Links

My Learning Process - by Blas Moros (LINK)

Why Time Has Slowed - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Bill Miller On Why Coronavirus Sell Off Is Buying Opportunity Of Generation (video) (LINK)

A Viral Market Meltdown V: Back to Basics! - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)

Given the news on the company today, this may be worth revisiting (from a couple of months ago): An anonymous, detailed short thesis on Luckin Coffee

Jim Chanos on CNBC (video) (LINK)

Steve Bregman on Energy (audio) (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Gavin Baker – Investing Through a Bear Market (LINK)

Grant’s Current Yield Podcast: The Grice Man cometh (LINK)

Freakonomics Radio: 411. Is $2 Trillion the Right Medicine for a Sick Economy? (LINK)

How I Built This with Guy Raz (podcast): Live with Guy Online: Jeni Britton Bauer (LINK)

The Peter Attia Drive (podcast): #102 - Michael Osterholm, Ph.D.: COVID-19—Lessons learned, challenges ahead, and reasons for optimism and concern (LINK)

The Four Rules of Pandemic Economics - by Derek Thompson (LINK)

Private Labs Are Fueling a New Coronavirus Testing Crisis (LINK)

A Coronavirus Fix That Passes the Smell Test - by Michael Lewis (LINK)

Is the Coronavirus Airborne? Should We All Wear Masks? - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Longform Podcast: 386: Ed Yong (LINK)

Related articles: 1) "How a Pandemic Might Play Out Under Trump" (December 2016); 2) "The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?" (July 2018); 3) "How the Pandemic Will End" (March 2020)

Immediately writing things down...

From The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (p.111-112):

I think that I have become a little more skilful in guessing right explanations and in devising experimental tests; but this may probably be the result of mere practice, and of a larger store of knowledge. I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence, and thus I have been often led to see errors in reasoning and in my own observations or those of others. 

There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement and proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have written deliberately.

I've begun to try and cultivate the habit of writing more thoughts down as soon as they come to me, instead of trying to remember them for later, or sending them from my phone via email. As the Darwin quote above suggests, this may often result in a better way of framing something than if one had thought about it more deliberately, and it may also help one to keep thinking about a given idea intently enough to force a better understanding and simplification of that idea in one's own mind. 

And for those interested in a few details.... My favorite pants over the last couple of years have been the UB Tech Men's Travel Pant from Costco ($17.99). Given that I like to always carry a pair of headphones with me so that I can listen to the large library of audiobooks and podcasts on my phone when some spare time arises, the side pocket on the pants is perfect for carrying small headphones (Apple EarPods in my case). And that pocket is also perfect for storing a small notebook and pen. The notebook I'm currently experimenting with is the Field Notebook - 3.5"x5.5" (that's about the largest size that will fit in the pocket). And the pens I'm experimenting with are the Pentel Mini Ballpoint Pens. I wish the pens were a bit bigger, but still smaller than normal-sized pens, so I may look for alternatives in that regard.

Links

"I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind if he first forms a good plan and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business." - Ben Franklin

A Conversation with David Swensen [H/T @jasonzweigwsj] (LINK)

Related article: Yale's Swensen Sees Low Volatility as `Profoundly Troubling'

Lessons Learned from The Outsiders & How Intelligent Fanatics are Different (LINK)

Pension Actuaries: The Joke is On Us - by Rick Bookstaber (LINK)

Is the Business Cycle Dead, Or Just Hibernating? - by Frank Martin (LINK)

Why Sales Quotas Ruined Wells Fargo (LINK)

Will Amazon disrupt healthcare? (LINK)

Sebastian Junger: "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" | Talks at Google (LINK)

Long-lost da Vinci painting fetches $450.3 million, an auction record for art (LINK)

How the Zombie Fungus Takes Over Ants’ Bodies to Control Their Minds - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Life Without Guts - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T @jasonzweigwsj]: The Quotable Darwin

"I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it. Indeed, I have had no choice but to act in this manner, for with the exception of the Coral Reefs, I cannot remember a single first-formed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or greatly modified. This has naturally led me to distrust greatly deductive reasoning in the mixed sciences. On the other hand, I am not very sceptical,–a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science. A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable." - Charles Darwin

