At some point, we are going to need a universal basic income (UBI). Human biology moves slower than silicon tinkering, so it's only a matter of time until we fall behind—machines will outperform us on every front not just physically but socially, intellectually, creatively.
When that day comes, the choice is between a hyperinequalistan whose small class of uberweathy grows ever richer off the dividends of ancestral wealth (while the bulk of the population starves on the offal), and a UBItopia that offers everyone a minimum of decency.12
Because there are no real alternatives in a world of human redundancy and because the first option seems so bleak, many of the technocrats I follow take a future UBI for granted. Only psychopaths and Ben Shapiroically pure conservative idealogues can reject the UBI outright.
Thus, much of the discussion around UBIs begins with the premise that it has already been adopted. Technologists prefer to deal with questions like: What effect would a UBI have on human creativity and artistry? What will society look like with most of the population unemployed? And perhaps the favorite: how will people find meaning post-work?
Here's how Elon Musk puts it:
[The] much harder challenge is: How will people then have meaning? A lot of people derive meaning from their employment. If you’re not needed, what is the meaning? Do you feel useless? That is a much harder problem to deal with. How do we ensure the future is a future that we want, that we still like? [1]
What Musk and other technologists forget is that most people derive meaning from their relationships, not their employment. The majority of people are—to put it mildly—ambivalent about their jobs. They would be perfectly happy to stop working and never look back. For this population, jobs are a source of meaning in so far as they are a place to develop relationships with others, and most jobs aren't particularly well-suited to doing even this.
Work that is deeply fulfilling and intrinsically meaningful is the exception; it is a privilege and luxury reserved to a tiny fraction of the population (usually already wealthy technocrats and creatives). What Musk was really asking is: "How will I have meaning? I derive a lot of meaning from being the spaceships-EVs-solar-panels-and-tunnel-boring-machines dude. If I'm not needed, what is my purpose?" And that might be a hard problem for you, Elon, but it's not the main concern for the rest of us.
Fortunately, we already have a time-tested solution for creating meaningful relationships—it's called community. And you build one through shared events like sports, barbecues, volunteering, schools, the occasional acid trip, etc. It really doesn't take much imagination: go share a cup of tea with your neighbor and stroll around the block.
It's not a coincidence that the happiest countries are those that work the least (think of Southern & Northwestern Europe) [2]. That the Netherlands with the highest part-time female workforce participation in Europe [3] also happens to have the happiest kids in the world [4]. That the world's monied classes have historically prided themselves on not working (our own culture's cult of work is an abberation).
When we talk about creating meaning after employment we're distracting ourselves at best and fostering complacency at worst. Meaning after employment isn't the problem. Meaning right now is the problem. The real "harder challenge" is to strengthen local communities and institutions long before the last humans become redundant.
This is not just a hard but urgent problem when our communities are falling apart from suicide, addiction, overdose, and chronic disease [5]. But it doesn't have to be a particulary difficult problem to solve when the most effective solution has already been identified: the UBI.
Economic security is the primary precondition to creating any kind of meaning anywhere. That's because, as Orwell puts it, poverty "annihilates the future." You can't even begin to create meaning and deep relationships when your mind is flooded with the worries of paying bills, getting enough to eat, finding your next fix, etc. As he puts it yet more poignantly: "Poverty is spiritual halitosis." Solve the underlying economic uncertainty first, and much of the spiritual growth will follow by itself.3
Let's get back to the challenge of implementing a UBI and fostering meaning right now. That's hard enough as is.
Footnotes
Counterarguments to a UBI that invoke the slippery slope ("Who defines what is minimum? The UBI will have to grow larger and larger to satisfy us.") totally miss the point. What other purpose could we have as society besides making the general population steadily more prosperous? ↩
Persistent exponential growth (as in economics) tends to collapse highly complex multi-dimensional problems onto single axes. This is why gases of billions of particles are characterized wholly by three variables: pressure, volume, and temperature. And this is why on a centuries-long timescale the societal choice simplifies to a choice between unbounded inequality and redistribution. ↩
The conservative talking point of government handouts fostering complacency and spiritual degradation is completely backwards. These pundits need to read more Orwell. ↩
Romulus recently published a video essay on Europe's "lost" startups. If you haven't watched it, it's a good place to start.
This is only the most recent attempt by YouTube's pan-European content-creators to explain why Europe is falling behind the US and China 1. The answers these creators come up with (including Romulus) tend to be highly tangible and quantifiable:
VC opportunities. At the early-stage, it's a 3x difference between European and American investment [1]. At later stages, even within the EU, close to 75% of funding comes from foreign investors [2].
Brain drain. At the individual level, Europe-born US immigrants are five times likelier to "innovate" in the US compared to native citizens [3]. At the corporate level, almost half of European startups are acquired by American companies [4]. 2
Heterogeneous markets. For all the talk of a single-market, the EU remains fractured in language, custom, and regulation. That makes it difficult for startups to scale as quickly as their American competitors.
Regulation. The story is that the EU's tighter regulations limit the formation of corporate superpowers that could take on GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) and BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi) (e.g., Into Europe). Granted, this regulation is also the rather enjoyable perk that gives us the occasional GDPR or Green New Deal.
