Brady Helps

I took a two week holiday break. Mid week through my first full week back, here are my thoughts.As the amount of refreshment increases due to break, a parallel amount of habit formation is lost. After two weeks, I’m re-learning how to “do” my week.After one week of break, I become eager to work on something meaningful. It doesn’t need to be “work”, it can be another form of work. I need to be constructive.After two weeks, I want to spend a bit more time making jalan jalan (Filipino slang for “hanging out”) with the team I lead versus the hard work.I’m struggling to re-integrate my habits.That’s my stream of consciousness. Now time to do something with it.Acknowledgment is the first step.Welcome back.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what to write you today. My idea is advocacy. Advocacy comes in lots of forms. To be an advocate for self, someone, a cause, or an idea is to be a supporter. The other day I advocated for myself with a cardiologist. The test result we discussed showed that I do not have solid calcium in my arteries — that’s a good thing. However, it showed another interesting find. The machine that performed the calcium test is not calibrated to look at much beyond calcium; however it did and that output got reported on.I asked the cardiologist about that finding and was told, “it’s probably nothing.” I responded that if it’s nothing, and if the machine is not calibrated for that type of output, then did it make a mistake? Did a radiologist make a mistake in highlighting that output on their report? Why make a claim on data that’s not calibrated for making that claim in the first place? If I annoyed the cardiologist, they were nice enough not to show it. I said the hard part out loud for them, “if we’re making decisions based on the data before us, and if that data is not calibrated properly, I don’t see how we can make effective decisions.” The story ends with the cardiologist and I hypothesizing the likely nothing burger and we have a method for disproving that hypothesis through test. I’m happy. I also don’t believe I’m difficult. And while I don’t always accept or participate readily in norms for communicating with authority, I genuinely care about working with people to find the most correct answer — the truth, however it may be defined. For me, being the advocate for the cause that is me involved defying the norm and demanding a more rigorous decision process. I got a solid output. For you, if you could advocate more for yourself, consider it.

Yes, that likely means your recipe, your song, and your work. And, it’s probably best if you are speculative about how impactful your work will be.No, don’t doubt yourself… a doubt is a claim about the future.Instead, lean into life with three questions.What am I trying to do and why?What, of what I am about to do now, might work?How will I learn from what didn’t work?Then, make Bayesian updates…”Given how things unfolded, what do I believe now…”All of those words appeared in past posts. All of the words are words I told myself today. It made 100% a huge difference in how I handled a difficult situation.Words worth repeating.

HT to Tyler Cowen for sharing these rules with his readers. They are dubbed “Cowen’s Three Laws.”There is something wrong with everything.There is literature on everything.All propositions about real interests rates are wrong.#1 and #2 are intuitive, but what about #3?I read #3 as it’s easy to make claims about the future or that which is not certain; those claims are often wrong. Best to treat claims about what hasn’t happened with skepticism. All three are useful reminders. Hope they help you too.

It’s nice to greet people as they walk in to your store.If your head is down, you are not paying attention to that person, and you don’t make eye contact… are you achieving the effect of a greeting?In the United States/Americas, the greeting has evolved. From Indigenous rituals from first nations, to “how do you do” by European colonizers, to “hi” and “hello” in the 1800s. Different regions of the United States have different greetings — “howdy” for instance. I’m imagining we maintain these norms for social cohesion, etiquette, cultural expectations, respect for others, and perhaps to help reinforce a customer’s belief that they will extra value from their purchasing experience. Regarding eye contact — direct eye contact for too long is not considered a norm, and it’s not an absolute requirement in our culture. That said, it shows respect, demonstrates attentiveness, and establishes a connection. The greeting impacts our wallet now. Greetings are commercialized — greeting cards, digital greetings, and personalization reduce the formality and perhaps the meaning of the greeting itself. As consumers, perhaps we no longer expect being truly welcomed, but we expect the superficial act of welcoming.The paradox between engaging in a ritual to establish connection and demonstrate cultural etiquette yet remain distant and inattentive.Such is my experience at Starbucks.

