What I Read This Week - 4.7.24
Weekly finds from across the internet.
Happy Sunday, everyone!
The MiLB season kicked off on Friday night and it is some kind of exciting to be back into the full swing of things. 5 games per night across the full organization - hard to ask for anything better.
Back this week with edition #9 of Weekly Reads, featuring:
Why Occam’s Razor is the most important mental model for dealing with sports data/technology
Some good news on health benefits for coffee drinkers
Why the framing of an idea is more important than the idea itself
and more!
Enjoy, and see you all next week.
- CG
Sports/High Performance
Occam’s Razor & Sports Technology - Sian Allen (~2 min)
Found this tweet by Sian to be especially relevant in the current landscape of sports technology.
Over the past decade, the amount of data available on high performance has exploded. By way of technologies such as wearables, ball tracking systems, and motion capture, we currently have access to more data than at any other point in the history of sport.
On first thought, this is an overwhelming positive. But as someone that has spent the last 6 years knee deep in this information, I’ve found there are frequently times where the application falls short of expectation.
There is a simple reason for this, which I think of as an information paradox: large amounts of data present the opportunity for deeper insight, but the sheer volume of that information often obscures the truth. It is a story of signal and noise - the more data we have, the harder it becomes to figure what of that data actually matters.
The result, all too frequently, is exactly what the research abstract suggests:
An all too common trap for sport scientists is to get caught up in collecting information - then trawl through reams of numbers in an attempt to find relationships of interest (that may not even exist) - without being able to provide the coach or athlete with any meaningful information.
The antidote? From experience, it is simple: leverage expertise. Talk to the people that have spent time in the mud with the problem you are studying and now attempting to objectify. Chances are they will have highly valuable ‘anecdata’ - subjective knowledge gained from many years of hard work, things they know intuitively but they’ve always struggled to prove. By tapping into those perspectives, you can often take a short cut to finding the relationships that will carry value on the field.
Only by squaring theory against reality, data against expertise, can we give the data the utility it so desperately needs.
Health/Fitness
Is Coffee Healthy? - Layne Norton (~2 min)
Great news for the coffee drinking community (of which I am a proud member): human outcome data suggests there are a ton of positive benefits to regular consumption. Some standout benefits the “magic beans” have been associated with:
Up to a 17% decrease in all-cause mortality (influence peaking at 3-4 cups/day)
Up to an 18% decrease in cancer incidence
Reduction in body fat without negatively impacting insulin sensitivity
Improvements in cognition and exercise performance
Consider me sold. Now, if you need me you can find me at a coffee shop with a cold brew in hand (assuming I’m not at a baseball field).
Health Effects of Omega 3-Fatty Acids - Rhonda Patrick, Found My Fitness (~30 min)
What if I told you could take one supplement, and subsequently improve each of your cardiovascular, neurocognitive, musculoskeletal, immune, and respiratory systems?
Well, let me introduce you to Omega-3s. A growing body of research suggests that regular, high doses of Omega-3 fatty acids (especially DHA and EPA) have substantial benefits across a broad range of human functions. And while there is a wide array of controversy around fish oils on public forums, I found this breakdown to both informative and rooted in scientific research.
In it Rhonda mentions that the latest research suggests we should be targeting an Omega-3 Index (a bloodwork measurement of Omega-3 concentration) of about 8-10%. To do so, she suggests we should be taking about 1.75 g to 2.5 g per day, a number I have also seen Peter Attia mention as a target.
The easiest avenue (outside of eating wild caught fish such as Salmon) is through daily Fish Oil supplementation. But an important note: quality matters. Due to the molecular construction of Omega 3s, the bonds are fragile and can easily degrade if not properly isolated. So when some companies isolate their oils with excessive heat, they create a poor product that can cause more harm than good. To solve for this, check out Consumer Lab’s fish oil breakdown on common supplements found in the market and their respective qualities.
Speaking of Rhonda Patrick, she did a crossover interview on one of my favorite podcasts: The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish. In it, she provides simple frameworks for both diet and behavioral interventions to target optimal health. Those interventions, put simply:
Diet: Adequate Omega-3s + Adequate Vitamin D + Adequate Greens/Protein
Behaviors: High Intensity Exercise + Resistance Training + Heat Exposure
Storytelling
Ogilvy on Advertising - David Senra, Founders Podcast (~3 min)
A great breakdown of advertising titan David Ogilvy’s magnum opus, ‘On Advertising’. You may not work in advertising or sales, but at some point all of us deal in communication - and these principles can help make whatever it is you are presenting stickier. A trio of my favorites:
“You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.” - The world changes. So too must your message when the time calls for it.
“You are a human being writing to another human being. Neither of you is an institution. Be personal, direct and natural.” - Write for an audience of one. You’ll be amazed how much easier this makes the process.
“Human nature hasn’t changed for a billion years. It won’t even vary in the next billion… A communicator must be concerned with the unchanging man.” - Follow the advice of Jeff Bezos: focus on what won’t change.
How Art Silverman Took on the Movie Popcorn Industry - David Perell (~2 min)
A small story that shares a great lesson about communication: tiny shifts in how an idea is presented can cause big differences in how well it spreads. Reframe the same message in a different light and you’ll get an entirely different impact.
The Future (AI, Crypto, Tech, etc.)
The Knowledge Economy is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy. - Dan Shipper (~8 min)
Have you ever wanted to be a manager? Well congratulations, now you are.
In this piece, Dan provides an excellent take on how AI tools will make everyone a manager in the years to come, whether they realize it or not. He argues that if we are to get the most out of our AI models in the future, doing so will require skills we often attribute to the domain of management: setting a vision, evaluating talent, and knowing when it is the right time to get into the details.
The better we can “lead” our models in the future, the greater impact they will have on both our creativity and productivity.
Personal Growth
Should You Reverse Any Advice You Hear? - Scott Alexander (~6 min)
A piece on taking advice from others, which I find especially relevant for anyone that is young/up and coming in their career.
If you’ve ever been the ‘young person’ in the building, you’ve likely experienced a never-ending flow of advice from those with more experience than you. But while guidance is often valuable, there is a catch: how do you know if that advice is relevant to you, the individual?
Advice is always relative to the individual giving it. As such, I’ve always felt it important not to take advice at face value - to instead think deeply about where it is coming from and what that says about its intentions. Only by squaring it against what you know of yourself can you determine what is useful for you, and what is not; what is worth keeping, and what should be discarded.
I like Scott’s suggestion here to create a more attuned filter: invert any advice you receive. Rather than instantly conforming to what is front of mind, challenge yourself to consider the opposite perspective. In doing so, you open up the full spectrum of the advice presented rather than the narrow band brought to light by the person that gave it.
You may find what you need is not what was given, but instead the exact opposite.
Mental Models/Principles
The Top 1% of New Ideas I’ve Encountered - Sahil Bloom (~4 min)
Resurfaced an old but good thread from Sahil on some high value ideas/models. A couple of my favorites:
Page 2 Learning - Asymmetric opportunities come from understandings that surpass the surface level. Everyone reads Page 1 - keep going to Page 2 and beyond for the real alpha.
Anti-Goals - We spend a large amount of time investing in goals, thinking about the optimal outcome. But we can also borrow from Charlie Munger (”Invert, always invert”) and think about the opposite - Anti-Goals. By avoiding what we don’t want, we can craft a clearer path to what we do.