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💡Something I learned
How to counter Legal Disinfo
I am not a lawyer. I have some understanding of how the judiciary functions in a Common Law system. Perhaps more than an average person. However, I can’t be called an expert. The law sometimes even confounds lawyers. Hence, there is a lot of legal misinformation and disinformation online.
A great way to avoid being a victim to these is to see if case law is mentioned. It is not foolproof, but it is good way to filter out a lot of it.
📕Something to read
- Twitter isn’t real: I recently posted my thoughts on Elon Musk’s purchase of a middling social media business that barely anyone uses.
- A primer on Free Speech: Mr. Musk and his army of simps have a clear misunderstanding of what Free Speech is. They are also responsible for muddying the waters on this concept. This might clear it up for you.
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🗣Some Quotes and Notes
Generation C
As a father of a Covid baby, I often wonder about the long-term effects. Marketing guru Seth Godin summarizes it in this short essay.
So what to call the next generation?
My co-authors Bruce Clark and Paige NeJame have coined the term “Generation C.” It’s so well-suited, I believe it’s going to stick.
C is for Covid, C is for Carbon, C is for Climate.
The combination of years of school spent at home, in a mask, combined with the significant revolution (economic, political and social) that our industrialism has led us to means that this generation will be different than the ones before. Every decision and investment and interaction is going to be filtered through the lens of carbon and remediation and resilience.
— Seth Godin, Generation C
Imagining the Future
I have been on a sci-fi kick right now. The books reminded me of this passage from Neil Gaiman’s defense of libraries. Future can’t be imagined by people if they are not allowed to do it.
I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?
It’s simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.
— Neil Gaiman, Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming
Chance Encounters
I recently picked up Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Taleb. I am just up to the first chapter, but the preface contains more wisdom than most self help get-rich-quick tripe containing . While referencing one such waste of ink and paper, The millionaire next door, he points out how lacking the premise it self is.
That all millionaires were persistent, hardworking people does not make persistent hard workers become millionaires: Plenty of unsuccessful entrepreneurs were persistent, hardworking people. In a textbook case of naive empiricism, the author also looked for traits these millionaires had in common and figured out that they shared a taste for risk taking. Clearly risk taking is necessary for large success—but it is also necessary for failure. Had the author done the same study on bankrupt citizens he would certainly have found a predilection for risk taking.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled By Randomness
Thank you for joining me this week. If you know some who might enjoy this, please forward this email to them. See you next week.
Mudassir Chapra