Links

Planet of the Cows - by Vaclav Smil [H/T The Browser] (LINK)

Why Each One Should Eat His Own Turtles: Equality in Uncertainty - by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (LINK)

Latticework Of Mental Models: Hedgehog Vs Fox (LINK)

Copying Culture – Nucor’s Fraternal Twin - by Sean Iddings (LINK)

The Obvious Value of Communication is Perhaps Not So Obvious - by Cal Newport (LINK)

Many famous scientists have something in common—they didn’t work long hours (LINK)

Related book: Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less

The Game-Changing Technique That Cracked the Zika-Mosquito Genome - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Charles Darwin and avoiding prejudice

Upon my latest re-read of the  passage below from The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, I was once again struck by the effort Darwin took in his work to remain an objective observer of facts. Many investors avoid publicly, or even privately, discussing investment ideas in order to avoid the Commitment and Consistency bias so well explained by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence. And Darwin seems to have understood this bias well when he mentions being "so anxious to avoid prejudice, that I determined not for some time to write even the briefest sketch of it." 

The excerpt, in which he describes some of how he came across one of the most important discoveries in the history of science:

From September 1854 onwards I devoted all my time to arranging my huge pile of notes, to observing, and experimenting, in relation to the transmutation of species. During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil animals covered with armour like that on the existing armadillos; secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards over the Continent; and thirdly, by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group; none of these islands appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense. 

It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the organisms (especially in the case of plants), could account for the innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits of life,—for instance, a woodpecker or tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained it seemed to me almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that species have been modified. 

After my return to England it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My first note-book was opened in July 1837. I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed enquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of Journals and Transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time a mystery to me. 

In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work; but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice, that I determined not for some time to write even the briefest sketch of it. In June 1842 I first allowed myself the satisfaction of writing a very brief abstract of my theory in pencil in 35 pages; and this was enlarged during the summer of 1844 into one of 230 pages, which I had fairly copied out and still possess. 

But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance; and it is astonishing to me, except on the principle of Columbus and his egg, how I could have overlooked it and its solution. This problem is the tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed under genera, genera under families, families under sub-orders, and so forth; and I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature.

Charles Darwin and the pleasure of observing and reasoning

The below excerpt is from a current re-reading of The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, and it reminded me of a recent post on Malcolm Gladwell and the most important decision he ever made: 

The above various special studies were, however, of no importance compared with the habit of energetic industry and of concentrated attention to whatever I was engaged in, which I then acquired. Everything about which I thought or read was made to bear directly on what I had seen and was likely to see; and this habit of mind was continued during the five years of the voyage. I feel sure that it was this training which has enabled me to do whatever I have done in science. 

Looking backwards, I can now perceive how my love for science gradually preponderated over every other taste. During the first two years my old passion for shooting survived in nearly full force, and I shot myself all the birds and animals for my collection; but gradually I gave up my gun more and more, and finally altogether to my servant, as shooting interfered with my work, more especially with making out the geological structure of a country. I discovered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of skill and sport.

The essence of Charles Darwin's disruptive genius...

"The essence of Darwin's disruptive genius was his ability to think about nature not as fact—but as process, as progression, as history." -Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History

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A related quote (from my Favorite Quotes page):

"I have been speculating...what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things, and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever—much cleverer than the discoverers—never originate anything. As far as I can conjecture, the art consists in habitually searching for the causes and meaning of everything which occurs. This implies sharp observation and requires as much knowledge as possible of the subject investigated." -Charles Darwin (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin)

That also reminds me of a quote from Charlie Munger relating to turning information and knowledge and cleverness into something useful: 

"We read a lot. I don't know anyone who's wise who doesn't read a lot. But that's not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don't grab the right ideas or don't know what to do with them." 

