What I Read This Week - 3.24.24
Weekly finds from across the internet.
Welcome back, everyone! And happy Sunday.
We are in the full swing of March Madness and barreling towards MLB Opening Day in less than a week. I heard there may be a banner getting hung in Arlington for something that happened back in November…. along with some hardware to come soon there after. Stay tuned.
A lot to share this week, so lets get to it. Below are some finds on:
The evolution of coaching & playing in a modern era of sports
How media trends toward pessimism in regard to the future, and why we are in need of people willing to believe in fiction until it becomes reality
The overlap between design and storytelling
Why 80% consistently is better than 110% inconsistently
And more. Enjoy!
- CG
Sports/High Performance
An important read for both the modern coach and the modern athlete. As our game continues to evolve, the voices competing for the attention of our players are amplifying daily. Social media, technology, swing gurus, prior and current coaches - someone or something is always talking to them.
From a coaching perspective, it has become more critical than ever to identify how you can subtract from the noise you provide your players as opposed to adding to it. And for the player’s, the answer is clear. As Eno writes:
“The solution is somewhat simple. You end up being your own coach, or maybe something like the CEO of all the coaches you enjoy.”
Enhanced Games: Event for Doped Athletes Backed By Group Who Want to ‘Cheat Death’ - The Athletic (13 min)
I touched on the Enhanced Games in one of my first newsletters, and now it is starting to get the mainstream sports media treatment.
In grade school, our English teachers show us how to identify the tone of piece of writing. But even if you can’t recall a single one of those lessons, I’d wager you could guess the bent of this piece from the title alone. But just in case you can’t, the author spells it out in the final sentences:
Does he ever doubt?
[Founder Aron D’Souza] pauses, for the first time in the interview.
“No,” he replies, leaning back in his armchair. “You can’t have doubt. If you really, sincerely believe you’re going to build the future, you can’t have doubt. Our end goal, we want to enhance humanity as a whole. I believe in that.”
Doubt is for the rest of us.
The bent of this piece felt off to me, highlighting once again the ease of pessimism in regards to the future and new ideas. It makes potentially revolutionary science sound like something of out your middle school lab, whereas this is really about using novel research and technology to push the boundaries of what humans are capable of.
Sure, there are risks that must be responsibly accounted for. But as happens too many times, here the risks get substantially played up while the insights we might gain for the future of humanity lag far behind.
So, let’s rephrase that last bit. Doubt is for the media, rational optimism is for the rest of us.
Health/Fitness
The Science of Magnesium and Its Role in Aging and Disease - Dr. Rhonda Patrick (~1 hr)
An all encompassing breakdown by Rhonda Patrick of FoundMyFitness on the impact Magnesium plays in humans. Some of my key takeaways:
On the Value/Important of Magnesium as a Molecule
Nearly 50% of the US population is deficient.
Deficiencies may be linked to greater likelihood of cancer development. A study of 60K participants found that for every 100mg/day decrease in magnesium intake, there was a 24% increase in pancreatic cancer incidence.
Magnesium shares a critical tie in with Vitamin D. Research suggests that if magnesium levels are low, Vitamin D utilization throughout the body becomes suppressed even if levels of Vitamin D are sufficient.
A possible relationship exists between Alzheimer’s and magnesium. One study showed that middle aged adults consuming >196 mg/day had a 37% decrease in dementia compared to those consuming <174 mg/day.
Supplementation
Organic magnesiums salts (mag citrate, mag malate, mag glycinate, etc.) are the most bioavailable forms.
Magnesium threonate (a common compound taken for sleep as it is able to cross the blood brain barrier) contains a very low amount of elemental magnesium, and is thus not an effective source to meet daily nutritional requirements.
Splitting up your magnesium dosage to multiple consumption points over the day can increase bioavailability and minimize GI discomfort.
Storytelling
Writing is Design - PJ Nori (~2 min)
Loved this read in which PJ draws connections between the processes of ‘design’ and writing, arguing that there is in fact no separation between the two. Whereas designers use visuals to tell a story, writers tap into design through words. As such, he argues that we can apply take the principles of design and apply them to our writing. A couple of my favorite design principles viewed through the lens of writing:
Good writing is reader focused. Your responsibility is first and foremost to honor the time of the person reading your work.
