Every smart person I've met or read about have all had an appetite for reading a lot of books. In fact, it's often said that the more you read, the more you know. I made a commitment to myself to read a lot of books in the year 2022. While I didn't have a specific number in mind, I was able to get through 25 books and I'm excited to share some highlights from these books with you. From biographies to self-improvement guides to histories, I covered a wide range of subjects in my reading. I hope that by sharing these highlights, I can recommend some great reads and perhaps inspire you to pick up one of these books for yourself.
Out of these, some of my favorites are Deep Work, University of Berkshire Hathaway, The Richest Man in Babylon, Montreal at War 1914 - 1918, Remembrance Of Grandeur The Anglo-Protestant Elite of Montreal 1900 - 1950, Skin in the Game, and The Illustrated History of Ammunition.
Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to launching a Startup by Rob Walling
This book offers practical advice and guidance for developers looking to start their own businesses. Walling discusses the key considerations and challenges involved in launching a startup, and he provides practical tips and strategies for overcoming these challenges. He goes over some some key concepts such as micro entrepreneurship and bootstrapping.
An entrepreneur is a visionary. He is the person who sees the potential in an idea and creates a viable business from nothing. She is the person who invests hundreds of hours into building, launching and marketing a product, fighting through every roadblock along the way.
Micropreneurs – Entrepreneurs who want to remain solo. This means no employees under any circumstance. Micropreneurs might own a single product, or may own many products that collectively contribute to their bottom line. A specific lifestyle is the goal of a Micropreneur.
Bootstrappers – A bootstrapper has their vision set on something larger than a single person venture. Perhaps 5 employees, perhaps 10…a bootstrapper has an idea and knows she must execute and grow her company to survive.
A developer who knows how to market a product is a rare (and powerful) combination.
The “right” reason to start a startup depends on your goals. As I mentioned before, Micropreneurs lean towards lifestyle choices (freedom, income independence, location independence), while bootstrappers might embrace the challenge and excitement of owning their own business, to build equity in something they own, and to have control over the projects they work on.
A study at Dominican University revealed that the following 3 factors substantially increased someone’s chance of following through on their goals: 1. Written Goals – “Those who wrote their goals accomplished significantly more than those who did not write their goals.”
2. Public Commitment – “…those who sent their commitments to a friend accomplished significantly more than those who wrote action commitments or did not write their goals.”
3. Accountability – “…those who sent weekly progress reports to their friend accomplished significantly more than those who had unwritten goals…”
University of Berkshire Hathaway by Corey Lee Wrenn and Daniel Pecaut
The book is based on the authors' attendance at the annual shareholders meetings of Berkshire Hathaway, during which Buffett and Munger share their insights and wisdom on a range of topics, including investing, leadership, and corporate governance. The authors provide a valuable resource for readers seeking to learn from the successes and philosophies of two of the most respected figures in the business world. The coolest part for me was the authors providing a comparision between Berkshire and the S&P 500 at the beginning of each summary.
1967, Buffett bought an insurance company, National Indemnity.
Insurance companies collect premiums, of which a significant portion goes into reserves to pay future claims. This reserve (the “float”) earns money for Berkshire, leveraging the company’s return on capital. If you can operate in a way where that float is generated at a low cost and you can grow it over time, you have built a wealth-compounding machine. As Munger once put it, “Basically, we’re a hedgehog that knows one big thing. If you generate float at 3% per annum and buy businesses that earn 13% per annum with the proceeds of that float, we have figured out that’s a pretty good position to be in.”
For every $1 of equity at Berkshire, over time there has been roughly another 50 cents or so in float. By investing $1.50 for every $1 of capital over the years, Berkshire has leveraged its returns. A significant portion of Berkshire’s long-term outperformance can be attributed to Buffett and Munger’s ability to execute on this brilliant insight. That’s not something you or I can go out and do.
In 1972, Berkshire bought See’s Candy.Discovered how powerful a cash generator a great brand could be. It taught him about the power of brands and the virtues of companies that don’t require a lot of capital to grow
insurance company as a platform and high-quality brands as cash generators—built the base for the wealth-compounding machine that is Berkshire Hathaway.
Berkshire has consistently outperformed the S&P 500 during negative years. The S&P had 11 down years in the 52-year period. The cumulative loss for those 11 years amounted to 251.4%. Comparatively, Berkshire Hathaway had only two losing years during the same period and had a cumulative gain of 117.8% for those 11 years. That’s an incredible 369.2%
When Corey started in internal audit, computers could be purchased online without paying sales tax. But, at Berkshire, if anything like that was purchased, it had to be reported to corporate, so they could file the use tax returns. Buffett wanted to make sure that Nebraska got their sales tax. He was adamant about making sure that Berkshire paid—not more taxes than it had to, but the taxes that it was responsible for.
Buffett and Munger are clear in their advice—people should learn from them and model their advice rather than copy their behavior. The main reason is this: Unless you find yourself in the enviable position that Berkshire operates in, you would do well not to copy its moves.
world-as-our-classroom approach.
Buffett said that he drank five Pepsis per day until he switched to Cherry Coke. Now he drinks five Cherry Cokes per day. After 50 years of research, he joked that he finally noticed that there are only two companies in the field. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have over 70% of the soft drink market, and their market share grows each year. He finally made a decision and bought one of them
the key to investment success is to buy wonderful businesses
“cigar butt approach.”
Munger lamented that business schools would produce better managers if they would study what makes a good business good and what makes a bad business bad. But they don’t. When asked why they don’t, Munger replied that for business schools to do so would mean calling into question the flawed morals and performance of America’s largest corporations, the same corporations that hire many of the business schools’ students. Munger explained that the business schools are merely heeding Ben Franklin’s advice: “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half shut thereafter.” “Business schools are good at keeping their eyes half shut,” Munger concluded.
Each day, the average person drinks 64 ounces of something. In 1991, 25% of those 64 ounces were soft drinks, surpassing water as America’s number one beverage! That means about 730 soft drinks per capita per year are consumed, of which approximately 42% are Coca-Cola products.
Buffett commented that the distinction between the growth and value styles of investing is nonsense. Value is the only concern for any economic commitment. To calculate your expected return, compute the discounted present value of the flow of all cash from the business between now and judgment day. To do so, you must A) determine the amounts and certainty of cash flows in and out and B) select a discount rate.
Munger said the ideal business has a wide and long-lasting moat around a terrific castle with an honest lord. The moat represents a barrier to competition and could be low production costs, a trademark, or an advantage of scale or technology.
“Most men would rather die than think. Many have.”
