The article, written by his friend under the pseudonym Aadil Pickle on a site called Alexandria, includes a photo of Riley holding open a book to a page titled “Wouldn’t It Be Funny If.” Riley owns four copies of this book. Gave one to Aadil when Aadil complained about his own creative process. The book is called The Motern Method.

So of course I bought it.

It arrived, sat on my nightstand for a week, then I read it in one sitting.

Farley is an interesting cat. He's a songwriter (?) from Danvers, Massachusetts who has released over 26,000 songs. He's made over a dozen feature-length films. He writes books. Few of them hits by any traditional measure. Yet he makes roughly $200,000 a year doing this.

I can’t help but make the comparison, he’s the blue-collar Rick Rubin. Both books read like the Tao Te Ching, collections of aphorisms about the creative life delivered in their own voice. Farley self-published (of course) The Motern Method in three months, because why not?

The writing is simple. Short chapters, short sentences. Every phrase lands like a proverb you already knew but hadn’t yet said out loud. The kind that sting a bit because the reason you haven’t done the thing isn’t that you lacked information, it’s that you lacked nerve.

I wish more people would do this.

The discovery chain for this book is itself a demonstration of the method. A friend sends a link. That link leads to an interesting person. That person found another interesting person who wrote a book about his process. You read it in an evening. Organic discovery, all the way down.

An absolute blast. Funny, honest, and creative. Highly recommend.

Follow the rabbit hole

Vitals: The Motern Method by Matt Farley. Self-published, 2021. 136 pages.

The Rabbit Hole: Riley Walz (Alexandria) | Matt Farley (Archive)

Pairs Well With: Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile

Highlights

12 passages I dog-eared.

Tell Everyone

Tell everyone about the plan for project.

It’s more creative and interesting than small talk. And it’s a great motivator.

Because now you have to complete the project.

Otherwise, all those people will think you’re a failure.

This might not be true. In fact, those people probably don’t care whether or not you finish your project. But you care. You will feel like a failure each time you see them.

At your darkest moments, when you’re ready to quit, you can imagine all those people scoffing at you. Imagine them thinking you’re a failure.

Imagine them being disappointed in you.

Imagine them rolling their eyes next time you tell them about an idea.

Then get back to work.

Say Yes to your ideas

If you come up with an idea for a project, then you should treat that idea with the respect it deserves by following through on it.

Your idea might be simple. Your idea might be brilliant. It could be very serious. It could be very silly. It could be something that inspires you to work. It could be something that you don’t really want to do.

In all cases, you gotta do it. No matter what.

Why?

Because your brain will get mad if you don’t listen to its ideas. Your brain will think, “If my ideas aren’t being listened to, then I’ll stop coming up with ideas!”

That’s why you have to do it even if you think it’s a bad idea. Your brain won’t offer the next good idea until you’ve seen the bad idea to fruition.

Friends and Family

Friends and family will not react to your work in a way that makes you feel good.

Presenting your work to them is an excruciating experience.

You’ll watch needily as they take in what you’ve created. You’ll interpret their facial expressions, their breathing patterns, etc., looking for a sign that they like it or don’t like it. You’ll watch with exasperation as they get distracted and stop paying attention to what you’ve created. And then they’ll say something nice, which you will interpret for the next several weeks. Was there a subtle insult mixed in with that compliment? Did they mean it? They might compliment the el current work by mentioning that it’s better than your previous work. Of course, that’ll only make you defensive about your previous work. It can get really uncomfortable.

None of this is their fault.

It’s your fault.

They don’t know the proper way to react to art made by someone they know. Nobody does. It’s an inherently uncomfortable thing. They’re used to taking in art that is made by someone they would never dream of meeting. Or they simply never really think about how art is made. It’s just something they take in without much analysis.

Now you’re coming to them with a work of art, and a huge amount of desperation.

It’s awful for your friends or family to be put ine that situation.

You are like a child showing a drawing to a od parent.

Only that child is much better at accepting from insincere praise, then moving on to the next project.

