23 Things That Made Me Think in 2023

The Headline-Death Gap

67% of deaths are from heart disease, cancer, and road incidents. The media barely covers these topics. Why?

News and social media aim to provoke interest or shock – emphasizing the extraordinary over the ordinary. This skews our understanding of reality.

Epistemic Luck

You know that if you lived in a different time, were born in a different city, were raised by different people, read different books, and had different friends, you’d have different beliefs. Yet, you’re convinced that your beliefs are correct.

Are you wrong or the luckiest person ever?

Everyone Has The Same Phone

Phones are an unusual example of societal equality. Incredibly wealthy people have clothes, cars, houses, jewelry, vacations, and access to things other people couldn’t fathom. Yet, they have the exact same phone as everyone else.

Bragging Razor

If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume it’s half of what they say. If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume it’s double what they claim.

People who are confident and secure about something don’t feel the urge to talk about it. Related: if someone tells you they make six figures, assume it’s way closer to $100,000 than to $999,999.

Stop Trying to Sound Smart

“I gave a talk about startups to 14 and 15-year-olds, and their questions afterward were better than I get at top universities. I puzzled over this, then realized why. Their questions were motivated by genuine curiosity, rather than to make some kind of comment or to seem smart.”

One Change Can Make a Huge Impact

"Everyone talks about how if you went back in time, some tiny change could make everything different now, but no one talks about how some tiny change now could make everything different in the future."

Ancestral Mathematics

To be born you needed:
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great-grandparents
16 second great-grandparents
256 sixth great-grandparents
2,048 ninth great-grandparents

For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total of 4,094 ancestors over the last 400 years.

Truly a miracle. So much pain, happiness, struggle, joy – so many love stories that HAD to happen, just for you to be you.

Related: reading about history is weird. On one hand, it’s like “damn, everything was so awful, scary, and unfair”. But also, if any of those things had gone any differently, I wouldn’t exist. I could only have lived in a world where all these terrible things happened.

An Underrated Trait

“The ability to hang: it’s surprisingly rare to meet someone and know you could introduce them to anyone and they’d be an asset rather than a liability.”

English Is Weird

Tomb, comb and bomb all have different pronunciations.

I knew this (obviously), but it’s kind of crazy to think about.

All You Need to Know About Coaching

Bob Knight taught a basketball class at Indiana University. On the first day of class, he said, “I’m going to teach you all you need to know about coaching right now.”

He picked a kid in the class and asked him to run to the door and jump as high as he could. The kid barely nicked the top frame. Then, Coach Knight took out a $20 bill, pinned it three inches higher and told the kid it was his if he could touch it.

He did and Coach Knight explained that coaching was all about motivation.

Tic Tac Manipulation

Tic tacs are 94% sugar yet claim to be sugar-free. How? The FDA says anything can be labeled sugar-free if it has less than .5g of sugar in it.

So, each tic tac is .49g of sugar giving them the ability to claim zero sugar on the label.

People Don’t Want the Truth

Most people aren’t interested in the truth. Rather, they are interested in information that confirms what they already (or want to) believe.

Friendship Cures All

Research: mealtime with friends and loved ones is a direct predictor of well-being. Have at least one 2-to-3-hour dinner and/or drinks per week—yes, 2–3 hours—with those who make you smile and feel good.

It’s almost impossible to be happy without friends. Loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes per day.

GPA Inflation

Between 1890 and 1950, the average GPA at Harvard was 2.5. In 1960, it hit 3.0. Today, it's 3.8.

“College graduation rates were falling and instead of improving the underlying teaching methods, we started inflating people's grades.”

Three Men Make a Tiger

People will believe anything if enough people tell them it’s true. It comes from a Chinese proverb that if one person tells you there’s a tiger roaming around your neighborhood, you can assume they’re lying. If two people tell you, you begin to wonder. If three say it’s true, you’re convinced there’s a tiger in your neighborhood and you panic.

Top 5 Largest Fast Food Chains in the U.S.

1. Subway (23.4k locations)
2. Starbucks (15.3k)
3. McDonalds (13.6k)
4. Dunkin Donuts (9.5k)
5. Taco Bell (7.1k)

Yes, there are more Subways than Starbucks, McDonalds and all other fast food chains. Surprised me.

Berkson’s Paradox

Strong correlations can fall apart when combined with a larger population. Among hospital patients, motorcycle crash victims wearing helmets are more likely to be seriously injured than those not wearing helmets. But that’s because most crash victims saved by helmets did not need to become hospital patients, and those without helmets are more likely to die before becoming a hospital patient.

Sometimes It’s More Expensive to go Cheap

I’m spending my 30’s replacing cheap stuff I bought in my 20’s.

Segal’s Law

“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with 2 watches is never sure.”

Modern society is full of competing narratives. Without trust, more data makes us more confused, not more informed.

How To Understand Yourself Better

“A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.”

The Pizza Principle

“Good pizza is rare, even though the method to create it is well known. Efforts to make it more convenient, cheaper, or easier almost always make it worse.”

This is about way more than pizza.

Go Exercise

The mortality gap between a smoker and non-smoker: 40%. The mortality gap between the bottom 25% of exercise fitness and top 2%: 400%.

Why isn’t this bigger news?

Writing is a Superpower

Nothing sharpens thinking like writing. Throughout history, the very best thinkers have been exceptional writers. The best presenters don’t wing it, they write their speeches word for word. The best investors and CEOs write letters to their stakeholders.

Writing is how you digest ideas.

Case in point: people pick up a book and imagine that the author knew exactly what they were going to say before they started writing it. That's rarely the case though. Writing is how you discover what you think.