Bank deposits provide banks funds to invest. They come at an explicit cost, the rate of interest paid to the depositor plus operating costs. Similarly, insurance companies generate funds for investment (i.e., float) as policyholders pay premiums upfront in return for a promise of financial coverage in the event of future calamities. Unlike bank deposits, however, the costs of float are unknown until the policies expire and the claims are settled.
Buffett cautioned that ordinary insurance is not a good business and that float, per se, is not a blessing. To make it work, the insurance company must be run right, ideally with competitive advantages and the ability to maximize them. If you can get float cheap and in increasing quantities, float becomes a very important asset – something even more important than Buffett could have guessed in 1967.
Buffett contended that the average college student has the same standard of living as he does. Same food. No important difference in clothes, cars, TVs. (Though Buffett could not resist yet another plug, admitting that he does travel better thanks to NetJets.) After you have enough for daily life, all that matters is your health and those you love. Likewise in work, what really matters is that you enjoy it and the people with which you work.
Imagine a genie comes to a 17 year old and offers to get him any car he wants. However, there is one catch – whatever car he chooses he must make it last a lifetime. Well, you can imagine that the young man would read the owner’s manual 10 times, would change the oil twice as often as suggested, etc. to help that car last 50 years. In the same way, Buffett continued, we each receive one body and one mind for a lifetime. You cannot repair them at age 60. You must maintain them. One’s greatest asset is one’s self. Develop your mind and good health habits when you are young, and it will enhance your life. If not, you may have a wreck at age 70.
Munger cautioned that it is possible for prices to get so high that index funds won’t do well. In Japan, for example, the Nikkei Index returns over the past 13 years have been negative. Furthermore, Japan made all the right Keynesian moves, lowering interest rates and providing massive fiscal stimulation, to no effect. The models of the past failed to predict it. It’s crazy for Americans to assume that what happened to Argentina and Japan won’t happen to us.
Buffett claimed that successful investing is not complicated. The Rosetta Stone of investing is to remember that a stock is part ownership in a business. That principle provides the foundation for rational investing.
Asked if he recommended any books on accounting, Buffett advocated getting all the accounting you can if you are in business. Read lots of annual reports. Learn accounting by reading good business articles, especially those on accounting scandals. Try to know how the numbers are put together. Then, if you cannot understand it, it is probably because management doesn’t want you to understand it. Management always obfuscates the facts for a reason.
Regarding investment learning, Buffett recommended building your database so that you accumulate knowledge over a lifetime.
Munger advocated developing a temperament of owning securities without fretting. If you focus on the price, you are really saying that you believe the market knows more than you do. If you think of the value of the business instead of the price, you will sleep better. If the market were to shut down for five years, Acme Brick would still be turning out bricks, and Dairy Queen would still be selling Dilly Bars.
They suggested that investing is more like parimutuel betting, where you need only be right a few times as long as you don’t take a big loss.
The story of how Berkshire purchased National Indemnity in 1967 from Jack Ringwalt. Buffett said he had noticed that Ringwalt got into a fit of pique each year for about 15 minutes, in which he would threaten to sell the company. Buffett said he put a mutual friend, Charlie Heider, on alert to call him the next time Ringwalt had an episode, so he could buy the company. Sure enough, Heider soon called: “Jack’s ready.” Buffett made the deal in the 15-minute zone, though he could tell Ringwalt regretted it. Ringwalt tried to back out, asking, “I suppose you’ll want to see audited financials?” Sensing that Ringwalt was looking for an excuse to nix the deal, Buffett replied, “I wouldn’t dream of asking to see audited financials.” For $7 million, National Indemnity belonged to Berkshire.
Making money is no replacement for friendship and happiness.
You are successful if the people you hope love you, do love you.
For inflation strategies, Buffett suggested, as a first line of defense, that one increase his/her earning power. For example, if you are the best surgeon or the best plumber in town, your wages will likely be more than indexed to inflation. As a second strategy, Buffett recommended owning businesses that can price through inflation and have low capital expenditures to maintain the business. He cited See’s Candy as an example, noting that See’s has been a business that can maintain its value regardless of current changes.
The worst sorts of businesses to own in an inflationary environment are ones that require lots of capital to stay in the game and provide no real return.
Buffett said his failure to buy Wal-Mart has cost Berkshire shareholders $10 billion to date. He said that he initially ran the idea by Charlie who said, “It isn’t the worst idea you’ve ever had,” which, coming from Charlie, Buffett took as “ungodly praise.” But he got anchored on a price of $23. When the price moved up, he stopped buying.Buffett noted that he spends a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong in big unexpected ways. With low probability events, he asserted that people underestimate them if they haven’t occurred for a while and overestimate them if they occurred recently.
Munger noted that they have even contemplated a 60-foot tidal wave hitting California (which is not known to have ever happened). He doubted that any other insurance company considers risk more rigorously than Berkshire. Buffett added, “It’s Armageddon around here every day.”
Envy is the least fun of the seven deadly sins because it leaves you feeling awful. Gluttony has some upside – Buffett jested that some of his best times were with gluttony. As for lust...he joked that he wouldn’t go there. He concluded that envy is interesting in that it is widely practiced and, yet, is the least enjoyable sin.
Explanation of the Berkshire idea-handling process. There are three boxes – “in,” “out” and “too hard.” It is important to know what is too hard for you and stick to what you do best. He quoted IBM CEO Tom Watson, “I’m smart in spots.” Buffett noted that if you’re fast, you can run the 100 meters for the gold medal. You don’t have to throw the shot put. Munger shared that a reporter once said to him, “You don’t seem smart enough to be doing so much better than everyone else.” The key is knowing the edge of one’s circle of competence.
Our mantra: good ownership drives good stewardship.
Out of a global population of six billion, there will always be a small percentage of crazy people bent on doing others harm. Technology enables the unbalanced few to do unprecedented damage. Where 1,000 years ago, they might have thrown rocks or shot arrows, now there are nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the mix.
“the electronic herd.” Buffett observed that the percentage of securities that can be sold at the touch of a button has gone up a lot. There’s nothing necessarily evil about it. But it’s a different game, and there are consequences. If you’re trying to beat the other fellow on a daily basis, you’re looking to push the button quicker and quicker.
In modern portfolio theory, beta is a measure of volatility, which, in turn, is seen as a measure of risk. The higher the beta, the higher the risk. At least that’s how the theory goes. Buffett begs to differ, asserting volatility does not measure risk. Beta is nice and mathematical, but it’s wrong. For example, a couple decades ago, farmland in Nebraska went from $2,000 to $600 per acre. The theory would say the “beta” of farms went way up, so you would be taking far more risk buying it at $600 (as Buffett did) than at $2,000/acre. That, of course, is nonsense. But stocks do trade, and math types like the ability of computers to model all those jiggles in prices. Buffett concluded, “This concept of volatility is useful for people whose career is teaching, but it’s useless to us.”