Self Promotion Self promotion is ugly.

Self promotion is stinky.

That’s why world-famous artists hire other people to do it for them.

You are not a world-famous artist. You can’t afford to hire someone to tell the world about how great you are. You need to do it yourself.

Even if you could afford to pay someone else to do it, is it really right to do that? These hot-shot artists act cool and humble, all the while they are paying another person to promote them and their work. Is that cool? Is that humble?

Musicians have billboards with their names and faces on them. If you ask them, they say that the record company did it. But that musician didn’t have to sign with the record company. When they signed, they knew that the record company would use every ugly, stinky, shameless method to promote them. You don’t want to play that game.

You can do the dirty work yourself.

It’s much more honest.

So when you’re feeling reluctant to promote your work, just remember that all your favorite famous artists are doing way more to promote themselves, and with fewer scruples. They appear in commercials for credit cards. They write songs for insurance companies. They do private concerts for evil dictators.

You wouldn’t do any of those things.

But you can promote yourself. You can send out press releases about your work. You can run an advertisement for journalists, asking them to write articles about you.

your work. You can contact It doesn’t have to be all business. Your selfpromotion can incorporate your own personal 201 51 taste and style so that it feels a little less ugly, a little less stinky.

Ideally, you wouldn’t have to promote your work.

You could just release it, and then collect a fair wage from sales.

Until then, it’s ok to be scrappy and shameless.

Craft, Then Art

You usually need to practice your craft a long time before you can create art.

This is not always the case.

But, generally, if you want to write songs, it’s best to be proficient with a musical instrument. If you want to paint a masterpiece, it helps if you’ve learned how to work with paint. Etc. Etc.

It’s also helpful to study the art. If you want to make movies, it helps to watch lots of movies. If you want to write a novel, you should read lots of novels.

Do all of this with purpose.

You aren’t learning an instrument just because.

You are learning it because it is a step in the noble process of eventually creating something great.

You aren’t just watching a bunch of movies. You are actively studying the art of filmmaking.

Keep Your Day Job

It feels wrong that you need to work a day job.

After all, you are filled with creative energy.

There’s so much you could accomplish if your days were free.

But don’t quit your day job!

You don’t want to be a starving artist.

There’s no pride in only working on your art if your art isn’t earning you any money.

Sleeping on couches? That sounds so romantic.

But who paid for the couch? Someone who works a day job. And that person feels great resentment toward you if you use their couch for more than a couple nights. It’s not right. It’s not fair.

If you’re always looking for a place to sleep each e night, maybe that means you’re not really using all your time to work on your art.

Exercise

Arts and athletics don’t often get lumped into the same category.

But they should be!

Athletics of any kind are great for creativity.

Creativity is frequently a sit-down kind of activity. Sitting down all the time is not good for you in many ways. For the purposes of our book, sitting down is bad because it limits your opportunities for inspiration.

You can force the inspiration by sitting down and thinking really hard. Seriously. This can work.

And you should employ that method sometimes.

But another method is to let the inspiration come to you while you’re doing something else. Exercise is a very good way to make that happen.

Fund Your Own Projects

There’s something not quite right about asking people to pay for the creation of your project.

This goes for movie directors who are given tons of money by a studio to make a movie. This goes for musicians and writers who accept advances from corporations.

It also goes for you when you start a funding campaign to pay for the creation of your artwork.

There’s just something underhanded about it.

You want the joy of creation without the pain of paying for it.

It’s one thing if you get to the point where your fans are willfully donating to the cause because they appreciate your work and they want to help you make more. Are your funders doing it for that reason, or just because they feel bullied into donating? If most of the funding is coming from friends and family, then odds are they feel bullied. You’re like a niece or nephew who shows up with a bunch of cookies that your aunt and uncle feel obliged to purchase for a school fundraiser.

But you’re not a cute niece or nephew. You’re old enough to fund your own project.

How devoted to this project are you?

If you’re truly devoted, then you need to be the one who works hard to make it happen. That means making sacrifices. That means aggressively saving money. It should hurt.