Good writing makes its subject interesting. It brings something new to the table, either crafting a new idea or helping others see an old one in a new light.
Good writing is unobtrusive. Big words are not necessary to sound smart; in fact, the opposite is more often true than not.
The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)
Techno-Optimist Media - Not Boring (~21 min)
A great piece to consider in light of the Enhanced Games article from above.
Back at the end of February, I shared a piece on how the autonomous driving industry serves as a powerful case study for the challenges companies face in building the future. My synopsis was this:
Many startups are having to spend time justifying why they won’t make the world worse rather than how they will make it better….. [and] this is exactly backwards..
Mass media has played a large part in this, with companies such as The New York Times fueling the narrative via pieces with an “everything tech does is bad” bent. This isn’t exactly wrong - as Packy and Christian argue in this piece, part of legacy media’s role is to fact check obsessively. And in the early stages of a startup, there is oftentimes more fiction that truth.
But often media coverage is antithetical to the point of startups in the first place: to build the future out of a dream in the present. As Packy and Christian write, “mass media and journalism simply don’t have media message fit”.
To get it, they provide a solution - what they term the Techno-Optimist Media: a collection of publications meant to fill the gap for startups and tell the positive version of their stories to the world. As they write in the piece:
Nobody can change the world in a vacuum. You have to convince people to work with you; investors to give you money; customers to buy your product; and so on, at every scale.
This is, ultimately, the most fundamental job of a founder — to share a compelling story that convinces people to hitch their wagons to yours.
And there is no possible way to outsource that task.
But it certainly can’t hurt to have some help along the way. More Techno-Optimist media, please.
Visualizing Global Attitudes Towards AI - Visual Capitalist (~3 min)
Data from a study from market research firm Ipsos on the general sentiment on AI across the globe, and how it varies across different cultures. A couple of points I found especially interesting:
The US is amongst the bottom countries in terms of positive sentiment on AI, with about 40% of respondents saying they saw more drawbacks to AI products and services than benefits.
People living in wealthier economies view AI products and services less positively (as viewed through the lens of GDP per capita).
Developing countries seem to be adopting AI at greater lengths. This matches up with how I have thought about AI’s future arc - in the short term it will be an equalizer, in the long term a differentiator.
Mental Models/Principles
Ventures - Altos VC (~3 min)
Loved this piece on applying the Fox vs. Hedgehog mental model to the venture capital space. First popularized Archilochus in the 8th century BC, and since adapted by writers and thinkers such as Tolstoy, Berlin, Jim Collins and Phil Tetlock, it makes a distinction between the person that knows many things and the person that knows one big one.
In the piece, Ho Nam argues that Altos’s model has been built around identifying ‘hedgehog’ type founders. Some of the quotes that stood out:
The thing with Hedgehogs is that they never give up. They keep at it – and they don’t ever get bored because they just love what they do – and they have a lot of fun along the way.
Hedgehogs may not be as clever as foxes but they obsessively measure and track everything about their business, and over time, they acquire deep, relevant knowledge and expertise.
In the end, we agree with Jim Collins – that Hedgehogs are the ones who build great, lasting companies. As entrepreneurs, they are the rarest of breeds – those who can start something anew, make it work, stick with it, and build something special, and ultimately, inspire others along the way, with their determination, dedication and commitment.
I’m not sure there is a perfect answer for either side of the fox/hedgehog dichotomy. But I’ve written before about the value of range, and this was a great read on the perspective from the other side.
Issue #348 - Social Fitness, Four Currencies Framework, & 110 Percent Myth - Kpaxs (~2 min)
A couple good models in here this week from Kpaxs, but I especially liked the ‘110 Percent Myth’: even the greatest performers in the world rarely hit 100% effort on an everyday basis. Sustaining 80% for a long period of time is arguably the fastest mechanism for you to get ahead in the game of life. Consistency trumps intensity, every time.