These answers are satisfying because they admit relatively straightforward fixes. Not enough funding? Throw more cash around (just as the European Council Accelerator is already doing). Brain drain? Limit foreign takeovers and do a better job of advertising Europe as a STEM hub. (How? Oh I don't know, maybe with our ample affordable universities?) A fractured market? Continue the path towards globalization and do your best to ignore the populists. Or if you think the ailment is regulation, then your answer is deregulation.
Satisfying as the above diagnosis is, it is incomplete—it fails to explain why the EU produces only 40% as many seed-stage startups even after adjusting for population & GDP [5]. Europe is not just underinvesting, curtailing, and losing its startups, it is not producing them to begin with.
The cause of this deeper issue is likely less regulatory or financial and more cultural or social.
With the necessary disclaimer that "cultural and social" brings into more anecdotal, less rigorous territory, let us proceed cautiously.
Your correspondent, based on his own experiences living both in the US and Europe, has identified what he has experienced as the three most important factors:
Socially Enforced Mediocrity. The lingering effects of Calvinism discourage Europeans (especially in the North) from flaunting their achievement. It's why Germany's uberrich try to downplay their wealth [6] and the Dutch deliberately avoid getting high grades in school [7]. 3 Needless to say, that's not the ideal environment for encouraging entrepreneurs.
Pessimism and Cynicism. Despite having some of the best living conditions, Europe's inhabitants are the gloomiest in the world [8]. That's a problem because starting a company requires you to be almost naively optimistic—the odds are stacked so strongly against you succeeding that you will not survive on anything less.
Risk Aversion. Most importantly and probably a consequence of the previous two points, Europeans are highly risk averse. Near the top are Germany and the Netherlands [9]. Any guesses which country you'll find at the opposite end? Because the failure rate is so high, startups only work when there are a lot of them. And if you're paralyzed by failure, well, you will miss every shot you don't take.
As a result, European VC's are not just underinvesting compared to their American counterparts. They also take longer to close deals and they care more about founders drawing up detailed 3and 5-year plans 4. Europe doesn't just have a financing or regulatory problem—it has an attitude problem.
To be fair to Europe, these are the flip-sides of rather positive tendencies. The focus on social cohesion has likely helped to reduce inequality [10]. This helps make these countries some of the most pleasant to live in. And despite (or likely because of) the underemphasis on scholastic performance, Dutch kids are the happiest in the world [11]. Pessimism may make Europeans better able to acknowledge the challenges of our time [12], and you probably need a fair dose of risk aversion when your countries have experienced world wars on home turf, and when your countries remain at regular risk of massive drowning.
The problem is when these attitudes are taken to extremes. It's not that we have to worship achievement—only that we don't shun it. It's not that we ignore real problems—only that we continue to believe a better world is possible. And it's not that we start taking wild risks—only that we make an honest assessment of how severe the consequences really are. Failing to launch a company is not synonymous with ending up in abject poverty.
Fortunately, the tides are starting to change. Your correspondent's experience with the Dutch tech sector and in an Amsterdam-based accelerator has put him into contact with dozens of very European individuals who defy each of these labels. Just as EU is fixing its financials to fund the next generations of European startups, the youngest generation of EU nationals is fixing itself up to lead the companies of the future.
Your correspondent—as a European national who has moved to the US to found a company—feels his fair share of guilt in contributing to the problem. ↩
This is what's called zesjescultuur ("sixes culture") since a 6 out of 10 is considered a passing grade. Now, obviously, students everywhere do their best to do as little as they can and still pass. What's striking about the Netherlands is the degree to which it celebrates its satisfaction with mediocrity (De Fusie, NRC, VICE, de Volkskrant). This comes from a pretty healthy place—not wanting to worship achievement in the way that causes so many American students to kill themselves [13]. But it doesn't help to encourage the ego-trip of entrepreneurship.
More broadly, this Calvinistic sentiment has permeated so deep that even the language idioms deter achievement: hoge bomen vangen veel wind (tall trees catch lots of wind) and steek je kop niet boven het maaiveld uit (don't stick your head above ground level—the implication being that the lawn mower will take it off). ↩
See, for example, [14]. This focus on long-term planning is probably the biggest weakness in the European startup environment. In the early stage, startups pivot and adapt much too often for long-term plans to have any meaning whatsoever. Europe needs to realize and accept that startups are a lottery, albeit one without a ceiling [15]. ↩
I started this year with a a comprehensive review & planning—a practice I hope to continue into the future. As we are now a little more than halfway through the year, it seems like a great time to check-in and see how these goals have been going.
Successes
First, let's see what's working—the goals I've already reached or am on track to reach:
🛫 Move back to North America.
I have been in sunny California for five weeks. No second thoughts.
🎓 Finish my thesis; finish my masters.
I didn't quite get the 9+/10 I set out for (nor any awards), but the important bit is that I'm done. That's an enormous relief (and I'm perfectly happy with an 8.5).