Gabriele Steinhauser, Andrew Barnett, and Emma Brown of the WSJ write that Africa Has Entered a New Era of War.. Excerpts:This corridor of conflict stretches across approximately 4,000 miles and encompasses about 10% of the total land mass of sub-Saharan Africa, an area that has doubled in just three years and today is about 10 times the size of the U.K., according to an analysis by political risk consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft. In its wake lies incalculable human suffering—mass displacement, atrocities against civilians and extreme hunger—on a continent that is already by far the poorest on the planet.Yet, these extraordinary geopolitical shifts in sub-Saharan Africa have been overshadowed by higher-profile conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. That has led to less attention from global policymakers—especially in the West—grossly underfunded humanitarian-aid programs and fundamental questions over the futures of hundreds of millions of people.... Africa is now experiencing more conflicts than at any point since at least 1946, according to data collected by Uppsala University in Sweden and analyzed by Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo. This year alone, experts at the two institutes have identified 28 state-based conflicts across 16 of the continent’s 54 countries, more than in any other region in the world and double the count just a decade and a half ago. We hear plenty of news about conflicts around other parts of the world. But do we hear enough about the African continent? Perhaps the conflicts in Africa are too complex, historical in nature, and the nature of conflicts changes so dynamically that our existing media infrastructure may not know how to produce news we’d consume? Perhaps there are other narratives that we are adapted to trust more? See yesterday’s post. Maybe those are narratives are more efficient ROI-wise for news producers?Perhaps we’re too used to knowing that there are problems? We’ve become fatigue, or numb. I’m not a media expert, and I imagine this is a complicated topic to report on. At the same time, I wonder about the tradeoffs — by not giving light to Africa’s narrative, what do we end up giving light to instead?

And Robin answers the question by proposing we humans have adopted narrative styles that signal to us that the Rebels are good and the Empire is evil. Hollywood, the Bible, and other powerful and prestigious media channels gave us and reinforce these ancient narratives every day; we’re almost hard-wired for them. What if we were more skeptical? Robin offers us as way to assign a level of skepticism towards specific cultural expressions (he calls these “variants”) based on three tests. Is the variant ancient AND has it persisted through reinforcing social pressure? If Yes, then it’s possible that the least amount of skepticism required before adopting the variant.A group of people (society, family, community, etc.) are NOT required to adopt the variant for it persist. If a group of people are not required to adopt the variant, then it’s possible you’ll need more skepticism than test 1. Is the variant modern AND present in a winning culture — a culture that’s spread it’s influence across the world over massive amounts of time? If Yes, then it’s possible you’ll deploy the most skepticism. Using the idea from “Star Wars” that the Rebels are “good” and therefore must overcome all odds and overthrow the Empire “evil” we arrive at a variant — “good must triumph over evil”, I’ll refer to that as “good v evil.” Let’s go to the tests.Is “good v evil” an ancient idea AND has it persisted through reinforcing social pressure? Yes. This is an idea from ancient times, and it’s reinforced in political, religious, and other forms of rhetoric by influencers, mainstream media, clergy, and others. TEST 1 = PASS.A group of people are NOT required to adopt the variant “good v evil” for it to persist. We fail that test because groups of people must adopt the idea for it to persist. TEST 2 = FAIL.Is the variant “good v evil” a modern invention AND is it present in winning cultures? It’s an ancient idea and therefore does not pass. TEST 3 = FAIL. Because we passed the first test, I can choose to deploy the least amount of skepticism before deciding to adopt the idea. I can feel better about being less skeptical because ideas that are ancient and have persisted through our existence are likely culturally advantageous ideas. ALSO, If I want to be more rigorous, I can increase my level of skepticism because an ancient reinforced idea that does require group adoption may cause me to be more skeptical — what if we’ve gotten something wrong for a while and just don’t know it yet?As a takeaway, I tend to be more skeptical of ideas that are “group adopted” or “modern” because they have not been cross-examined enough by time. I prefer my wisdom robust… and robust timeless wisdom is in short supply, which increases its value and makes it easier to adopt — simple.HT and thanks to Robin Hanson’s blog, Overcoming Bias, for the inspiration.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being by Jieyu Zheng and Markus Mesiter offers an thought-provoking perspective on sensory inputs and how well your brain uses them — spoiler alert: slowly.Your wifi may send you information at a 100 megabits per second, that’s about 100 megabits/second, that’s ~100,000,000 bits. Of that 100 million bits, your brain can only process 10 bits/second. 10 bits/second is the speed of “being”. And within a factor of two it is the speed at which your brain can process motor functions, perception, and cognition. The median modern person would freak out if their internet became that slow. The paper’s authors said that our brain has the capacity to accept 50TB (vastly overestimated upper bound) of information. However, given nature (inputs that come from gene expression) and nurture (inputs that come from our senses), we can only store and use ~4GB —- the amount of information that can be stored on a thumb drive! Those overestimations are highly speculative and we still need more research.But what about all of this brain capacity that many think is untapped? What if we hooked ourselves up to a robot, would we be faster? The authors argue no because the rate of perception is only 10 bits/second, the speed of being limit is a threshold on the robot’s ability.I asked myself what happens to all of that information we take in but never use. The authors propose the idea of an inner and outer brain. The outer brain takes in all of the information and begins filtering and sifting through it. Some information is stored, some disregarded, and some is noise . The inner brain is where that speed limit comes in, the 10 bits/second threshold. The inner brain is responsible for grabbing only the most important information that it needs.I’m left with a few thoughts.Stop getting upset over slow internet speeds. We live in a 10 bit/second world — we’ve build our world that way.Life unfolds at a much faster rate and in powers of resolution greater than our ability to perceive and work with it —- it’s okay to slow down.Perhaps 2025 resolution? Knowing that our inner brain filters everything down to the essentials, perhaps we can learn to embrace slowness—trusting that we are already processing the most important parts of life.Thanks to Marginal Revolution for hipping me to the paper.