Links

Today's Audible Daily Deal ($3.95) is a worthwhile listen: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers - by Ben Horowitz

Broyhill Book Club 2015 - by Chris Pavese (LINK)

In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All [H/T @BrattleStCap] (LINK)

Apollo Asia Fund's Q4 report: Upheaval and new perspectives (LINK)

The First Million - by Ian Cassel (LINK)

What made Charles Darwin an Effective Thinker? Follow the Golden Rule (LINK)

Objectivity...

From Poor Charlie's Almanack:

The life of Darwin demonstrates how a turtle may outrun a hare, aided by extreme objectivity, which helps the objective person end up like the only player without a blindfold in a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. 

If you minimize objectivity, you ignore not only a lesson from Darwin but also one from Einstein. Einstein said that his successful theories came from "Curiosity, concentration, perseverance, and self-criticism." And by self-criticism, he meant the testing and destruction of his own well-loved ideas.

Links

Frank Martin's Q2 Letter (LINK)

Malcolm Gladwell's latest, "Trust No One" (LINK)

Evan Osnos profiles Joe Biden (LINK)

William Poundstone's latest book: Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody (LINK....or in MP3 CD for $10.79)

Darwin’s Daily Routine (LINK)

Related books: 

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work 

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin

Darwin's Darkest Hour (NOVA Documentary)

This two-hour scripted drama tells the remarkable story behind the unveiling of the most influential scientific theory of all time, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The program is a special presentation from NOVA and National Geographic Television, written by acclaimed British screenwriter John Goldsmith and directed by John Bradshaw.



Link

Darwin's Struggle: Origin Of Species

Link

UK scientists find 'lost' Darwin fossils

LONDON (AP) — British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.

Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey.

Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labeled 'C. Darwin Esq."

"It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realized it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen.

He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as "a heart in your mouth situation," saying he wondering "Goodness, what have I discovered!"

Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews - Richard Dawkins

Found via Simoleon Sense.


Link

Charlie Rose Show: An hour about the life and work of Charles Darwin

This 2005 Charlie Rose interview with E.O. Wilson and James Watson ends with Mr. Rose calling it one in which he is most proud: Link to VIDEO

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Related books:

Darwin: The Indelible Stamp: The Evolution of an Idea

From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin

Related link:

Video: The Genius Of Charles Darwin

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Unfinished business

Charles Darwin’s ideas have spread widely, but his revolution is not yet complete

THE miracles of nature are everywhere: on landing, a beetle folds its wings like an origami master; a lotus leaf sheds muddy water as if it were quicksilver; a spider spins a web to entrap her prey, but somehow evades entrapment herself. Since the beginning of time, people who have thought about such things have seen these marvels as examples of the wisdom of God; even as evidence for his existence. But 200 years ago, on February 12th 1809, a man was born who would challenge all that. The book that issued the challenge, published half a century later, in 1859, offered a radical new view of the living world and, most radical of all, of humanity’s origins. The man was Charles Robert Darwin. The book was “On the Origin of Species”. And the challenge was the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Since Darwin’s birth, the natural world has changed beyond recognition. Then, the modern theory of atoms was scarcely six years old and the Earth was thought to be 6,000. There was no inkling of the size of the universe beyond the Milky Way, and radioactivity, relativity and quantum theory were unimaginable. Yet of all the discoveries of 19th- and early 20th-century science—invisible atoms, infinite space, the inconstancy of time and the mutability of matter—only evolution has failed to find general acceptance outside the scientific world. Few laymen would claim they did not believe Einstein. Yet many seem proud not to believe Darwin. Even for those who do accept his line of thought his ideas often seem as difficult today as they were 150 years ago.

The origin of the Origin

The idea of evolution by natural selection is not hard to grasp. It just requires connecting some uncontentious propositions. These are that organisms vary from one another, even within a species, and that new variation can arise from time to time; that some of this variation is passed from parent to offspring; and that more individuals are born than can exist in the available space (or be sustained by the available resources). The consequence is what Darwin described in his book as a “struggle for existence”. The weakest are eliminated in this struggle. The fit survive. The survivors pass on their traits to their offspring. Over enough time, this differential transmission of characters will lead to the formation of a new species.
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Darwin’s theory explained why species were so well adapted to their environment and how new species would form. It suggested that all living things were related, from the beetle to the lotus, and that everything descended ultimately from a single common ancestor. Evolution thus removed the need for divine explanations of diversity and, along with evidence emerging at that time of the extreme age of the Earth, it further suggested that the wider universe might also owe nothing to divine intervention and everything to natural laws. Darwin understood all of this and was greatly troubled.