📕 1 book a week. Read through the works of Twain, Orwell, and the Stoics. Read ≥5 non-English books.
I could read a little more of Twain and Orwell as well as in the non-English category, but I've actually outperformed this goal and am already at 45 books. Because of this, I've upped my aim to 100 books for the year. Unfortunately, that would mean that I'm not actually ahead but behind—7 books from where I need to be. Time to catch up.
Partial successes
What about the goals that are sort of working—but that maybe need a rekindling or adjustment?
📊 GTD
This has been an on-and-off commitment.
But now that I'm no longer juggling both entrepreneurial and academic responsibilities, it's much easier to stay organized and disciplined with my time. I find that the "deep work" model of doing no more than one thing a day works best for me. My brain just can't handle much more.
🧘 Meditate daily. Try a (≥) week-long meditation retreat.
On the daily meditation front, I've come to accept that vanilla Vipassana just doesn't work for me. I already sit much behind the computer that I'd rather spend time for meditation doing something non-sedentary.
My alternative is to just go to the sauna. You get the benefits of the introspective time plus the benefits of the sauna. And if clearing your mind's the goal, then the sauna sometimes outperforms Vipassana. Just as turning up pink noise can tune out distraction, raising the temperature can dial down the brain.
As for that meditation retreat, it's just not going to happen this year.
👟 More cardio.
At the start of the year, I was stressing out about my heart rate being too high as well as my height (6' 5") substantially increasing my risk of early death.
I'm a little less stressed about this because it turns out my heart rate is fine. Those hours in the sauna must be doing something. And next to sauna, I've found swimming to be a great fit.
Failures
What about the goals that are not working out? The places where I need to make a change?
👥 Join a community at our new home.
We've only been here for five weeks, so I haven't had a whole lot of time to explore. But I could do a better job starting right now. I'll be looking specifically in the rationalist and language-learning communities.
🗣 Italian to B2; German to B1
Next to masters and business, language has been on the back-burner. That's okay. The only real deadline I have is reading Faust in German by my 25th birthday (for a bet with a former roommate).
🦵 Continue daily mobility and flexibility exercises. Reach at least 6 months without injury.
I wish, I wish. This time, it is my right shoulder that's been acting up. The consequence is that I'm continuing to ignore strength work and focus on mobility over all else.
✍️ Write weekly and develop a course (likely about workflows for academic research) for passive income.
Somewhere in the mix of starting a business, finishing courses, then writing my masters, I began to neglect my blog. That's a shame because there are few better ways to refine your thinking. Fortunately, I didn't stop writing—so I haven't lost that habit.
Starting now, I am rebooting my blogging practice. My aim is to have averaged one piece a week at the end of the year. That means that starting now I have to finish three pieces every two weeks. Definitely possible now that I have little else in my way.
💵 Achieve consistent growth with Health Curious (my business). Get into YC S2021.
It is in the nature of start-ups to pivot, pivot, and pivot again. So we have, so we will continue to do. That's why I don't feel bad about not meeting these goals. We're working super hard and now that I can work full-time, there's nothing in our way (except slowly dwindling funds, but that's part of the excitement).
What now?
One of the major lessons from this first half year is just how bad I am at multitasking. Not just in the moment (when, for example, you're talking to your mom and trying to cook at the same time), but throughout the day. My brain needs a few hours before it can really switch from one subject to another, say, from masters to business to blogging and back.
One consequence of this is that I've been more susceptible to wasting time on Reddit and YouTube. That needs to change. My solution is to use a VPN on my phone that blocks these websites. I might do the same on my computer.
My priority over the remainder of this year is to get enough money to my partner and I's business, Health Curious, that our team can last until the end of the year. I'll be sharing a more in-depth update in the next few weeks. Because of this, another consequence of my inability to multitask is that I have to "neglect" my side interests. Expanding my SRS and languages may have to wait as long as these other concerns take precedence.
The next few months may prove to be some of the most routine I've ever experienced. I'll be coding, entrepreneuring, and writing 12 to 14 hours a day, with the remaining hours reserved for a bit of movement, sauna, food, and girlfriend. It's good that we started a company together: she knows what we signed up for.
Maybe the weirdest part is how much I'm looking forward to this regimen. Maybe it's that I've been brainwashed by our culture to worship work as religious duty. Maybe it's that I've brainwashed myself into programmatic stupor. Or maybe it's the start-up lore of Bill Gates and Paul Allen churning out Altair Basic on a sleep-deprived diet of Tang, Marc Andreesseen and Eric Bina slaving away behind Mosaic, and many other luminaries besides these entering the world through an unhealthy-seeming rite of start-up passage. We will have to wait and see how this story turns out.
The fourth law of power is to "always say less than necessary." Everything you say is an opportunity for criticism, so saying less prevents attack. It also gives you more room to maneuver when the situation changes. And you maintain an aura of alluring mystery.
The fourth law of cooperation is to "always say enough," and "to ask more than you think necessary." Everything you say is an opportunity for miscommunication, so saying more prevents misunderstanding. We always underestimate how clear we come across, so it's better to be safe than sorry and speak abundantly.