The idea of finding talented people to do what they do best is one of Buffett’s driving principles.
Buffett noted that it’s important to think about risks, including those that have never happened before. The investment banks all had models, they had weekly risk committee meetings and they still didn’t have a clue. Buffett opined that “a chief risk officer is an employee that makes you feel good while you do dumb things.”
Financial literacy is a tough sell in a world of calculators. Few can actually do the math anymore. Add in credit cards, and you’ve made it easy for people to do silly things.
Buffett noted there are things that Berkshire does that the average investor cannot copy. Float – Berkshire has that $58 billion interest-free loan. Berkshire makes direct purchases and deals of its own design. Berkshire sometimes buys whole companies.
Berkshire owns more than 70 different businesses, so it needs a variety of compensation arrangements. For example, Burlington Northern requires lots of capital and See’s Candy requires none. Each business has its own key measures of building business value. What Buffett wants to pay for is widening the moat. Munger noted that GE and many other large companies have centralized personnel departments for such things. Imposing policy from headquarters can build resentment. Berkshire is the opposite – totally decentralized management. Munger mused that it is amazing how simple it’s been, how well it has worked and how little time it takes.
Growing wealth. Spend less than what you make. Know and stay within your circle of competence. The only businesses that matter are the ones you put your money in. Keep learning over time. Don’t lose. Insist on a margin of safety.
Since 1776, America has been the most extraordinary economic story in the world. If you had been told that following Aug. 30, 1930, the day Warren was born, the market would crash, 4,000 banks would fail, the Dow would sink to 32 (32!!!), there would be 25% unemployment, a dust bowl, the grasshoppers would take over… you might think we were in big trouble. Instead, despite all those problems, since 1930, the average standard of living in America has increased 6 for 1. In contrast, Buffett observed that you can look at entire centuries in world history where nothing happened. The economic growth of America has been an incredible achievement. Many have underestimated the resilience of our republic.
We’ve had the Civil War…15 recessions…it certainly has not been a straight line of progress, but the power of capitalism has been amazing. Stimulus has helped our recent problems, but what will really bring us out of recession is capitalism. And the world has caught on. Buffett predicted that in the next 100 years, we will have 15 to 20 lousy years and that we’ll be so far ahead of where we are now that it will be beyond belief.
In inflation, your compensation can go up without any additional investment. As a business example, Buffett noted that when See’s Candy was purchased in 1971, it had the revenues of 25 million dollars and sold 16 million pounds of candy annually with 9 million dollars in tangible assets. Today, See’s sells 300 million dollars of candy with 40 million dollars of tangible assets. Berkshire needed to invest only 31 million dollars to generate a more than 10-fold increase in revenues. In aggregate, Buffett noted that Berkshire has earned 1.5 billion dollars in profits at See’s over the years. See’s inventory turns fast, has no receivables and has little fixed investment – a perfect inflation hedge.
Buffett acknowledged that there are institutions in the world that governments should properly save. Europe is in the process of deciding whether whole countries are “too big to fail.” Buffett suggested that this problem will always be with us, so our best tactic is to reduce the propensity to fail. One measure he proposed was that those institutions that put society at risk and fail should leave the CEO and spouse dead broke. The board should also suffer severe penalties. If society needs to save you, you should have very painful penalties.
His Dale Carnegie course in 1951 cost him $100, and the value was incalculable as the value of good communication skills so dramatically enhanced his life. So Buffett’s big point was to develop yourself. Find your passion, and improve your skills.
Buffett labeled medical costs the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness. The rest of the world spends 5%–10% of GDP on healthcare, mostly with socialized medicine.Buffett shared that his ideal legacy is very simple. What he really likes is teaching. He’s been teaching both formally and informally all his life. He’s also had some of the greatest teachers one could imagine. So he figures that, if somebody thought he did a decent job of teaching, he’d feel very good about that.
The Richest Man In Babylon by George Clason
This book does a great job of teaching personal financial primitives through a series of parables based in ancient Babylon.
A part of all you earn is yours to keep. It should be not less than a tenth no matter how little you earn.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Security to a man's possession is the protection of wise counsel.
To be able to acquire and hold desirable things, you must be able to pay for them.
The less you are controlled by your possessions, the freer you are.
A full purse soon empties if you have no plan for its use.
There is no substitute for financial security, for peace of mind, for the privilege of owning your own property.
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Montreal At War 1914 - 1918 by Terry Copp
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This book examines the impact of World War I on the city of Montreal and its inhabitants. In the book, Copp explores the various ways in which the war affected the social, economic, and political life of Montreal, and he looks at the experiences of soldiers, civilians, and various immigrant groups during the conflict. My favorite parts was learning about different prominent figures such as Henri Bourassa and Lady Drummond.
Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos
Mastering Bitcoin: Programming The Open Blockchain is a book by Andreas Antonopoulos that provides a comprehensive guide to Bitcoin and other digital cryptocurrencies. In the book, Antonopoulos covers the technical aspects of Bitcoin, including how it works, how to use it, and how to develop applications that interact with it. He also discusses the social, economic, and political implications of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and he explores the potential for these technologies to disrupt traditional financial systems and create new opportunities for innovation.
Bitcoin isn't Money, it's a decentralized trust network.
Cold Storage: achieved when Bitcoin private keys are created and stored in a secure offline environment.
Double-Spending: result of successfully spending some money more than once.
ESDSA(Elliptic Curve Signature Algorithm): a cryptographic algorithm used by Bitcoin to ensure that funds can only be sent by their rightful owners.
Proof-Of-Work(PoW): a piece of data that requires significant computation to find. In Bitcoin, miners must find a numeric solution to the SHA256 algorithm that meets a network wide target, the difficulty target.
Proof-Of-Stake(POS): method by which a cryptocurrency blockchain network aims to achieve distributed consensus.
Bitcoin is a collection of concepts and technologies that form the basis of a digital money ecosystem.
Units of currency called bitcoin are used to store and transmit value among participants in the bitcoin network.
Bitcoin users communicate with each other using the bitcoin protocol primarily via the Internet, although other transport networks can also be used.
The bitcoin protocol stack, available as open source software, can be run on a wide range of computing devices, including laptops and smartphones, making the technology easily accessible.
Bitcoin in a sense is the perfect form of money for the internet because it is fast, secure, and borderless.
The coins are implied in transactions that transfer value from sender to recipient. Users of bitcoin own keys that allow them to prove ownership of bitcoin in the bitcoin network.
