🤯Unknown Unknowns #46 - Write of Passage
I completed my third cohort of Write of Passage this past week. The course is exhausting. Five essays in five weeks. But it's more than just writing. David Perell, the creator of Write of Passage, talks about intellectual loneliness, when "you feel alive when you’re learning on the Internet but soul-crushed when you try to talk about those same ideas with friends and family."
Luckily, I can talk about those ideas with my wife. But "finding my tribe" has still expanded my horizons. I no longer feel like I'm crazy if I think the forty-hour work week is nuts or that rat race isn't necessary. It's permission to believe in yourself and that the world can be better.
If you're interested in learning more about Write of Passage, feel free to ask me any questions.
So I just said that I did five essays in five weeks. Well, one was the Austin piece that I shared last week. Where's the other four? They are still works in progress. I have an excuse - this past cohort, I was a Steward, focusing on giving feedback to the other students. I gave feedback on over 150 essays.
Next week, I'll share an essay on what I learned from giving that feedback. And, I'm leaning in. Reply to this email with anything you want feedback on. An essay, an idea, a theory. I'll help you out as best I can.
This Week:
Discoveries:
Sharing two essays this week. Coincidentally, both use relationship development in their examples.
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Applied Complexity Science argues that it's impossible to predict every possible scenario and therefore impossible to prepare. So how can you best prepare for these unknown unknowns? By accumulating knowhow, or the knowledge of how to do things. Don't hoard a bunker of food, learn how to grow food. Don't stockpile enough clothes for twenty years, learn to sew. Don't buy every table you will need for the rest of your life, learn how to build a table. And the best knowhow is to learn to develop relationships with others.
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Bryan Caplan discusses signal arbitrage. Game theory is about iterative games. What happens in one influences what happens in the next. If something is successful in the first game, the participants will adjust in the future.
This is a long-winded way of saying that the future is complex and complicated. It's often better to just to act virtuously than to analyze every permutation.
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Questions, suggestions, complaints? Email me me at [email protected]. Feedback welcome.
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Leaving you in peace,
Chris