Transgression of the Law
In 2010, Adam Neumann co-founded WeWork with his business partner Miguel McKelvey. Their new idea was to rent office space from landlords in bulk, divide it into smaller pieces, and sublease for profit.
But that wasn't really their "new" idea. The idea of coworking already existed. There were well-established competitors like Regus (est. 1989), the Cambridge Innovation Center (1999), and The Office Group (2004). Granted: WeWork may have been the first "pretty" coworking space, but that's hardly patentable. This was a problem because—if you recall Peter Thiel's lesson from the last chapter—a company's primary need is to be inimitable.
If WeWork's unique value proposition wasn't in coworking, it certainly wasn't in real estate. After the Great Recession (caused by real-estate speculation), you weren't going to convince any investors that you could scrape more than the thinnest of margins off of mortar and brick.
No, the new idea of WeWork was to build the first "physical social network" (yes, seriously). To offer coworking space that would fulfill not only the carnal needs—plants, wifi, standing desks—but those higher wants—"community," yoga, and craft beer.
Simple as that idea was, it would rocket WeWork to a $47 billion valuation, to spin-offs in coliving, gyms, and private schools, and to acquisitions in construction, marketing, and food.
Empty as that idea was, it would crash WeWork into the dust. The $47 billion valuation introduced intense pressure to grow, and Neumann became tyrannical. He would berate and ostracize any critic. Burning through cash, Neumann bought a company jet, threw Gatsby-esque parties, and made outlandish investments in unrelated companies like a wave-generating start-up for surfing. The perhaps most telling example is the simplest. Neumann had mixed-up the definitions of "latte" and "cappuccino." Rather than correct him, WeWork swapped their internal definitions of "latte" and "cappuccino."
When the waste and losses came to light in WeWork's S-1 paperwork in 2019 (as part of its IPO filing), the tides turned. In the space of six weeks, WeWork crashed from its peak to a valuation of "only" 9billion.Helostinvestorsbillionsandcostthousandsofemployeestheirjobs.And,intheend,hewalkedawaywithalmost2 billion…
Interpretation
WeWork crumbled because in saying too little Neumann promised too much.
The idea of pretty coworking space is not a particularly special idea. Anyone can copy it. Because anyone can copy it, others will, and your profit margins will evaporate. And because there is so much real estate, you could never achieve a situation of "winner-take-all."
And the idea of coworking space plus "community" and "culture" is not an idea. It is vague psychotechnobabble at best and cultish at worst. Let me give an example:
"Real estate is going through a fundamental shift, from a fixed-cost-per-seat commodity to a must-have experiential-differentiated service." — Adam Neumann
Let's translate that: middlemen ("service") will make lots of money if they can convince you to buy their bells and whistles ("experiential-differentiated"). To do that, they have to convince you these luxuries are essential ("must-have"). And when these luxuries become the norm, they can begin rent-seeking (cf. "fixed-cost-per-seat").1
To hide the aim of rent-seeking from clients, your best weapon is jargon and outright nonsense. Promise investors that you're like Amazon in the books-and-CDs phase. Don't commit to anything.
Neumann is unique because he blends the trite mumbo jumbo of the spiritual guru ("community," "we") with the obscurity of business speak ("experiential-differentiated service", "physical social network") . To this, he adds a lethal dose of charisma for a brew so potent it took only 12 minutes to dupe SoftBank's Masayoshi Son into a $4.4 billion investment. If only Son had probed past the veneer and looked for real content: How much money were they making (losing)? What is the conceivable take rate on a square foot of real estate? How does this take rate scale with the amount you invest in furniture, plants, beer? What are the returns on "community?"
Of course, Neumann could have (and would have) retorted, "we're trying to look past profits. We want to build something for humans not only investors." And, you know what, that answer might have even deserved praise. But if you don't ground those higher aspirations in a sustainable business model, you will one day crumble. Such is nature.
In some ways you can read Neumann's tale as validation to say "less than necessary." Evidently, this strategy works well enough to trick laypeople and seasoned investors alike. But, as with any con, time will call your bluff. Avoid the platitudes of the guru. Spurn the nonsense of the businessman.
On January 28th, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after takeoff, killing all seven crew members. In the aftermath, NASA set up the Rogers Commission to determine the cause. This commission would, by stroke of luck, include legendary physicist Richard Feynman. He was reluctant at first: there was physics to do, and Feynman doubted he was the right fit. Fortunately for the commission, Feynman came to his senses. Even as an outsider to aviation, he did have something unique to offer: the ability to ask questions—lots and lots of questions. This came from Feynman's complete lack of shame in admitting he didn't know something. For example, his first briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory "wasn't brief: it was very intense, very fast, and very complete. It's the only way I know to get technical information quickly . . . you ask a lot of questions, you get quick answers . . . and learn just what to ask to get the next piece of information you need." Take a pointer from Feynman and be willing to be the idiot in the room.
