives the decision to act or to wait are feedback loops. Feedback loops are powerful. They can reinforce, balance, or limit behaviors of systems. Between 1947 and 1952 (4 years), the United States 64x’d their atomic bomb stock from 13 to 841. Driven, as sold to the American public, by a need for deterrents. The reinforcing feedback loop looks like this: the more bombs we have, the more secure we’ll become, and we need to increase our stock of security. But our system exists in a zoo, with other nation states and their systems.Russia and other nations increased the stock of their own bombs for similar reasons. The reinforcing loop in one system influenced the behavior of another system. Economists call these spillover effects, externalities. While the system of production does its thing, it’s the system of people and their deliberations and their beliefs which ultimately set a catastrophe in motion. The decision to allow cooler heads to prevail, or the decision to be aggressive. Of course, that all depends on the reinforcement feedback loops present in those social and political systems.The takeaway for me is simple: your system of thought and life matters — your inputs, your outputs, and the feedback loops that help shape your processes all matter. Your system helps create a life of contentment vs war.Inspiration and facts about bomb production from Annie Jacobsen’s “Nuclear War: A Scenario” — continuing to be the one of the best books I’ve read… and I’m not a war junkie.

The opening sentences of Annie Jacobsen’s book, “Nuclear War: A Scenario” haunt and pique the senses.

A 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonation begins with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend.

The prologue and the next 2 chapters discuss the history of the US’s plan to launch nuclear weapons at Russia and the real effects of the atomic bomb blast over Hiroshima. Most concerning (and admittedly upsetting) was that the US kept the effects of the bomb on Japanese citizens confidential to avoid enemies learning of the effects. I visited Nagasaki’s atom bomb museum a decade ago, the images are real and horrific — what’s the justification for keeping that confidential?

I just acquired “Nuclear War: A Scenario” by Annie Jacobsen. I’m not looking forward to nuclear war, and it’s my hope that our world never experiences that fate. I became interested in the book because I am interested in risk.How do we define risk? How do we manage risk? How do we game out potential scenarios? What history did we use as the basis for our models? Similar questions to the ones I asked yesterday. Some of the best ways for learning a new way of thinking are to study people who obsess about a thing and write about their obsession. You can learn a lot more about the music industry reading works by people who obsess about music. You’ll learn a lot more about business by reading biographies and autobiographies of people who obsess about a business/industry than a general business book. And I’ll learn more about risk management from someone who obsesses about a horrible scenario and writes about it than from a book on risk.

Let’s say you are presented with a scenario that includes a prediction — reviewing a job offer, making a health decision, or reviewing a product to purchase. Here are three questions you can use to generate a picture of future-reality, adapted from Donella H. Meadows’ “Thinking in Systems”.

1. Are the driving factors likely to unfold this way?
2. If they did, how will life likely unfold?
3. What is driving the driving factors?

Question 1 is a guess.

An elderly gentleman with Alzheimer’s sitting outdoors, wearing a Notre Dame football sweatshirt, in a hospital courtyard featuring animal sculptures. He presents a pensive expression while seated on a bench. Remarkably clear about what he does and doesn’t know in the zoo.

Here is a man that could easily feel defeated, and at times had.

Here is a man that is aware that the present is just past the future and that the present seems disorganized, cloudy, and like a broken puzzle.