If you’re asking someone else to pay for it, then it just feels like you don’t really care that much.

There’s a certain laziness to that approach which will trickle down through the entire project. If it’s someone else’s money on the line, then you won’t be as committed to the project as you would if it were your money.

Vicariously Tap Into Universal Feelings

Feeling uninspired?

Engage with someone else’s art until something about it inspires you.

As soon as that inspiration comes, get to work on your own art.

For example, you could watch a sad movie. If it fills you with emotions, immediately start writing a song that expresses those emotions. You can even write the song from the point of view of a character in the movie.

bit. But No matter how interesting your life is, you might run out of direct experience to write about. That’s when you use your imagination to insert yourself into other works of art, and create something out of that.

The most important thing to remember is that you’re not just being entertained. You’re actively engaging with a work of art. You’re taking notes.

This isn’t cheating. Works of art have always inspired other works of art. Continue the tradition.

It doesn’t Need to End Up Like You Thought It Would

You wanted to make something funny, but it turned out sad.

You wanted to make something inspiring, but it turned out comical.

You wanted to make something funny, but it i turned out scary.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Your audience will come to it with no expectations. They’ll enjoy it (or not) for what it is, not for what you intended it to be.

Projects can evolve over the course of their creation. You can fight it if you want. But it’s probably easier to just follow the direction that the project is naturally going in. Go with it. Be surprised by your own creation as it reveals itself to you.

**Note:** The importance of embracing emergence

Self Promotion vs. Organic Discovery

Self promotion works. It’s worth the effort.

Organic discovery works much better. It’s much less effort.

Self promotion means you are trying to convince someone to explore your work.

Organic discovery means someone just finds your work on their own.

played along for If you tell someone they need to check out your work, it suddenly becomes a chore to them. If they just find it on their own, it becomes a treasure that they went searching for. They’re proud to have discovered it, and therefore more likely to enjoy it.

ing unconventionally to be So what does that mean for you? Should you not bother with promotion?

No. You should still promote your work. It really works sometimes.

But you can also view your output as a self promotion tool. If you create a lot of stuff, then that means there’s more stuff out there for people to discover. Once they’ve discovered it, they might be tempted to explore more of your work.

And since you created a lot of stuff, there’s a lot of your work for them to discover.

The Burger Test

You’re at a table with a friend. He says I want a quality cheeseburger. You say I got you.

You could serve him two wildly different things and be correct about your interpretation of quality both times.

Burger one. Wagyu beef, freshly ground to order. House brioche bun. Aged cheddar that costs more per ounce than the beef. Secret sauce whisked by a chef with Michelin stars on the wall. Grilled over binchotan, the good charcoal, the Japanese stuff. This burger costs forty dollars and it earns every penny. Everything is considered. This is a quality cheeseburger.

Burger two. Double-Double animal style. Three bucks and change. Made in ninety seconds by a flush faced-kid in a paper hat following a system so precise that the burger you get in San Diego is the same burger you get in Tucson is the same burger you get at the one near LAX at midnight. This is also a quality cheeseburger.

Both are quality. They are not the same thing. They are not achieving remotely comparable outcomes. And yet the word “quality” applies to both of them without hesitation.

That gap, the space between two completely valid uses of the same word, is where most conversations about quality fall apart. We don’t have a quality problem. We have a quality literacy problem. Nobody talks about this.

You Know It When You See It

We use “quality” the way Justice Potter Stewart used “obscenity.” You know it when you see it.

He wasn’t wrong. We do know it when we see it. I believe sensing quality is one of the most powerful intuitions humans have. You walk into a room and you feel it. You pick up a tool and you know by the heft in your hand. You take a bite and it’s either there or it isn’t.

Pirsig wrote an entire novel chasing quality in 1974. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is great precisely because the question he tackles is so slippery. What is quality? Where does it live? Is it in the object or the observer?