Ronald Reagan was growing tired of the high turnover rate in Soviet leadership. Brezhnev had lasted more than a decade, but his successor, Andropov, had made it only two years. And, after Andropov, Chernenko had lasted just one. So Reagan was hesitant when in 1985 yet another communist, Mikhail Gorbachev, rose to power. Gorbachev, likewise, was weary of the conservative American. Reagan had called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" only 2 years earlier.
Despite these hesitations, Gorbachev and Reagan gave each other a chance, and the rest is history. In fact, it's not a stretch to say that this one relationship brought about the end of the Cold War. Together, the two would sign the INF treaty in 1987. Later, George H.W. Bush, building on Reagan's relationship with Gorbachev, would sign the CFE agreement (1990) and START I (1991).
This mutual respect was also the basis for a peaceful end to the Soviet Union in 1991. Rather than gloating in "victory," Bush played down the fanfare, which made it easier for the Soviets to accept regime change.
The relationship between Gorbachev and Reagan had a simple foundation: a series of more than 40 personal letters.
These letters began rather vague and noncommittal. Reagan opens by professing his belief that "our differences can and must be resolved through discussion and negotiation." Gorbachev agrees and acknowledges the "great importance [of] the exchange of letters."
But they soon venture into details. In his second letter, Reagan hones in on the killing of Major Nicholson. While gathering information in Berlin, Nicholson had been shot by a Soviet sentry. His death provoked a crisis between the nations and would be the first and only official US casualty of the Cold War. In his third letter, Reagan calls for the demilitarization of Afghanistan. He goes on to propose a ban on chemical weapons. Gorbachev counters with a proposed ban on anti-ballistic missile technology ("Star Wars"). And he suggests a halt to nuclear weapons tests. Evidently, the two were not afraid to say anything and everything. They spoke freely even when they had no hope of a particular proposal materializing.
Here's Reagan's explanation:
"I've written you in candor. I believe that our heavy responsibilities require us to communicate directly without guile or circumlocution. I hope you will give me your frank view of these questions and call my attention any others which you consider require our personal involvement."
And Gorbachev's response:
"I noted the intention expressed in your letter of April 30 to share thoughts in our correspondence with complete frankness. This is also my attitude. Only in this manner can we bring to each other the essence of our respective approaches the problems of world politics in bilateral relations."
When the problems are great, the only way to get through them is by talking, talking, talking. By sharing openly, Gorbachev and Reagan learned to see each other as people. Without the chance for spoken repartee, close reading forces you to acknowledge the other's concerns. In so doing, they found a tiny area of common ground: the desire to avert nuclear war. From this shared aim, they could begin to effect tangible diplomatic progress. They never would have gotten there had they not spoken abundantly. When trying to establish cooperation, put all your cards on the table.
🇺🇸 Presidential Styles
President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama are polar opposites in political style. Obama, the epitome of technocracy, was the numbers guy. He needed data before any decision and would annotate binders full of briefings. Biden was more the people person. Famous for long-winded digressions, Biden is a politician more in the style of an FDR or LBJ. He'll go on talking with people deep into the night, looking for compromise and even bemoan the Democrats as a party of "heartless technocrats… [that] have never … moved this nation by 14-point position papers and nine-point programs." As Biden writes in his 2007 memoir Promises to Keep, "[i]t’s important to read reports and listen to the experts; more important is being able to read people in power." We're still early on in Biden's presidency, so we can't say much of the consequences. But a promising nugget is that some Republicans believe they can better get along with Biden than Obama. Time will tell which is the winning strategy.
Keys to Cooperation
The invitation to say enough is not a suggestion to dilute your words. It's the opposite: saying enough requires constant vigilance towards clarity and concision. Each of has very little time on this planet, so it is arrogant to assume you deserve anyone's attention.
We must earn our audience's time, and the best way to earn this is to show frugality. Get to the point.
The best practice for frugality is to write. Only when you put your words in front of you will the waste reveal itself and the clean-up begin. This is why, in organizations, communication should be asynchronous first. Meetings have a horrible way of devolving into jargonistic ego-trips for management. Talking makes commitment cheap, while writing keeps it prized.
There are exceptions of course. Water-cooler conversations is the kind of cross-talk that spurs creative insights. Sometimes, direct questions are faster, especially if the problem is blocking. And before everything else, as human beings, socializing is just about our most basic need.
From the 19th to 20th centuries, the sun never set on the British empire. This is quite the accomplishment if you consider that they did so without phones and telegraphs. How? Letters. An elaborate hierarchical structure helped, but the main feature was an elite class of bureaucrats who could write. The slow speed of communication was a feature, not a bug. Then, in our present age of tweets and texts, we stand to gain from slowing the pace of information.
"I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood." — Kurt Vonnegut
Types of Say-nothings
Just as you should avoid wasting the time of others, you should avoid those who waste your time by saying nothing. That begins by learning to diagnose the major types of say-nothings.
The Guru. The total sum of human wisdom is a pretty short list: "eat healthy," "get enough sleep," "spend time with friends," "go on a walk," "meditate," etc. But, for whatever reason, we humans regularly forget these basic tenets. Every so often, we need a spiritual guru, a Deepak Chopra or Paolo Coelho, to come along and remind us of what is, in retrospect, painfully obvious. Sometimes, it's innocent, and the reminder is welcome. But, often, their words carry something sinister and deceiving. Take Coelho's, "When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream." If you have ever sat in a science class, you know the universe does not work this way. To say the universe is going to help you meet your goals just sets you up for failure. Meeting your goals requires hard work not just wishful visualization.