That trouble continues today. In the United States a Gallup poll conducted last year found that only 14% of people agreed with the proposition that “humans developed over millions of years”, up from 9% in 1982. Acceptance of evolution varies around the world, with the most ardent believers being in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden (see chart). In general, as you might expect, a country’s belief in evolution is inversely correlated with its belief in God. But there is an interesting twist.

Gregory Paul, an independent researcher on evolution, and Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College in California, have argued controversially that a belief in God is inversely correlated with the level of what might be described as the intensity of the struggle for existence. In countries where food is plentiful, health care is universal and housing is accessible, people believe less in God than in those countries where their lives are insecure. A belief in God, and rejection of evolution, they suggest, is most valuable in those societies that are most subject to Darwinian pressures.

Making science work

Be that as it may, many aspects of modern science could not work without accepting evolution. Darwin’s ideas touch every corner of biology and medicine. They have also had an impact farther afield, in areas from art to politics. And their impact has been practical as well as theoretical. Both software engineers and drug developers, for example, often make use of evolutionary thinking when designing their products.

Economics, too, may be helped by Darwin. Ideas about “rational” economic man are being overturned by new ones from a discipline called behavioural economics. Rather than assuming that individuals faced with economic decisions will comport themselves in what “classical” economists regard as a rational manner—ie, to maximise their future wealth—behavioural economics tries to study how real people actually behave.

What is surprising is the degree to which human beings are not rational, and how the reasons for this are likely to involve Darwinian explanations. Take, for example, a phenomenon called the endowment effect, which is the tendency most people have to value objects they already own more highly than similar ones they have never owned—and, consequently, to be more reluctant to trade them than a classical economist would predict.

Because this effect has been observed in three primate species, most recently in a study of chimpanzees, it suggests this effect has evolutionary roots. Its strength seems to relate to the evolutionary salience of the item in question. People may be reluctant to trade goods related to food and mating because in the recent evolutionary past it meant parting with a known object in exchange for an uncertain proposition.

Another example of economic behaviour that may have deep evolutionary roots is the “herd” mentality that contributes to financial bubbles. In the past, copying the neighbours would have been helpful—in order to avoid danger or to find food. In today’s financial systems, however, it can create instability. The instinct to follow the herd can be rationalised as rational, so to speak, since everybody benefits in the short term by forcing the price up. But it does not look so rational when the instability is exposed by an external shock and the market crashes. In fact, at least part of what seems to be going on is that everyone instinctively feels compelled to copy the others, rather than making an independent assessment of the situation.

Whether the mystery is why people are so averse to risk, unable to estimate the time needed for a given task, or give different answers to the same question depending on how it is framed, there is a fair chance that the explanation will, at some point, involve evolution. To understand human behaviour properly, the world needs Darwin. Some have said it is the best idea that anyone ever had. If it isn’t, it certainly comes close.

Despite so much evidence, evolution remains difficult to accept because it implies everything living is largely accidental. Stephen Jay Gould, an American evolutionary biologist, who died in 2002, argued that misunderstandings about Darwinism were rife not because the theory is difficult to understand but because people actively avoid trying to understand it. He thought a misunderstanding about progress was the problem.

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Related previous post:

Why we are, as we are

Related books:

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin

The Origin Of Species

The Voyage of the Beagle

The Selfish Gene

Mean Genes

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Darwin quote from Favorite Quotes post (taken from his autobiography):

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"I have been speculating...what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things, and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever, -- much cleverer than discoverers -- never originate anything. As far as I can conjecture, the art consists in habitually searching for causes or meaning of everything which occurs. This implies sharp observation and requires as much knowledge as possible of the subject investigated." -Charles Darwin

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