FutureIQ

Share this post
Best of Twitter: Antifragility, Via Negativa, Imposter Syndrome and more
futureiq.substack.com

Best of Twitter: Antifragility, Via Negativa, Imposter Syndrome and more

Navin Kabra
May 18, 2021
4
2
Share this post
Best of Twitter: Antifragility, Via Negativa, Imposter Syndrome and more
futureiq.substack.com

This is my weekly list of the most interesting tweets I found—with a little commentary from me.

Small Failures Prevent Big Disasters (Antifragility)

Twitter avatar for @TaylorPearsonMeTaylor Pearson @TaylorPearsonMe
If you remove all the stressors from an environment by delaying risk, you not only make the eventual collapse worse, you make people less prepared for it.

CountBaisse @IRunWithBulls

@TaylorPearsonMe @rhughesjones @Kingspol_econ @TimHarford @JJSwartzwelder @mpigliucci @ElectricAgora @jam_croissant @HowardMarksBook @JohnHMcWhorter You might enjoy this from a couple of weeks ago :) https://t.co/LXYMXqF5yv https://t.co/niKKtuiGtu

May 11th 2021

1 Retweet21 Likes

If you protect a system, a company, or a child from small failures or stressful situations, most likely you’re setting them up for a larger failure in the future. Ability to deal with smaller/safer failures stresses is important for the system/company/child to grow up to be much stronger. Nicholas Nissim Taleb’s book “Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder” is a potentially life-changing philosophy that everyone must be familiar with in these uncertain times. Here is a shorter introduction to the core ideas.

Removing Bad Things Is More Effective Than Adding Good Things: Via Negativa

Twitter avatar for @NicolaiFossNicolai Foss @NicolaiFoss
Evidence of a strong rotten apple effect: "we find that avoiding a toxic worker (or converting him to an average worker) enhances performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a superstar worker."

May 15th 2021

10 Retweets29 Likes

Removing a toxic worker from a team (or fixing the toxicity) improves team performance much more than adding a superstar worker to the team. Avoiding stupidity will give you better results in life than trying to become very intelligent. Here’s an older tweet recommending via negativa in the context of mental health:

Twitter avatar for @docbhooshanDr.Bhooshan Shukla MD डॉ. भूषण शुक्ल @docbhooshan
While treating kids with mental health related issues, first principle of any help - Think systemically, identify active harms and contributors, work on dialling them down as much as possible. active intervention only when above proves inadequate & serious imminent risk

November 3rd 2020

13 Likes

And in fact, this idea applies to all health, not just mental health. And you can get quite a lot of insights by applying this idea to all aspects of your life, not just health. For a more detailed discussion of via negativa see this article from the wonderful Farnam Street blog.

The Importance of Short and to the Point Writing

Twitter avatar for @TaylorSicardTaylor 🍕 @TaylorSicard
School: this paper is a minimum 5 pages, single spaced with size 10 font. Real world: you have 8.5 seconds to get your point across.

May 9th 2021

189 Retweets2,101 Likes

Successful entrepreneur and VC Shaan Puri has an entire thread on this concept:

Twitter avatar for @ShaanVPShaan Puri @ShaanVP
In school they want long essays & you study shakespeare. I sucked at that. I get exhausted writing long essays & my grammar was horrible (still is). Lucky for me - in the real world you want: * less words * simple language * stories that get people hooked

May 11th 2021

1 Retweet71 Likes

Do you think like this before you write an email or a tweet? The most successful people do.

Twitter avatar for @ryanstephensRyan Stephens 🥃 @ryanstephens
When Shaan is trying to craft a viral tweet, he thinks about the core emotion he's trying to convey to Jenny in her bedroom. Here are a few: •😂LOL •🖕WTF •❤️Awww • 🤯 Ohhhhh (now I understand) •😌Finally! (relief; finally someone said it; you put my feelings into words)

May 12th 2021

4 Retweets17 Likes

When you’re writing, you must spend far more time on rewriting than on the writing itself. Can you make it shorter? Can you make it clearer? Can you make it a story? Can you add emotion?

Here Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator and one of the most influential people in the world of tech startups) explains the process of writing and rewriting:

Twitter avatar for @paulgPaul Graham @paulg
Writing is rewriting. Here's me writing the essay "Startups in 13 Sentences." Characters in yellow will ultimately be deleted. Notice how few characters I type make it into the final version.
Watch Me Make Mistakesbyronm.com

February 26th 2021

174 Retweets1,555 Likes

Reading between the lines

Did you know that Neptune was discovered by a mathematician doing calculations on paper and not an astronomer using a telescope? Urbain Le Verrier noticed unexpected perturbations in the orbit of Uranus, deduced that it was caused by the gravitational pull of another planet, and computed the size and position of the planet. He then told astronomer John Galle to look for a planet at a specific time and place in the sky, and that’s how Neptune was discovered.

Twitter avatar for @pseudoerasmusPseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus
Amazing. Studying share price patterns, under the assumption that the efficient markets hypothesis was correct, he deduced what a key material in the hydrogen bomb was. The external validity of his methodology & assumptions confirmed by the US government's burning his paper ;-)

Vincent (Economic History) Geloso @VincentGeloso

Armen Alchian was the inventor of the first event study. He just had to destroy the paper because of national security issues. That's how much of a badass Alchian was #econtwitter https://t.co/QdjIcHNcBw

May 7th 2021

53 Retweets208 Likes

Here is a completely different example of that kind of deduction. In the 1950s when the US was working on the Hydrogen bomb, one of the important ingredients was a top-secret. Armen Alchian, an economist, used stock market data to see which companies’ stocks went up in correlation with announcements related to the bomb and correctly deduced that the secret ingredient was Lithium. He was forced to destroy this paper and keep the deduction secret because of national security issues.

Do you know other, more recent examples of people deducing important information by guessing from correlated data?

Just for fun

Twitter avatar for @Christina_OwenActual Red Lobster @Christina_Owen
I did not know a stingray had all this skeleton
Image

May 10th 2021

6,790 Retweets67,674 Likes

New to Some

(This section contains tweets where there’s an interesting concept that many might know but it would be new to at least some people.)

Twitter avatar for @merciMerci Grace @merci
My career advice: Do the thing that most triggers your imposter syndrome.

May 13th 2021

133 Retweets1,148 Likes

Do you know about imposter syndrome? Do you ever get the feeling that you are really unqualified for your job? That you don’t quite know what you’re doing and you’ve just been promoted because your boss doesn’t know how clueless you are? Everyone feels like this: If you don’t believe that, read this delightful incident that happened to Neil Gaiman. You need to learn to deal with it: here’s HBR talking about how to overcome imposter syndrome. In fact, as the tweet above says, for fastest growth, do the thing that most triggers your imposter syndrome.

(I’m sure you know someone struggling with imposter syndrome: please forward this to them.)

2
Share this post
Best of Twitter: Antifragility, Via Negativa, Imposter Syndrome and more
futureiq.substack.com
2 Comments

Create your profile

0 subscriptions will be displayed on your profile (edit)

Skip for now

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.

Ashish Kulkarni
May 18, 2021Liked by Navin Kabra

Excellent post, as always! Thank you :)

Regarding antifragility, a related book you might enjoy reading is Foolproof, by Greg Ip.

Expand full comment
ReplyCollapse
1 reply by Navin Kabra
1 more comments…
TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2022 Navin Kabra
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Publish on Substack Get the app
Substack is the home for great writing