The Jargonist. With the guru, there can still be something endearing about the whole charade. So long as it's not a Bikram Choudhury taking advantage of his disciples (which may be more the norm than exception), you can forgive followers for wanting something to believe in. There's less of this endearing quality in jargon. Jargon's role is to signal belonging and exclusion: if you speak the idiolect, you are in-group; if you don't, you are out-group. Now, jargon is everywhere. And we can't hope to eradicate jargon for the same reason that we don't want capital-L Language to be static. A large part of language is completely inseparable from social signaling. Still, we can do our best to deter the most dangerous varieties of jargon. Worst is probably business speak or "commercialese." Here's my best attempt: quantum block-chain is an emerging disruptive technology that will utilize AI to revolutionize finance and bring about a paradigm shift to a new generation of empowering decentralized, delocalized quantum internet. Unlike the gurus who at least offer you a repackaging of ancient wisdoms and life advice, the jargonist has nothing to offer. Nothing, that is, except an endless void in which to dispose of your investments. Avoid.
The Hyperrationalist. Hyperrationalists content themselves to talk about just the "facts." They pride themselves on their analytical ability and no-nonsense attitude. This would be Obama when compared against Biden. The risk is that hyperrationalists may lack the people skills necessary to collaborate. They see questions like "how was your weekend" and "how are your kids" as small-talk that wastes valuable time they could be talking about ideas. With the hyperrationalist, your best option is to show them, subtly, the latent opportunity for learning. They have often never considered the possibility that human relations are a skill to learn (and the single most important skill at that). This intervention won't always work. Some hyperrationalists convince themselves they are not "people people." They may think it hopeless for them to try to learn more. If this attitude persists, limit the damage by keeping the person out of management, or sever your tie.
The Timid. Many people say too little because they are shy and fear embarrassment. With this type, it's best to make room for talking in a smaller, more personal environment. Otherwise, try to keep track of who is speaking in a group and how often, and ask questions that involve the quiet types. Also, preemptively volunteer vulnerability to reduce the perceived risk of embarrassment. People can grow past timidity, but it is usually a gradual process. Unlike the other types of say-nothings, the timid person is not one to avoid. They usually can have much to say; it's on you to help bring this out.
The Gossip. We all recognize the gossip: the person who talks nonstop about other people. In this way, they are opposite to the hyperrationalist who talks too much about things and not enough about people. In the gossip's gregariousness, they are opposite to the timid person who keeps quiet. Put a bunch of timid people together in a room with one gossip, and the gossip may start blabbing from fear of "awkward" silence. Even though they often end up being the most awkward person in the room.
Note that the gossip is not always harmful. They can play a critical role in a group, especially if they have a sense of humor. But we all know there is a dark side. Avoid and ostracize the gossip who only talks negatively about others. This person will cannibalize your group's social scaffolding.
Summary
Here's another piece of self-evident life advice: aim for the middle. Don't say too much, and don't say too little. Listen more than you speak, ask more than you answer, and you'll be fine.
So little Goldilocks opened the door, and went in; and well pleased she was when she saw the porridge on the table. If she had been a good little girl, she would have waited till the Bears came home, and then, perhaps, they would have asked her to breakfast; for they were good Bears, a little rough or so, as the manner of Bears is, but for all that very good-natured and hospitable.
So first she tasted the porridge of the Great, Huge Bear, and that was too hot for her. And then she tasted the porridge of the Middle Bear, and that was too cold for her. And then she went to the porridge of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and tasted that; and that was neither too hot nor too cold, but just right. She liked it so well, that she ate it all up.
Then little Goldilocks sat down in the chair of the Great, Huge Bear, and that was too hard for her. And then she sat down in the chair of the Middle Bear, and that was too soft for her. And then she sate down in the chair of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and that was neither too hard nor too soft, but just right. So she seated herself in it, and there she sat till the bottom of the chair came out, and down she went, plump upon the ground — John Cundall, "The Three Bears"
Footnotes
Footnotes
Consider an example. You want to (and can afford to) go skiing. So you look on your local ski resort's website and find out that two weekends of skiing will cost you around 400.Butifyoubuytheseasonpassfor800, you'll get unlimited access not just to your local mountain, but to 30 others. It's a steal, right? But you are a rationalist, and you know you only have two weekends available. So you go for the $400 option even though some cruel twist of psychology makes this cheaper option feel like you've lost money. That's because you have: by normalizing the luxury item, your ski resort has raised costs for "normal" clients. Another example is universities. Competition between universities for students puts pressure on universities to differentiate—not in quality but in luxury. Think spas, gyms, and meal plans. As these become the norm, universities become more expensive even for students who don't want the luxuries. It's a race to the top. ↩
Every so often a late-night TV host comes along to show us just how abysmally bad we are at geography.