Bitcoins, i.e. units of bitcoin, are created through a process called "mining," which involves competing to find solutions to a mathematical problem while processing bitcoin transactions.
Any participant in the bitcoin network (i.e., anyone using a device running the full bitcoin protocol stack) may operate as a miner, using their computer’s processing power to verify and record transactions.
Bitcoin mining decentralizes the currency-issuance and clearing functions of a Central Bank and replaces the need for any central bank.
The bitcoin protocol includes built-in algorithms that regulate the mining function across the network.
The protocol also halves the rate at which new bitcoin is created every 4 years, and limits the total number of bitcoin that will be created to a fixed total just below 21 million coins. The result is that the number of bitcoin in circulation closely follows an easily predictable curve that approaches 21 million by the year 2140. Due to bitcoin’s diminishing rate of issuance, over the long term, the bitcoin currency is deflationary.
Bitcoin is also the name of the protocol, a peer-to-peer network, and a distributed computing innovation.
Bitcoin represents the culmination of decades of research in cryptography and distributed systems and includes four key innovations brought together in a unique and powerful combination. Bitcoin consists of:
A decentralized peer-to-peer network (the bitcoin protocol)
A public transaction ledger (the Blockchain)
A set of rules for independent transaction validation and currency issua_nce (consensus rules)
A mechanism for reaching global decentralized consensus on the valid blockchain (Proof-Of-Work(PoW) algorithm)
A network for propagating value and securing the ownership of digital assets via distributed computation.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
This book was an absolute game changer for me. It provided a guide to gaining the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. In the book, Newport argues that deep work is becoming increasingly rare in a world that is constantly interrupted by notifications and other distractions, and that this lack of focus is damaging to both productivity and fulfillment. He offers practical strategies for cultivating the ability to do deep work, and he discusses the benefits of this ability for individuals and organizations. This is my second time reading this book and it will definitely not be my last.
Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
If you study the lives of other influential figures from both distant and recent history, you'll find that a commitment to deep work is a common theme. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates famously conducted "Think Weeks twice a year, during which he would isolate himself (often in a lakeside cottage) to do nothing but read and think big thoughts.
In an age of network tools, knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative-constantly sending and receiving e-mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction.
The Shallows was just the first in a series of recent books to examine the Internet's impact on our brains and work habits. These subsequent titles include William Powers's Hamlet's BlackBerry, John Freeman's The Tyranny of E-mail, and Alex Soojung-Kin Pang's The Distraction Addiction-all of which agree, more or less, effect that network tools are distracting us from work that requires unbroken concentration, while simultaneously degrading our capacity to remain focused.
Given Jason Benn's story highlights a crucial lesson: Deep work is not some nostalgic affectation of writers and early-twentieth century philosophers. It's instead a skill that has great value today.
To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you're capable of producing-a task that requires depth.
Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output.
The lack of distraction in my life tones down that background hum of nervous mental energy that seems to increasingly pervade people's daily lives. I'm comfortable being bored, cultivate an ability to produce real value in an increasingly distracted world; and to recognize a truth embraced by the most productive and important personalities of generations past: A deep life is a good life.
"Our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind."For many workers, this lag predicts bad news. As intelligent machines improve, and the gap between machine and human abilities shrinks, employers are becoming increasingly likely to hire “new machines" instead of “new people."
Though an increasing number of people will lose in this new economy as their skill becomes automatable or easily outsourced, there are others who will not only survive, but thrive-becoming more valued (and therefore more rewarded) than before. those with the oracular ability to work with and tease valuable results out of increasingly complex machines will thrive. Tyler Cowen summarizes this reality more bluntly: “The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?"
Elon Musk: Tesla, Space x, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
This book provides an in-dept look at Elon Musks life and career. Musk is well known all around the world so most of the stories from this book have been shared millions of times. My personal favorite was his trip to Russia to potentially acquire a rocket. Why does Musk need a rocket? One of his main goals is to make humanity a multi-planetary species. The purchase was unsuccessful but that didn't stop Musk. On the flight back from Russia he was already in the process of creating a financial spreadsheet of rocket parts that he would need to build the rocket himself. That rejection from the Russians and the financial spreadsheet of the rocket parts was the birth of SpaceX.
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
This book does a great job at explaining how our attitudes towards money are influenced by our values, beliefs, and experiences. Housel combines personal anecdotes, historical analysis, and research to provide a thought-provoking look at the complex relationship between money and human psychology.
Doing well with money has a little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave.
Two topics impact everyone, whether you are interested in them or not: health and money.
Physics isn’t controversial. It’s guided by laws. Finance is different. It’s guided by people’s behaviors.
I love Voltaire’s observation that “History never repeats itself; man always does.” It applies so well to how we behave with money.
Your personal experiences with money make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.
studying history makes you feel like you understand something. But until you’ve lived through it and personally felt its consequences, you may not understand it enough to change your behavior.
Every financial decision a person makes, makes sense to them in that moment and checks the boxes they need to check. They tell themselves a story about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, and that story has been shaped by their own unique experiences.
Americans spend more on lottery tickets than movies, video games, music, sporting events, and books combined.
The lowest-income households in the U.S. on average spend $412 a year on lotto tickets, four times the amount of those in the highest income groups. Forty percent of Americans cannot come up with $400 in an emergency. Which is to say: Those buying $400 in lottery tickets are by and large the same people who say they couldn’t come up with $400 in an emergency. They are blowing their safety nets on something with a one-in-millions chance of hitting it big.
King Alyattes of Lydia, now part of Turkey, is thought to have created the first official currency in 600 BC.
At the end of 2018 there was $27 trillion in U.S. retirement accounts, making it the main driver of the common investor’s saving and investing decisions
The 401(k)—the backbone savings vehicle of American retirement—did not exist until 1978. The Roth IRA was not born until 1998.
The share of Americans over age 25 with a bachelor’s degree has gone from less than 1 in 20 in 1940 to 1 in 4 by 2015.7 The average college tuition over that time rose more than fourfold adjusted for inflation.8 Something so big and so important hitting society so fast explains why, for example, so many people have made poor decisions with student loans over the last 20 years.
It’s possible to statistically measure whether some decisions were wise. But in the real world, day to day, we simply don’t. It’s too hard. We prefer simple stories, which are easy but often devilishly misleading.
When judging your failures I’m likely to prefer a clean and simple story of cause and effect, because I don’t know what’s going on inside your head. “You had a bad outcome so it must have been caused by a bad decision” is the story that makes the most sense to me. But when judging myself I can make up a wild narrative justifying my past decisions and attributing bad outcomes to risk.
