Einsteins, luxury beliefs, intellectual obesity, US economy and Uber - Edition 1

The very first edition of this newsletter

Why we stopped making Einsteins

Now we have the Internet. We have the full knowledge of humanity in our pockets. However society, it seems, is unable to produce geniuses like Einstein, Beethoven, Maxwell, Nietzsche, etc. Is this the cause of our education system? The author makes a connection that 1:1 tutoring is missing in the modern world and maybe, just maybe, we don’t make Einsteins anymore because we don’t make Max Talmuds anymore.

Luxury Beliefs are Like Possession

Now that more and more folks have access to items that previously only rich people had access to, the rich have moved to have luxury beliefs.

People adopt certain beliefs because it gives them a feeling of belonging, and does not impose any serious costs. You can scream “defund the police” all day with the knowledge that you will not be personally responsible for whatever happens with policing policies. But by displaying that belief, you can elevate your social status among the people whose opinions you care about at no instrumental cost to yourself.

Rich people have certain beliefs that will put them at odds with middle-class people. Rich people can go for “defund the police” because they have private security. An anti-police stand makes them feel rich just like owning a Rolex watch.

The Intellectual Obesity Crisis

We are making our brains consume a lot of empty calories and it’s making all of us obese and unhealthy.

Put simply, the brain treats information as a reward in itself; it doesn't matter whether the info is accurate or useful, the brain will still crave it and feel satisfied after consuming it.

But despite being "empty calories," junk info still tastes delicious. Since your dopamine pathways can't distinguish between useful and useless info, consuming junk info gives you the satisfaction of feeling like you're learning.

And when you notice the myriad holes that all this junk has left in your memory, then it’ll finally be clear that you weren’t consuming it as much as it was consuming you.

It won’t be easy to get rid of this obesity but the first step is to recognize that we have a crisis on our hands.

How This All Happened

This is a short story about what happened to the U.S. economy since the end of World War II. After the end of the war, a large number of soldiers came home. In the meantime, women were forced to work to produce ammunition, etc and now these women didn’t want to go back and stay home all the time. So the government printed oodles of money and made money cheap. Richart Nixon severed the U.S. dollar’s ties to gold and that made it easier to print even more money.

Later the economy became more productive but also more unequal.

Founding Uber SRE

Will started the SRE team at Uber. This is his story of how it all came about. He describes the period when Uber was growing really fast and just keeping the server functioning was not trivial.

There is definitely something personally satisfying about working on a hard problem when there is so much at stake. The downside is that if one is not careful then this might exact a toll on your personal life. As Will admitted he couldn’t do much writing while working at Uber.