Happy 2025. Thoughts from the last year, what worked, what didn’t…I will continue…Blogging every day, continue.Aiming for >7 hours of sleep. Allowing myself 30 min to fall asleep. No distractions.3.5L of water per day.>30 minutes of exercise per day.Maximizing protein intake.>2 hours of piano practice per week.Write personal notesAim to read a chapter per day of a bookI will stop…I no longer see the value in specific eating plans. There’s enough evidence out there that energy deficiency is required for losing weight, and diets are simply a lever that can be pulled. Not saying what I think. I have the habit of hedging or softening my positions, I will stop that in 2025. In 2024, I got better outcomes by being more blunt. The tradeoff is momentary stress, but the long-run benefit is congruency. I don’t know if I will stop, but I may limit my consumption of general business books in favor of specific academic subject areas. Example — stop reading about leadership and start reading more about a specific industry or brand. I will limit, not stop, my time with others and prioritize my home life and my personal time. My time is finite, and I can’t be all things for all people. I need to more focus on that which brings me long-run utility and value over short term gains from making people happy at the expense of myself. I will start…I don’t know that I want to start anything at the moment. I’m happy with reductions for the moment. Sometimes life doesn’t need adding….Best Music EnjoyedThinking of You - Aaron FrazerYai Yai - Mohama SazPaper Doll - Kurt Eling & Sullivan FortnerPixingando - Amina Mezaache & MaracujaForever - MidlifeNo Death - Mirel WagnerElectric Energy - Ariana DeBose, Boy George, and Nile Rogers (I’m a sucker for that bassline)La Comparsa - Ernesto Lecuona played by Frank FernandezVaper Wipe - The Breadman (shameless plug, I did keys for their album… but I love this track, a nod to my influence, Richard Tee)Best Movies Enjoyed“Argylle”“Red One” - cackled non-stop“Conclave” - the skeptical and lapsed Catholic in me loved this one“Deadpool & Wolverine” - I waited for this movie all year, it did not disappoint“American Fiction” and “Am I A Racist” - Yes, I saw both, and loved both. I’m attracted to the controversy, I love satire, and I think it’s healthy to laugh at ourselves.“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” - watched multiple times. All and all — a good year. Lots learned, lots of music enjoyed, lots of enjoyable movies, and fun experiences. Looking forward to 2025.Happy New Year.

You can’t live a life without considering tradeoffs. To inform your boss you want a raise or sit quietly. Or in poker, to hold or bet. Or in nuclear war, to use aggressive rhetoric or to allow cooler heads to prevail. My working belief about what drives the decision to act or to wait are feedback loops. Feedback loops are powerful. They can reinforce, balance, or limit behaviors of systems. Between 1947 and 1952 (4 years), the United States 64x’d their atomic bomb stock from 13 to 841. Driven, as sold to the American public, by a need for deterrents. The reinforcing feedback loop looks like this: the more bombs we have, the more secure we’ll become, and we need to increase our stock of security. But our system exists in a zoo, with other nation states and their systems.Russia and other nations increased the stock of their own bombs for similar reasons. The reinforcing loop in one system influenced the behavior of another system. Economists call these spillover effects, externalities. While the system of production does its thing, it’s the system of people and their deliberations and their beliefs which ultimately set a catastrophe in motion. The decision to allow cooler heads to prevail, or the decision to be aggressive. Of course, that all depends on the reinforcement feedback loops present in those social and political systems.The takeaway for me is simple: your system of thought and life matters — your inputs, your outputs, and the feedback loops that help shape your processes all matter. Your system helps create a life of contentment vs war.Inspiration and facts about bomb production from Annie Jacobsen’s “Nuclear War: A Scenario” — continuing to be the one of the best books I’ve read… and I’m not a war junkie.