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Time Saved This Week: 15 Hours, 46 Minutes
Arenas of American Ambition | Michael Lewis on Glue Guys with Alex Smith, Shane Battier, and Ravi Gupta
Michael Lewis is best known for writing Moneyball, The Big Short, and The Blind Side, all of which were famously adapted into major films. While often categorized as a non-fiction writer focused on sports and business, his work plays a more essential role in society: uncovering compelling untold stories in arenas of American ambition. In an era where journalism and storytelling are more accessible than ever on platforms like X, studying Lewis’s approach could inspire you to ask bold, overlooked questions and share insights of your own with the world. And for the sports fanatic, Michael Lewis also proposes a new book idea on projecting quarterback success and explains the ruthlessly competitive relationship between Kobe Bryant and Shane Battier.
How to Increase Motivation & Drive | Huberman Lab Essentials
In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, he explains the biological mechanism behind motivation and drive, as well as discuss practical tools for overcoming procrastination
How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods | Huberman Lab Essentials
Can food really help with depression? Do diets make a difference for your mood? Find out in the latest of the Huberman Lab Essentials, where Dr. Andrew Huberman condenses all the most important info on how food and nutrients impact our emotions and overall mood
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Top Premium Takeaways Of The Week
Arenas of American Ambition | Michael Lewis on Glue Guys with Alex Smith, Shane Battier, and Ravi Gupta
Don't Write What Doesn't Excite: “There’s no subject that you can’t do something with, but there are ...” – Michael Lewis
The Hard Part About Writing: Identifying what people are ...
Sports Stories are a Trojan Horse: “If it seems to be about sports, you can break down people’s ...” – Michael Lewis
Writing Shouldn't be Mad Libs: “The typical way of doing a story is that someone has an opinion and they are coming to you for a quote to ...” – Michael Lewis
Find What is Interesting That Others Miss: The world is chock-full of interesting untold stories, and we all have the power to investigate and shed light on them — if we have the ...
Be Useful and The Rest Will Follow: “If you go through the world looking to be ...” – Michael Lewis
- Example: While sitting at your gate at the airport...
- You may not get always get paid for ...
How to Increase Motivation & Drive | Huberman Lab Essentials
Motivation is a two-part process: Balancing pleasure and ...
Role of Dopamine: Dopamine is responsible for ...
- Dopamine is released in anticipation, not just in response to ...
Dopamine is About MORE: “Dopamine isn’t as much about pleasure as much as it is about ...” – Huberman
Dopamine increases in response to different things:
- Eating food increases dopamine by XX%
- Sex increases dopamine by XX%
- Nicotine increases dopamine by XX%
- Cocaine and amphetamines increase dopamine by XXX times in about 10 seconds
Which Type of Procrastinator are You?:
- (1) The first type enjoys the ...
- (2) People who just don’t have ...
Rx for Low Dopamine: ...
Dopamine Mastery in 3 Steps:
- Hit your milestones
- ...
- ...
Social Media Addiction: Social media and video games can also ...
How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods | Huberman Lab Essentials
The Vagus Nerve and Why it Matters: The vagus nerve is just one way in which our brain and body are ...
- When you eat something sweet, there are neurons in your ...
- These signals go through the vagus nerve to the ...
- “This tells us that we have circuits in our body driving us toward certain ...” – Huberman
Hidden Sugar Controls Your Brain: Scientists did tests where people couldn’t taste their food and ...
The Essential Role of Amino Acids: People don’t stop eating when their stomach feels full, they stop when ...
Reward prediction error: Your expectation of something releases ...
Should you supplement L-tyrosine?
- It does increase ...
- People with hyper-dopaminergic conditions like ...
- It can cause a ...
- Chronic use can disrupt ...
The Role of Serotonin: Over XX% of serotonin is made in the ...
- SSRIs work by preventing the reuptake of serotonin, leaving more available...
- Risks of SSRIs: Blunted mood, sexual side effects (can be permanent), weight gain and can be extremely difficult to stop taking (create dependence)
Omegas: Here’s a simple fact that most people don’t know -The omega-3 to ...
The Stanford Milkshake Experiment: Participants were given the same milkshake but were told different things:
- One group believed it was ...
- The other group believed it was ...
- Results? The ...
- Why is this important? Beliefs modulate ...
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458 – Marc Andreessen: Trump, Power, Tech, AI, Immigration & Future of America / Lex Fridman
Synthetic Data in AI: Potential of synthetic data in AI development, highlighting the importance of integrating human oversight to enhance effectiveness. A combination of 99% synthetic data and 1% human-curated data could optimize AI performance.
Economic Resilience of the United States: Despite political challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. has demonstrated remarkable economic resilience.
Strategic Advantages of the U.S.: The U.S. benefits from physical security, abundant natural resources, and the potential for energy independence. The USA’s rich history of immigration, bringing in diverse, driven, and intelligent individuals, which has bolstered sectors like software, AI, and biotech.
American Individualism and Cultural Shifts: Reflecting on the nation’s cultural evolution, the shift from the despondency of the 1970s to the optimism during Reagan’s era.
AI Market Dynamics and Challenges: Several “trillion dollar questions” shaping the future of AI, including debates over big versus small models, open versus closed systems, and the use of synthetic data.
Integration of Human Oversight in AI: How to effectively integrate human oversight in AI development?
Economic Growth Comparison: While the U.S. economy has continued to grow, many other countries have stopped growing, highlighting the unique resilience of the American economy.
Immigration as a Strength: The U.S. has benefited from decades of immigration, attracting some of the most driven and intelligent people from around the world, which has contributed to its leadership in advanced technology sectors.