But here’s where I think Pirsig left an opening. The reason quality is so hard to define isn’t because it’s mysterious (it is, a little, but that’s not the main issue). It’s because quality isn’t one thing. It’s one word doing far too much lifting. And until you learn to calibrate on the meaning, you will continually run into mismatched perceptions, conversations that feel like agreement but aren’t, decisions that feel right but ultimately miss the mark. We default to “I know it when I see it” as if that’s good enough.

It’s not.

The Vector Matrix

Here’s my take. Quality has spatial orientation. It moves around a vector matrix. And the coordinates are determined by constraints.

There are at least four dimensions that set coordinates: cost, time, skill, and scale. Every quality evaluation lives somewhere in the space these create. Change the constraints, you change what quality means.

The wagyu burger is high cost, high time, high skill, low scale. The constraint set is essentially wide open, full throttle. Quality on this vector means pushing every variable to its highest expression. Best beef. Best bun. Best cheese. Best fire. The sky is the limit.

The Double-Double is low cost, low time, moderate skill, extreme scale. The constraint set is borderline oppressive. And quality on this vector means something completely different. It means a system so refined, so intentional, so lean that the output is remarkable because of the constraints. Not despite them. This is where consumer surplus lives.

This is not just a food thing. The sonnet is constraint optimization. Fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, specific rhyme scheme, and within that box Shakespeare communicated more about love and death than most writers manage with unlimited pages. Haiku. A three chord punk song. A Leica M.

Craft maximization is a different game entirely. A cathedral fresco. A Patek Philippe. Jiro’s Omakase. A Christopher Alexander building where every room feels like it couldn’t have been anything else. This is quality too. Obviously. But the coordinates are different. The constraints are different. The evaluation criteria are different.

Neither aim is necessarily superior. They are simply optimized under differing constraints.

The Game

Enter James P. Carse. Finite and Infinite Games, 1986. One of the books that permanently reoriented my perspective.

A finite game is played to win. An infinite game is played to keep playing.

The brands and the systems that sustain quality over decades are all playing infinite games. In-N-Out has been playing the same infinite game for seventy-five years. Same menu. Same quality. Same constraints, honored religiously (literally). They’re not trying to beat Five Guys. They’re not optimizing for quarterly earnings. They’re playing a game that doesn’t have a finish line.

You know when quality dies? When someone switches the game. When a private equity firm buys a brand that was playing an infinite game and converts it to a finite one. Hit the margin. Cut the cost. Juice the top line. That’s what happened to J.Crew. To Brooks Brothers. To Quiksilver and Billabong, two of the most iconic surf brands ever built, both bankrupted, merged, sold to a brand holding company, and as of last year, liquidating their remaining stores. The constraint set didn’t change. The game changed. And quality collapsed along with the viability of the business.

I want to be very clear about something because this distinction matters a lot. Cost cutting by degrading quality is not constraint optimization. They look similar from the outside. They could not be more different. Constraint optimization is intentionally choosing a vector and producing the best possible output within those constraints. Cost cutting is removing the constraints that were producing the quality in order to extract short-term margin. One is an infinite game. The other is a finite game.

Calibration

So here’s the move. Before you can evaluate a product, a company, a meal, a decision, a life… you calibrate.

What vector are we on? What are we optimizing for? What are the constraints? Cost, time, skill, scale… where are we? What game is being played, finite or infinite?

Skip this step and you end up in conversations that can’t go anywhere. Two people saying “quality” in the same sentence, meaning completely different things, talking past each other with total confidence. They usually are.

Answer these questions and everything sharpens. You develop vocabulary. You develop precision. You develop the ability to calibrate. To articulate what is happening instead of just feeling it.

That’s quality literacy. The ability to perceive, articulate, and evaluate quality with precision across any domain.

The Skill

Quality literacy is a skill. Not a gift. Not an innate talent that some people have and others don’t. A skill.

People sometimes call this “taste” and they’re not entirely wrong, but taste stops short.