“Enough” is realizing that the opposite—an insatiable appetite for more—will push you to the point of regret.
Good investing isn’t necessarily about earning the highest returns, because the highest returns tend to be one-off hits that can’t be repeated. It’s about earning pretty good returns that you can stick with and which can be repeated for the longest period of time. That’s when compounding runs wild.
Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there. But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk. It requires humility, and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast. It requires frugality and an acceptance that at least some of what you’ve made is attributable to luck, so past success can’t be relied upon to repeat indefinitely.
There are two reasons why a survival mentality is so key with money. One is the obvious: few gains are so great that they’re worth wiping yourself out over. The other, as we saw in chapter 4, is the counterintuitive math of compounding. Compounding only works if you can give an asset years and years to grow.
Room for error—often called margin of safety—is one of the most underappreciated forces in finance.
I had a day job in midtown Manhattan paying 20k dollars per year—about minimum wage ... I never ate out, and never took a taxi. My cost of living was about 1000 dollars per month, and I was earning 1800 dollars per month. I did this for two years, and saved up 12,000 dollars. I was 22 years old. Once I had 12,000 dollars I could quit my job and become a full-time musician. I knew I could get a few gigs per month to pay my cost of living. So I was free. I quit my job a month later, and never had a job again. When I finished telling my friend this story, he asked for more. I said no, that was it. He said, “No, what about when you sold your company?” I said no, that didn’t make a big difference in my life. That was just more money in the bank. The difference happened when I was 22.
Rockefeller’s job wasn’t to drill wells, load trains, or move barrels. It was to think and make good decisions. Rockefeller’s product—his deliverable—wasn’t what he did with his hands, or even his words. It was what he figured out inside his head.
Remembrance Of Grandeur The Anglo-Protestant Elite of Montreal 1900 - 1950 by Margaret Westley
As my time in Montreal increases, so does my desire to learn more about its history. In this book, Margaret Westley examines the social and cultural history of the Anglo-Protestant elite in Montreal during the last half of the 20th century. Westley explores the various ways in which this elite group, which was made up of wealthy and influential individuals from English-speaking Protestant backgrounds, shaped the city's social, economic, and cultural landscape. She looks at the institutions, organizations, and networks that this elite group belonged to, and she discusses the values, beliefs, and practices that defined their way of life.
The Illustrated History of Ammunition by Ian Hogg
My interest of weapons and weapons systems started around the time that I was learning about the Bitcoin networks explicit use of power projection as a defence mechanism. Power projection is the ability to exert influence or control through various means(military, economic, cultural), a concept that can also be applied to the Bitcoin network, as its high energy consumption serves as a form of power projection, deterring potential attackers and maintaining its integrity and security.
In this book, Ian Hogg covers a wide range of topics related to the history of ammunition, including the development of different types of bullets and their use in various weapons, the evolution of gunpowder and other explosives, and the role of ammunition in warfare and other conflicts. He also discusses the impact of technological advances on the development of ammunition, as well as the cultural and social significance of this technology.
The Book of Life by J Krishnamurti
This books is a great supplement to a morning or night routine as it consists of a series of essays and discussions on a wide range of philosophical and spiritual topics. In "The Book of Life" Krishnamurti explores different ideas in depth, offering his thoughts on the human condition and the ways in which we can awaken to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Below are three essays from the book.
I do not know if you have observed what an enormous part the intellect plays in our life. The newspapers, the magazines, everything about us is cultivating reason. Not that I am against reason. On the contrary, one must have the capacity to reason very clearly, sharply. But if you observe you find that the intellect is everlastingly analyzing why we belong or do not belong, why one must be an outsider to find reality, and so on. We have learned the process of analyzing ourselves. So there is the intellect with its capacity to inquire, to analyze, to reason and come to conclusions: and there is feeling, pure feeling which is always being interrupted, colored by the intellect. And when the intellect interferes with pure feeling, out of this interference grows a mediocre mind. On the one hand, we have intellect, with its capacity to reason based upon its experience and knowledge and on the other, we have feeling, which is corrupted by society, by Fear. And will these two reveal what is true? Or is there only perception, and nothing else?
What do we mean by learning? Is there learning when you are merely accumulating knowledge, gathering information? That is one kind of learning, is it not? As a student of engineering, you study mathematics, and so on; you are learning, informing yourself about the subject. You are accumulating knowledge in order to use that knowledge in practical ways. Your learning is accumulative, additive. Now, when the Mind is merely taking on, adding, acquiring, is it learning? Or is learning something entirely different? I say the additive process that we now call learning is not learning at all. It is merely a cultivation of memory, which becomes mechanical; and a mind that functions mechanically, like a machine, is not capable of learning. A machine is never capable of learning, except in the additive sense. Learning is something quite different, as I shall try to show you.
A mind that is learning never says "I know", because knowledge is always partial, whereas learning is complete all the time. Learning does not mean starting with a certain account of knowledge and adding to it further knowledge. That is not learning at all; it is a purely mechanistic process. To me, learning is something entirely different. I am learning about myself from moment to moment, and the self is extraordinarily vital; it is living, moving; it has no beginning and no end. When I say "I know myself," learning has come to an end in accumulated knowledge. Learning is never cumulative; it is a movement of knowing which has no beginning or end.There is in fact only one state, not two states such as the conscious and the unconcious; there is only a state of being, which is conciousness, though you may divide it as the conscious and the unconcious. But that coniousness is always of the past, never of the present; you are concious only of things that are over. You are conscious of what I am saying to convey the second afterwards, are you not? You understand it a moment later. You are never conscious or aware of the now. Watch your own hearts and minds and you will see that Consciousness is functioning between the past and the future and that the present is merely a passage of the past and the future... If you watch your own mind at work, you will see that the movement to the past and to the future is a process in which the present is not. Either the past is a means of escape from the present, which may be unpleasant, or the future is a hope away from the present. So The Mind is occupied with the past or with or with the future and sloughs off the present...If either condemns and rejects the fact or accepts and identifies itself with the fact. Such a mind is obviously not capable of seeing any fact as fact. That is, our thought, is the conditioned.
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
This book explores the principles of good design and how they apply to objects and environments that we encounter in everyday life. Don Norman discusses the importance of usability and user-centered design, and he argues that good design should be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. He also looks at the ways in which poor design can create confusion and frustration for users, and he offers insights and strategies for designing products and spaces that are intuitive and effective.
Industrial Design: The professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value, and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer (from the Industrial Design Society of America’s website). Interaction design: The focus is upon how people interact with technology. The goal is to enhance people’s understanding of what can be done, what is happening, and what has just occurred. Interaction design draws upon principles of psychology, design, art, and emotion to ensure a positive, enjoyable experience. Experience design: The practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality and enjoyment of the total experience.