- “We are the beneficiaries of 50, 100, or 200 years of the most aggressive driven, smartest people in the world moving to the US.” – Marc Andreessen
- But also, are we not destroying other countries without a second thought by robbing them of their best and brightest? Is this a form of extractive colonialism?
Cultural Drive Against Mediocrity: The unique intensity of the American entrepreneurial spirit, which fuels innovation and resilience, pushing against mediocrity and inspiring innovation.
Potential for Economic and Productivity Boom: Due to its strategic advantages, the U.S. has the potential for a significant economic and productivity boom in the coming years.
Wokeism: Modern society still reflects these ancient beliefs through identity politics and environmentalism, akin to ancestor and nature worship.
- “Identity politics is worshiping ancestors, right? It’s tagging newborn infants based on who their ancestors were.” – Marc Andreessen
- “We have actually worked our way all the way back to their cult religions without realizing it.” – Marc Andreessen
20/60/20 Society Framework: The society can be broken into three groups: 20% true believers, 60% who go along to maintain peace, and another 20% who oppose.
- The middle 60% often aligns with the status quo until a counter movement sways them.
- The current societal pivot may suggest a shift away from previous dominant ideologies (“woke” movement).
- The shift can lead to preference falsification in the opposite direction as people claim past adherence.
Power’s Corrupting Nature: The “ring of power” from Lord of the Rings is used as a metaphor for power’s inherently corrupting nature.
- It emphasizes that power is infinitely tempting, likened to censorship mechanisms that, once possessed, are overwhelmingly persuasive to use.
Trillion Dollar AI Questions:
- Big models vs. small models.
- Open models vs. closed models
- Use of synthetic data.
- Chain of thought and reinforcement learning.
- Political and policy questions in the US and EU.
Josh Waitzkin: The Art of Learning & Living Life | Huberman Lab
Elite Competitors are More Like Each other In Different Arenas Than Not: “People who are at the pinnacles of different arts are often doing things that are much more similar than people who are in the same art as them but at lower levels.” – Josh
If You Aren't Losing, You Aren't Growing: “One-on-one competition is relentless truth-teller.”– Josh
If It Doesn't Break You, You Get Stronger: “The most heartbreaking devastating moments ultimately were the ones that catalyzed the most growth.” – Josh
Firewalking—cultivating the ability to learn from experiences one doesn’t have, with the same somatic intensity that one learns from really intense experiences that we actually go through
Peak Efficiency >>> Brute Force Effort: When you’re at your very best for four or five hours a day, you’re doing multiples of what you would do if you were grinding yourself at a simmering six for 15 or 16 hours a day
Thematic Interconnectedness: By addressing a theme that caused one technical mistake, other manifestations of that theme also improve
Believing Yourself a Prodigy is A Huge Mistake: “When competing against someone with that psychological construction, they’re done. You can break them because there are so many chinks in the armor.” – Josh
Leaving with a sense of direction: Hemingway would always end his workday with a half-written sentence
- He would return to it first thing in the morning, and that unwritten sentence would become a paragraph and a page in his mind, and it would be a way to hit the ground running
Everything Counts: Quality is a way of life. If we practice sloppiness, we’re reinforcing that theme throughout everything we do.
Naval Ravikant and Aaron Stupple — How to Raise a Sovereign Child, A Freedom-Maximizing Approach to Parenting | The Tim Ferriss Show (#788)
The Taking Children Seriously Philosophy: Includes no sleep schedules, no control over what they eat, unrestricted screen time, no forced school, no forced tooth brushing…
What’s wrong with forcing your kids to eat broccoli? It sets the parent up as the adversary. Kids should learn to value broccoli for its properties and not because their parents make them eat it
2 things where Naval interferes a lot with his kids: He insists they learn math and reading
Explaining > forcing: Instead of just saying “because I said so,” take time to explain why something matters. It’s more effort up front, but it pays off in the long run
Golden Rule of Parenting: “If you wouldn’t speak that way to your spouse, don’t speak that way to your child.”
Guidelines for Sibling Conflict:
- Stop physical violence
- For loud arguments, remind them to keep it down or take it somewhere else
- Give kids a way to opt out. Kids can escape to their rooms for privacy and to cool off
- Make sure kids know what belongs to who—no forced sharing
The most important thing is self-assuredness: “Nothing damages self-confidence and self-assurance than giving kids a reason to doubt themselves.” – Aaron
4 categories of harm can come from rules:
- Parent-child adversarial gatekeeping relationship
- Damage to the child’s relationship with themselves: When kids feel like their desires are always getting them into trouble, they start policing themselves instead of learning from their own experiences
- Confusion about the issue: Rules confuse the real reasons behind actions. Brushing teeth is to avoid cavities and bad breath, not because of a rule
- Confusion about how to explore the world: Rules lead kids to rely on authority figures for answers rather than developing the ability to figure things out themselves
Why Naval Is In: “I often say that I would rather that my kids be disobedient and free and uneducated than that they’re educated and obedient because you can always educate yourself, and most of us who know anything have become self-learners over time.” – Naval
The lives of people who don’t homeschool suck: “Because they have to wake up at 6:00 in the morning, they’ve got to pack the lunch, they’ve got to drag the kids out of bed screaming. They’ve got to put ’em in the shower, they’ve got to bundle ’em onto a bus, they’ve got to send ’em off. Kid comes home, then they’ve got to force ’em to do their homework, put ’em to bed, kid squealing the whole time. They have to argue about what they eat. They can’t travel, they can’t vacation. If someone’s sick, they can’t get the time off. Their lives are run around the school.” – |