At the other extreme, you have the London taxi driver. These walking (read: driving) atlases have to master The Knowledge— the world's most exacting geography test (actually a set of four progressively more difficult exams). Aspirants absorb the "Blue Book," a navigation bible of 320 sample runs, more than 26,000 streets, and every single location of interest in London. It's a process that can take more than four years.
is significantly larger in these taxi drivers than in control subjects. And the more experience you have as a cab driver, the more pronounced this difference becomes. [1]
Somewhere between these poles is where most of us aim to sit. This is because geography matters. It matters because most of us have opinions on what's going on in other places. And most of us can't keep those opinions to ourselves. If we want to be slightly more informed citizens, we'd do well to brush up on our geography.
But there's a more practical, less abstract reason to train your knowledge of geography: expanding your spatial thinking is perhaps the best way to improve your general-purpose memory.
That's because we can directly convert spatial thinking into memory storage through a technique known as the "method of loci" (aka memory palace). How it works is as follows: when you want to learn a new sequence (or collection) of data (e.g., a speech, a timeline, the steps to a dance, anything), you imagine yourself walking through some space you are familiar with. In your mind's eye, you place the objects you'd like to memorize in this imaginary space. When you want to recall the information, you just imagine yourself walking through the same space and retrieving the items.
An example: Roman emperors
Let's say I want to memorize the order of the first five Roman emperors after Caesar (the rest can come later):
Augustus
Tiberius
Caligula
Claudius
Nero
I choose as my space the street in front of my house. First, in the middle of the intersection, I place a sweltering sun, representing the oppressive heat of the month of August. I walk past it to the corner, where a tiger jumps out at me through a shop display. He's followed by Calvin (the tiger turns out to be the peaceful Hobbes). As I'm recoiling from the shock, the pair bursts into a cloud of smoke. They leave behind only a sad pile of ashes. Out of the smoke enters Neo, in his full sunglasses-and-trenchcoat glory.
You'll notice, I placed objects that sounded similar to what I'm actually trying to memorize—not the objects themselves. One of the most important tricks of the mnemonist is to convert the abstract into the practical. It's even better if they become animate characters. The other trick is to make your mental images as action-heavy (also violent and raunchy) as possible. Both serve to hijack our primitive ape brains.
The method of loci is not just a clever trick; it is the primary means by which oral traditions store knowledge from antiquity on to today. This allows, for example, the Matsés people of Brazil and Peru to memorize a 500-page encyclopedia of their traditional medicine. And the Hanunóo of the Philippines to classify 1,625 plants. Or the Aboriginee to memorize sung sequences of locations and information ("songlines") that can span almost a thousand kilometers. [2]
Train your brain in geography (especially local geography), and you have more locations for mental storage and more machinery for connecting things.2 Up to a point. The stronger navigational memories of cab drivers turns out to compromise their abilities to retain new visual associations [3]. There's a trade-off at play between the anterior (more visual) and posterior (more spatial) hippocampus.
Still, there's reason to remain optimistic about the benefits of some geography training. Just because we can see that it's not healthy to be steroidal bodybuilder doesn't mean we should give up on exercise.
Also, most of us (cab drivers included) never learn to use the method of loci. We don't learn how to translate our navigational memory into more general-purpose memory, so we end up thinking (rightly) of geography as a stuffy and narrow-minded exercise.
This does not have to be. In the rest of this article, I'm going to set out a few tricks to make it not just easier to memorize geography but more fun (yes, actually) and readily transferable. So you're not just the arrogant geography snob.
As always, we're going to be using a spaced repetition system. If you don't know what that means, start with my previous article on the subject.
Areas
Countries, bodies of water, provinces, and states
As a budding geographer, you'll want to start at the top. First, understand the two-dimensional continents and countries in coarse detail. Then, zoom in for further detail as you learn states and provinces, zero-dimensional cities, towns, and one-dimensional roads and rivers.
2d regions are the easiest to memorize because their unique shapes help us distinguish them. You're going to want to play that game you played as a kid where you try to see shapes in clouds. This shapiness is less present with 1d roads and totally absent in 0d cities.
For regions, you're only going to need two kinds of cards:
Region -> Name
Name + Blank map -> Region
For both, it's best to use two-color maps. This way you're not distracting yourself with a million other pieces of information. Compare the following examples:
What country is this?
Zambia
What country is this?
Zambia
The second type of card does require more effort to make, but fortunately you can almost always piggyback off of the work of others.
With the "Name + Blank map -> Region" card, make sure you include a blank map. It becomes a little too abstract when you're prompting yourself with only words.
Islands and little countries
Sometimes, shape alone will not be identifiable enough. That's the risk when you're at a particularly dense region of the map (looking at you Eastern Europe) or when you're dealing with islands (looking at you Caribbean and Oceania).
First, if you can blow up the map, do so (provided you know where in the world the map is).
When you look for blown-up maps, try to avoid isolated maps. You still care what's going with the neighboring areas.
