Making Bets and Bubbles

/ Placed some bets on predicting the election outcome and what the Federal Reserve will do to interest rates in September this week.

Related: it is fun to see what type of bets people make on Kalshi and Polymarket. This data helps me think about risk/reward and what I think vs. what the market thinks. A second-order takeaway from this is to take the last 5-10 decisions you have made and imagine if the average person would have made the same decision (which is a difficult thing to gauge). In other words, has your recent behavior been more in line with “I decided to do X. I think that the average person would also have done X.” or “I decided to do Y. I think the average person would have done X or Z, but not Y.” Another way you can evaluate your decisions is to poll feedback from friends/family on whether they would have made the same decision, but this introduces bias, so take this method with a grain of salt.

Friday Musings

1. How do you encourage kids/teens to learn to think independently, preserve natural curiosity, and, most importantly, realize it is ok and encouraged to be different and unique? Qualify teachings as either informative or prescriptive. Maybe an example: “This is how people do X. Here is why. It is up to you to figure out how you get comfortable reasoning through why things are how they are. If you question everything intensely, there’ll be too many rocks to turn over. If you accept everything blindly, you’re leaving your fate to chance.” It is something about rewarding thinking out loud (I might be biased because I do this, and I think it is like net additive b/c it may show how I reason through something, correctly or incorrectly)

2. There is something infinitely refreshing about people talking plainly and simply about things from the start. Sometimes it is worth putting on a show, and sometimes it may be worth just speaking clearly (maybe).

3. Life is simultaneously pretty long and pretty short.

4. You need new experiences to get your mind into new headspaces; otherwise, you forget the world is so vast and dynamic and changes fast yet stays the same. Related tidbit: I had this personal realization after speaking with a quality investor (most would consider successful, track record of 20+ years) and them saying something along the lines (paraphrasing) – “Things are very much still the same. Behaviors, aspirations, fallacies. People still talk about the next big thing. People still swing their sentiments too far up and then too far down. So much has changed in this industry, but it is still the same stuff you deal with daily. Basically, it’s still pretty much the same three decades later.”

/ Wrote this about AI (also found on my “Predictions/Beliefs About The Future” page)

In an AI world, you’ll still need to convince people to do things, give you their money, help you out, or share what they know. One way to (maybe) hedge against that is understanding how the world works and having a broad knowledge base.

It is valuable not because you impress people by being a walking encyclopedia (Google is helpful for that), but when you meet someone who knows a lot of random stuff, maybe you deduce that they’re curious and enjoy learning. You might deduce that they can think about complex problems because learning involves thinking about details…and when you want meaningful outcomes, sometimes that involves dealing with intricate situations. You’ll trust someone who, yes has integrity and works hard, but if someone is capable of deeply understanding complexity and can see tasks through to completion.

If you bring up a topic and someone can piece together different scenarios and learnings into something unique, that understanding unique to them might resonate with you and lead to some belief (i.e., I like this person) or action (I respect them so I will do X).

Over time, you may say the list of items humans need to do keeps declining, and eventually, it culminates in people striving to be great people: great parents, caretakers, soccer coaches, athletes, artists, and listeners because it gives you purpose and is fun. What else is there to do but eat, drink, banter, learn, teach, and explore?

Tweets / Memes

Until next time

-VS

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