Design is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology.
Machines require us to be precise and accurate, things we are not very good at.
Good design starts with an understanding of Psychology and Technology.
Good design requires good communication, especially from machine to person, indicating what actions are possible, what is happening, and what is about to happen. Communication is especially important when things go wrong.
Glass affords transparency. At the same time, its physical structure blocks the passage of most physical objects. As a result, glass affords seeing through and support, but not the passage of air or most physical objects (atomic particles can pass through glass).
Affordances exist even if they are not visible. For designers, their visibility is critical: visible affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. A flat plate mounted on a door affords pushing. Knobs afford turning, pushing, and pulling. Slots are for inserting things into. Balls are for throwing or bouncing. Perceived affordances help people figure out what actions are possible without the need for labels or instructions. I call the signaling component of affordances signifiers.
Good design requires, among other things, good communication of the purpose, structure, and operation of the device to the people who use it. That is the role of the signifier.
Signifiers can be deliberate and intentional, such as the sign PUSH on a door, but they may also be accidental and unintentional, such as our use of the visible trail made by previous people walking through a field or over a snow-covered terrain to determine the best path. Or how we might use the presence or absence of people waiting at a train station to determine whether we have missed the train.
Affordances represent the possibilities in the world for how an agent (a person, animal, or machine) can interact with something. Some affordances are perceivable, others are invisible. Signifiers are signals. Some signifiers are signs, labels, and drawings placed in the world, such as the signs labeled “push,” “pull,” or “exit” on doors, or arrows and diagrams indicating what is to be acted upon or in which direction to gesture, or other instructions. Some signifiers are simply the perceived affordances, such as the handle of a door or the physical structure of a switch.
Affordances are the possible interactions between people and the environment. Some affordances are perceivable, others are not.
• Perceived affordances often act as signifiers, but they can be ambiguous.
• Signifiers signal things, in particular what actions are possible and how they should be done. Signifiers must be perceivable, else they fail to function.In design, signifiers are more important than affordances, for they communicate how to use the design. A signifier can be words, a graphical illustration, or just a device whose perceived affordances are unambiguous.
Mapping is an important concept in the design and layout of controls and displays. When the mapping uses spatial correspondence between the layout of the controls and the devices being controlled, it is easy to determine how to use them.
The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant
A small book that provides an overview of human history and the ways in which it has shaped the world we live in today. The Durants draw on their extensive knowledge of history to explore the patterns and trends that have emerged over time, and they examine the cultural, economic, and political factors that have influenced human development.
The purpose of history is to provide us with the experience of the past, that we may profit by the follies and the wisdom of our predecessors.
The history of the world is the history of a privileged few.
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
The present is the living sum of the past.
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
The history of civilization is the history of the substitution of culture for instinct.
The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, but it pays off.
The Well Tempered City by Jonathan F.P Rose
This book explores the complex and interconnected systems that make up modern cities and the ways in which these systems can be designed and managed to create more livable and sustainable communities.
Dan Siegel, professor os psychiatry, describes the Mind as an emergent, self-organizing process that is embodied and relational, and regulates the flow energy and information
Dr.Siegel uses the acronym FACES to describe a healthy mind: flexible, adaptive to changed in context, coherent(holding itself together), energized, and stable. Qualities also necessary for cities to thrive in VUVA times.
Chaos theory observes that, when a self-organizing system is not able to link differentiated parts, it moves to chaos or rigidity. The same happens with the Mind- almost all mental disabilities can be categorized as chaos, rigidity, or both
Natures way of flowing between rigidity and chaos is to encourage the growth of differentiation, or diversity, at the same time increasing interlinkage.
Three great waves in human history:
The first wave, hunter gatherers who adapted on foraging, hunting, and fishing, increased our caloric input significantly by working cooperatively and sharing their gains with their family or tribal group
Rise in calories energized the evolution of the cognitive abilities of our mind
The second wave was agricultural^^, a time when we advanced our social networks and applied them to growing the calories to fuel the development of civilization.
In the third wave we dramatically advanced our organizational and technical capacity, making possible our largest technology, cities, which are now spread across the earth in a metropolitan tide.During the first wave humans perceived themselves to be part of nature. In the second wave, we saw ourselves as deeply embedded in nature yet also shaped by human culture. Our third wave increasingly ignores nature.
In another cognitive bias, our minds have evolved to value present condition more highly than we do future ones, a tendency known as hyperbolic discounting
Our minds are also biased towards in-group favouritism, one’s warm feeling for family and friends which is coupled with out-group aversion.
Alloparenting or shared parenting
Homo sapiens hunted more successfully in groups, protected one another, and helped raise one another’s young
A child consumes 3 million calories in the span from birth to maturity, and it’s difficult for one parent to gather that much food on her own while also taking care of herself
Acting collectively, it is feasible to feed an entire, even its smallest, weakest members
Humans are the only mammals that engage in alloparenting, or shared parenting.
Small groups evolve much more quickly than large groups
The nine C’s: Cognition, Cooperation, Culture, Calories, Connectivity, Commerce, Control, Complexity, and Concentration.
Culture is our collective operating software, which continuously evolves, adapts, and regenerates just as nature does.
Culture also serves as our collective memory, a way to pass an adaptive behavior like social organization, knowledge and communication systems, and world views from one generation to the next, so they do not have to be continuously rediscovered.
If you scan someones brain with an MRI machine while he or she is chipping away at flints to make tools, the core language areas of the brain light up.
Skin In The Game by Nassim Taleb
In this book, Nassim Taleb explores his concept of "skin in the game" – the idea that those who have a stake in the outcome of an action or decision are more likely to act responsibly and ethically than those who do not.
The world cannot be understood without mastering probability, without understanding the crucial role of skin in the game.
The Skin in the Game principle is about risk-sharing and fairness. It is about ethics, responsibility, and the preservation of justice.
It is the absence of skin in the game that leads to the utter degradation of the world, to the scams, the blowups, the political and financial corruptions, the economic inequality, the unemployment, and the lack of economic stability.
If you want to understand the world, you have to understand the role of incentives.
The concept of skin in the game is at the core of ethics, justice, and fairness.
Skin in the game is the ultimate test of integrity and honesty.
Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke
A technical programming book that helped me solidify some JavaScript concepts.
The Everything Store by Brad Stone
This book tells the story of Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos.
Bezos always took to opportunity to listen to experienced executives like Walmart CEO Lee Scott and Costco Founder Jim Senegal.
In a meeting with Jim Senegal, he tells Bezos about Costcos business plan. How Costco doesnt advertise at all, and earns most of irs gross profitcs from annual membership fees.
