7 New-To-You Concepts (Winter 2024)

Titanic Problems: Issues that everyone says you’re in such a privileged position to deal with.

“This is an extra special type of tragedy, a tragedy that unfolds while everyone cheers. Like being on the Titanic after the iceberg, water up to your chin, with everybody telling you that you’re so lucky to be on the greatest steamship of all time. And the Titanic is indeed so huge and wonderful that you can’t help but agree, but you’re also feeling a bit cold and wet at the moment, and you’re not sure why.” - Adam Mastroianni

From 63 Steps to Survive the Worst Moments of Your Life by Mark Manson:

“Step 34: Come up with three ways your life could be way, way, way worse. There’s always a worse.

Step 35: If you can’t come up with anything, take an afternoon and go visit your local children’s cancer ward.

Step 36: Or just google it and then lie and say you visited one.

Step 37: Start feeling really guilty once you realize you’re not a child who has fucking cancer.”

The 4 Laws of Behavioural Genetics

Law 1: All traits are partially heritable - including even weird stuff like political views and mobile phone use.

Law 2: The effect of the shared family environment is smaller than the effect of the genes. In fact, often the shared family environment has no effect at all.

Law 3: Much of the variance in psychological traits is not due to either genes or the shared family environment. A big part of it is random developmental noise.

Law 4: Complex traits are shaped not by one genetic variant or a handful, but by many hundreds or thousands of genetic variants, each of which has close to no effect.

The Roman Empire Rule

Historians now recognize the Roman Empire fell in 476 - but it wasn't acknowledged by Roman society until many generations later. If you wait for the media to inform you, you'll either be wrong or too late.

H/T - George Mack

Chalkboard Decisions: The only time math isn’t always right.

“The problem is that most decisions are less about the math and more about judgment. The math always points to the optimal immediate decision, which is rarely the best long-term decision.

Consider paying off your mortgage. With 2% interest rates, the spreadsheet will tell you it doesn't make sense to pay off your mortgage. Instead, put the money you would have used to pay off your house in the stock market. Assuming an 8% return, you'd be much better off.

The math in chalkboard decisions is irrefutable. And yet, the best decisions are often based on positioning yourself for things you can't see.

What if we have a pandemic? What if the stock market drops 20% or 30%? What if mortgage rates rise 10%? Can you handle these events with equanimity, or will circumstances force you to do something you don't want to do?” - Shane Parrish

The Success Trap

"The biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. There was a day when I looked up and realized that I had become someone who professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby." - Neil Gaiman

Licensed therapists aren’t obviously better than a random nice person.

“In the late 1970s, two researchers assigned a small group of college men to receive treatment either from trained therapists or from professors in a variety of disciplines who were selected based on their “untutored ability to form understanding, warm, and empathetic relationships.” At the end of the study, it looked like the professional therapists and the affable professors were equally effective. This study is too small and low-quality to count for much, but it’s concerning that it wasn’t a slam-dunk in favor of the pros.”

H/T - Adam Mastorianni

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