Second, with islands, instead of focusing on the shape, focus on relative positions. This is a general piece of advice: the shape of a country really doesn't matter all too much (beyond deciding the total area of a country); it's who is on the other side of the border that makes the country. And the best way to emphasize this relative positioning is to come up with constellations (see subsequent section on "Cities, towns, peaks, and landmarks").
Also try to avoid maps like the following. When you're looking at a real globe, you're never going to have these lines so cleanly delineated.
Foreign names
One difficulty, especially when you're learning the provinces of a country whose language you don't speak is that the names will be hard to keep apart. I'm thinking of China's Shǎnxī, Shānxī, and Shāndōng, or its Húnán, Húběi, Hénán, Héběi, and Hǎinán.
One solution, obviously, is to learn the language, but that costs a lot of time. Better to learn the bare minimum. If you know that "nán" means south, "běi" means north, "xī" means east, and "dōng" means west, it starts to get easier.
Whenever you can, use a mnemonic association to form something more memorable: "hey, nun" and "hey, bae" are much easier to keep apart than "Hénán," and "Héběi."
Points
Capital cities
With capital cities, you'll again need only two kinds of cards:
Region + Name -> Capital
Capital + Blank map -> Region + Name
You will always want to include some picture of the region. Including a visual is not just going to ground you back in reality (you think about where a city is instead of the letters its name consists of), but it'll be vastly easier to memorize (use that full hippocampus).
You'll also want to avoid pictures of the region that don't include the particular location of the capital. It's relevant to know where a capital is.
Cities, towns, peaks, and landmarks
Cities, towns, similar landmarks are hard to learn because they have no identifiable features in and of themselves. They're usually just dots on a map.
To learn these, you'll have to invent identifiable features. And the best way I've found to do that is to take inspiration from the stars: group cities into constellations because constellations are much easier to place on a 2d map than individual points.
Even simpler: group cities into triangles, the simplest 2d shape. If you tile the area you're learning with enough of these triangles, you'll have an easier time not only placing the vertices but also figuring out relative positions.
Let me give you an example. In May, I'm planning to move to the Bay. Nerd that I am, I've decided to absorb the local geography long before we step on a plane.3
What I'll do to remember the triangles is to create a little story for each one. Take San Francisco—Oakland—San Jose. San Francisco becomes pope Francis, Oakland, an oak tree, and San Jose, well, a bevy of "hoes." The visual I paint in my mind might go something like this: Pope Francis is cruising in his pope mobile convertible with two hoes in the backseat when he swerves off-road and crashes into an oak tree, killing all three...
...It shouldn't be tasteful, it should be memorable.
One more? Okay, a pole-vaulter jumps over half a dozen scantily-clad men only to fall off the mountain precipice she had failed to see.
Lines
Road numbers
First of all, we need a way to turn road numbers into something more tangible. Roads turn out to be a perfect usecase for the Major system (a way to convert digits into sounds, thereby numbers into words).
I've already written about it before:
Roads, rivers, and transit
Roads are easier than cities in that they have more of a shape to go off of. But they're harder because they wind on and on.
The first trick is to break the roads into chunks and to use a variation of the constellations technique.
Example: San Mateo to Hayward via highway 92
With the Major system, 92 might become "Pan." To join them together, I might imagine a pirate yelling at some unfortunate guy with a "hey, matey, walk the plank," while brandishing a threatening-looking pan in his one remaining hand. For this to work, you'll first want to learn the destinations before learning the roads.
Another trick is to focus on intersections.
Example: Intersection of I-580 & I-680 in Dublin
This becomes two chefs (680) grinding a leprechaun (Dublin) into three meatloaves (580). Sorry Irish readers.
A final trick is to look at groupings of parallel roads.
Example: I-280, highway 101, I-880, and I-680
These all span from northwest to southeast (in order from east-most to west-most). I might turn these highways into, respectively, knives, taste, thieves, and chefs. Visualize a knife chopping a tongue in half. The camera pans out, and we see the tongue in question was trying to get a taste of a delectable-looking pastry. Zooming out again, we see the tongue belonged to a stereotypical thief in black-and-white stripes, who was planning to steal the pastry. A final pan, and we glimpse the satisfied looking chef who defended his pastry with an act of smug violence.
Summary
Done right, memorizing is anything but boring. On the contrary, it can be an exercise in creativity. You're fighting a war against your monkey brain; you know that it will do anything it can to slack off and forget, so you offer it the richest images you can come up with: pictures and stories it won't ever forget.
When you play this game, you should wary that you don't go too far. That it doesn't become an abstract exercise in reciting these images, but you constantly ground them back in reality.
I recommend to introduce only a few new cards a day, and, whenever you encounter a new card, to browse its Wikipedia page for a minute. You'll often find a few interesting tidbits that give the place a little more life. Because, ultimately, you're trying master geography so you have a better understanding of the real people living in a real place.
Footnotes
Footnotes
A brain region preferentially involved in spatial navigation. ↩
I wonder whether our reliance on Google maps may actually be making us stupider. It sounds a little too conspiratorial though. ↩
Is this excessive? Probably. Intolerably snobby? Definitely. Still, will it save me time on the long run?... Maybe, I'm not actually sure. ↩