"The membership fee is a onetime pain, but it's reinforced every time customers walk in and see forty-seven-inch televisions that are two hundred dollars less than any place else. It reinforces the value of the concept. Customers know they will find really cheap stuff at Costco"
Costcos low prices generated heavy sales volume, and the company used its significant size to demand the best possible deals from suupliers and raise its per-unit gross profit dollars.
"The reason people are prepared to come to our strange places to shop is that we have value. We deliver on that value constantly."
Amazon decided to invite business thinker Jim Collins to take a deep look at the company. His finding led him to a simple conclusion, "You've got to decide what you're great at".
This led Bezos and the team to do a quick sketch of their own virtuous cycle or flywheel which looked something like this:
Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the site. This greater efficiency the enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel and it should accelerate the loop.
After his talk with Jim Senegal, Bezos also wanted to use Costcos tactic of stopping advertising. He believed that word of mouth could deliver customers to Amazon. He wanted to use the saved marketing dollars into improving the customer experience and accelerating the flywheel.
The use of marketing dollars on improving the customer experience was working in one experiment- free shipping
During the 2000 and 2001 holidays, Amazon offered free shipping to customers who placed orders of a hundred dollars or more. The promotion was expensive but it definetly boosted sales.
Survey results showed that customers did no like paying for shipping costs.
Bezos wanted to turn the holiday season free shipping into a permanent offer but that would be very costly for the business at the time.
A finance vice president would later offer an alternative idea that stemmed from the aviation industry. He mentioned how airlines had segmented their customers into two groups- business people and recreational travellers -by reducing ticket prices for those customers who were willing to stay at their destination through a Saturday night.
So at Amazon they would make the free shipping offer permanent, but only for customers who were willing to wait a few extra days for theit orders.
Like Airlines, Amazon would divide their customers into two groups: those whose needs were time-sensitive, and everyone else.
In January 2002, Amazon started a new service called Free Super Saver Shipping for orders above $99.
The service did not last long but it set the sage for new Initiatives that could come inside the company, an example is the subscription club Amazon Prime
Around 2002 an internal combat between two Amazon departments started: Amazons editorial division and its personalization team.
Editorial team was key to amazon in the early days as they game the home page a human touch to the experience.
Over the years, the personalization groups efforts started to seep into the work of the editorial team.
The personalization team, nicknamed P13N used analytics and algorithms to generate recommendations crafted to appeal to individual customers based on their previous purchases. As with most technologies today, P13N kept getting better.
This was a clear competition between humans and machine, and time showed that humans couldn't compete.
"PEOPLE FORGET THAT JOHN HENRY DIED IN THE END"
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
This book tells the story of a young man's spiritual journey in ancient India. The book follows the protagonist, Siddhartha, as he leaves behind his privileged life as a Brahmin and embarks on a quest to find enlightenment. Along the way, he encounters a range of teachers and mentors, including the Buddha himself, and he grapples with the meaning and purpose of life.
Siddhartha had one single goal—to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow—to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought—that was his goal. When all the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desires were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self—the great secret!
He had begun to feel that the love of his father and mother, and also the love of his friend Govinda, would not always make him happy, give him peace, satisfy and suffice him.
“Om is the bow, the arrow is the soul, Brahman is the arrow’s goal At which one aims unflinchingly.”
If you find bliss in the forest, come back and teach it to me. If you find disillusionment, come back, and we shall again offer sacrifices to the gods together.
Siddhartha sat upright and learned to save his breath, to manage with little breathing, to hold his breath. He learned, while breathing in, to quiet his heartbeat, learned to lessen his heartbeats, until there were few and hardly any more.
A heron flew over the bamboo wood and Siddhartha took the heron into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, became a heron, ate fishes, suffered heron hunger, used heron language, died a heron’s death. A dead jackal lay on the sandy shore and Siddhartha’s soul slipped into its corpse; he became a dead jackal, lay on the shore, swelled, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyenas, was picked at by vultures, became a skeleton, became dust, mingled with the atmosphere. And Siddhartha’s soul returned, died, decayed, turned into dust, experienced the troubled course of the life cycle.
He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his Self in a thousand different forms. He was animal, carcass, stone, wood, water, and each time he reawakened.
What is meditation? What is abandonment of the body? What is fasting? What is the holding of breath? It is a flight from the Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life. The driver of oxen makes this same flight, takes this temporary drug when he drinks a few bowls of rice wine or cocoanut milk in the inn. He then no longer feels his Self, no longer feels the pain of life; he then experiences temporary escape. Falling asleep over his bowl of rice wine, he finds what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape from their bodies by long exercises and dwell in the non-Self.
The drinker does indeed find escape, he does indeed find a short respite and rest, but he returns from the illusion and finds everything as it was before. He has not grown wiser, he has not gained knowledge, he has not climbed any higher.
You have listened well to the teachings, O Brahmin’s son, and it is a credit to you that you have thought so deeply about them. You have found a flaw. Think well about it again. Let me warn you, you who are thirsty for knowledge, against the thicket of opinions and the conflict of words. Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them. The teaching which you have heard, however, is not my opinion, and its goal is not to explain the world to those who are thirsty for knowledge. Its goal is quite different; its goal is salvation from suffering. That is what Gotama teaches, nothing else.
Beneath heaped-up black hair he saw a bright, very sweet, very clever face, a bright red mouth like a freshly cut fig, artful eyebrows painted in a high arch, dark eyes, clever and observant, and a clear slender neck above her green and gold gown. The woman’s hands were firm and smooth, long and slender, with broad gold bangles on her wrists.
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
This was my second time reading this book and definitely not my last. In the book, Peter Thiel argues that the key to building a successful company is to create something new and valuable that does not yet exist – to go from "zero to one."
Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott
This book is a bullish take on blockchain technology and its implications in society.
Blockchains differs from the Internet in two important ways:
First, where the Internet was a free utility built by a diverse group of stakeholders, many of them volunteers with little financial incentive, blockchain provides huge financial rewards for those who can build successful, scalable, and widely used technology through the appreciation of underlying crypto assets.
Second, blockchain is tackling value industries such as financial services and supply chains, far larger than information industries like media and publishing. So Bitcoin has become: a store of hundreds of billions of dollars of value on the most robust computer network ever formed (and entirely bootstrapped), a secure payment system that enables billions of dollars in daily on-chain transactions, a reserve currency for the burgeoning crypto asset world, a final settlement layer when it's time to cash out, and a favorite punching bag for every armchair analyst in the world. Whereas bitcoin serves such a purpose, Ethereum is a platform technology, designed from the outset to enable distributed applications (DApps), what Nick Szabo calls "an application that runs in a distributed and trust-minimized manner on a blockchain." At the core of distributed applications are smart contracts, software that mimics the logic of a business agreement. Because they are decentralized and running on blockchains, they minimize the need for intermediaries (banks, brokers, lawyers, courts, escrow agents, corporations) to guarantee execution.
The more DApps built on the network, the more demand for the associated platform token, ether. If Ethereum is the city grid, and the DApp is the car, then ether is the fuel, or "gas" in crypto parlance. We pay in ether to use the network for running the smart contract that powers the DApp.
“Remittances are expensive because interregional-settlement is not existent. Forty percent of Caribbeans don't have access to banking. Three percent fees are being taxed by foreign bankers on merchant charges using credit cards."
Stablecoins like Tether "decentralize the dollar but centralized the issuance. You have to trust a single entity who now becomes the monetary authority." Abed asks, "Are you better than the Federal Reserve?"
The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous
Saifedean Ammous book examines the history and characteristics of bitcoin, the world's first decentralized digital currency. Ammous discusses the ways in which bitcoin is different from traditional money and how it is able to function as a store of value and a medium of exchange without relying on a central authority.
Bitcoin – an invention leveraging the technological possibilities of the digital age to solve a problem that has persisted for all of humanity's existence: how to move economic value across time and space.
While investment is also meant to produce income to be exchanged for other goods, it is distinct from money in three respects: first, it offers a return, which money does not offer; second, it always involves a risk of failure, whereas money is supposed to carry the least risk; third, investments are less liquid than money, necessitating significant transaction costs every time they are to be spent. This can help us understand why there will always be demand for money, and why holding investments can never entirely replace money.
Bot Business 101 by Ekim Kaya and Cem Onur
This book provides insights and advice for entrepreneurs looking to start and grow a business in the field of bots and artificial intelligence. The book is based on the authors' own experiences building and growing their own bot company, Botego, over the course of a decade. In the book, Kaya and Onur share the lessons they have learned and the mistakes they have made along the way, and they offer practical guidance on topics such as choosing the right distribution channel, pricing, designing a solid conversation flow, and increasing retention. This book was written back when automated messaging bots was "the thing to do" so most of the information is outdated, but still a fun read.
A well implemented Bot is one that functions to fill a need, make the users’ life better, provide some convenience in a productive manner
“Don’t send a human to do a machine’s job” - Agent Smith (The Matrix)
Bots (a.k.a. Conversational Interfaces)
Artificial Intelligence (aka Deep Learning, Machine Learning etc)
fore the end of this decade, self driving cars, connected to various services through Bot interfaces will enable us to focus on things that matter the most – let the radar do the distance and speed calculations while you ask a Bot about dinner reservations and have that Bot ask the restaurant’s Bot for the details during your Video Call with your daughter who is in another city as the car drives itself and communicates with other vehicles about road conditions and traffic pattern – yes, you can think of each vehicle as a Bot connected to various other Bots aggregating information and making sense of big data and telling you things like “there is a disabled vehicle in 20 miles disrupting efficient vehicle flow. I have opted to reroute along with 30% of other vehicles in our trajectory to relieve flow pressure on the highway, we will lose 3.4 minutes but compared to 15 minute loss had we not elected such a course that is a negligible loss for a significant benefit. I am awaiting your verbal approval on that.
You cannot build skyscrapers using steel – it just will not work. You need a certain type of steel, manufactured up to certain standards so that so that you can create a market of skyscrapers because more than one person can build them.
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
In this book, Walter Isaacson that tells the story of the life and work of the iconic Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. Isaacson explores Leonardo's many talents and interests, including painting, sculpture, anatomy, engineering, and more, and he examines the ways in which Leonardo's curiosity and creativity have had a lasting impact on the world.
_In Da Vincis era, people saw God and Jesus through the eye of the artists.
An example of this is The Last Supper where Leonardo depicts Jesus and nine of his apostles.
Leonardo and other prominent artists of the time were like gods in the sense that they portrayed God and Jesus to humans or Europeans.
Waking up by Sam Harris
This book explores the idea of spirituality outside of traditional religious contexts. Sam Harris argues that there are ways to cultivate a sense of inner peace, purpose, and self-transcendence that do not rely on belief in God or any other supernatural concepts.
Consciousness is the context in which the objects of experience appear.
Much of what makes us human is generally accomplished by the right side of the brain.
Only 25 percent of Americans believe in evolution while 68 percent in the literal existence of Satan.
Life is a matter of what systems do with respect to their environment. Like fluidity, life is defined according to external criteria.
“Spirituality” in the widest sense of the term is an indispensable part of understanding the nature of the Mind
Lying by Sam Harris
It looks like Sam Harris is my repeat author for the year 2022. In this book, he explores the concept of lying and the ways in which it can harm individuals, relationships, and society as a whole. Harris argues that lying is a destructive and corrosive force that undermines trust, respect, and transparency, and he discusses the various forms that lying can take, including deception, omission, and self-deception.
Lying is the royal road to chaos
What Is a Lie?
Deception can take many forms, but not all acts of deception are lies
By wearing cosmetics, a woman seeks to seem younger or more beautiful than she otherwise would. But honesty does not require that she issue continual disclaimers -- "I see that you are looking at my face: Please be aware that I do no look this good first thing in the morning"
Elisions: the omission of a sound or syllable when speaking
It is even possible to deceive with the truth. I could, for instance, stand on the sidewalk in front of the White House and call the headquarters of Facebook on my cell phone: "Hello, this is Sam Harris. I'm calling from the White House, and I'd like to speak to Mark Zuckerberg."
To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.
People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs--That is, the more a person's well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people opinions--the more consequential the lie
Truth vs Truthfulness
To speak truthfully is to accurately represent one's beliefs.
But candor offers no assurance that one's belief about the world are true. Nor does truthfulness require that one speak the whole truth, because communicating every fact on a given topic is almost never useful or even possibleThe intent to communicate honestly is measure of truthfulness
Reasons why people lie
People tell lies for many reasons:
To avoid embarrassment
To exaggerate their accomplishments
To disguise wrongdoing
They make promises they do not intend to keep
They conceal defects in their products or service
They mislead competitors to gain advantage
Many of us lie to our friends and family members to spare their feelingsEuphemisms: a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
It is in believing one thing while intending to communicate another that every lie is born.
The liar often imagines that he does no harm so long as his lies go undetected. But the one lied to rarely shares this view. The moment we consider our dishonesty from the perspective of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed
The opportunity to deceive others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception casts us onto some of the steepest ethical terrain we ever cross