Kanye said this in 2013 and it stuck with me:

For me, first of all, dopeness is what I like the most. Dopeness. People who want to make things as dope as possible. And, by default, make money from it. The thing that I like the least are people who only want to make money from things whether they’re dope or not. And especially make money at making things as least dope as possible.

He sees it. He feels it. He can even identify the forces that degrade it. What he doesn’t have is a coordinate system. And without coordinates, “dope” is a closed door. The intuition is real, the signal is strong, but it can’t be transferred, can’t be taught, can’t be perpetuated.

Taste is the intuition. Quality literacy is the intuition plus the vocabulary to make it useful, to communicate it, to perpetuate it. Intuition alone is trapped inside the person who has it. It vanishes when they leave the room, and sometimes they can’t even recall or reconjure the feeling once the moment passes. Vocabulary makes it transferable and scalable. It lets you explain to someone else why this works and that doesn’t, in terms precise enough that they can start seeing it too. That’s how quality spreads. Not through vagaries or dopeness. Through shared language.

Training the Eye

David Bessis convinced me this is possible.

His book Mathematica (if you haven’t read it, I wrote about it here and had a lovely chat with him here) makes an argument that rewired how I think about talent. The conventional story about math is that some people are born with the gift and the rest of us aren’t. Bessis dismantles that. The “gifted” mathematicians aren’t a different species. They just started perceiving abstract concepts sooner and stuck with them longer. That perception compounds exponentially.

I believe quality works the same way. You expose yourself to the thing (the meal, the building, the system, the garment, the work of art, the sentence), you pay close enough attention to notice what’s actually happening, and then you force yourself to articulate why it works or doesn’t. The articulation is the workout. It’s what turns a vague feeling into a precise perception. Do it repeatedly over a long enough time frame and things that were once invisible become obvious. You start to recognize the patterns. Another one of those.

The Quality Trail

This path is well worn. Pirsig walked it. Deming walked it. Carse, Taleb, Munger, Alexander, Aristotle and many others. Each one saw the same phenomenon from a different angle and left markers for whoever came next. The Unified Theory of Quality is my marker.

The first part is quality literacy, the beginning of a shared language for something most people feel but few can articulate.

UToQ

This is Part One of what I’m calling the Unified Theory of Quality. UToQ.

There’s a lot more to say. How quality emerges. How it compounds. How it collapses. Why imitation might be the most underrated force in quality (and not for the reasons you’d expect). Why some things last five hundred years and others fade into obscurity.

Part Two: Systemic Quality. How the best build systems where quality is the forgone conclusion.

The Mettleist / UToQ Series

Hey,

I haven’t published anything here in over a year. Here’s what happened.

I stopped hitting publish because I needed to let something emerge. I’d been consuming voraciously for fifteen plus years, reading, listening, watching, connecting dots across disciplines, and all of it was pointing at something I could feel but couldn’t articulate. I once heard Andrew Bird describe hitting a point where he switched from ravenous consumer to creator. He said he’d been eating since he was a kid and one day realized he was full, and it was time to become the thing he’d been eating. That’s the closest anyone has come to describing what I was feeling.

I needed to stop adding to the knowledge graph and start producing something original from it. That took over a year of sitting with everything I’d accumulated, turning it over, letting the connections form on their own schedule instead of brute forcing them out of me.

What emerged is a framework I’m calling the Unified Theory of Quality. UToQ. Nine parts. The argument, in short: quality is not just some opaque property. It’s not a talent, not a gift, not something you either possess or you don’t. It’s a literacy. A skill you can train. And I think it might be one of the most useful skills nobody is teaching or talking about.

The first piece is called The Burger Test. It’s coming soon.

Oh, one last thing. This feels vulnerable, in a good way. Everything I published here before was curation. This is mine. My ideas, built on the shoulders of my intellectual heroes, but synthesized and aimed in a direction I haven’t seen anyone else aim them.

This is effectively my life’s work up to the age of thirty seven and I’m excited about working on it for at least thirty more. I want quality literacy to become a real thing. I want it to help steer things, even slightly, toward something better.

More soon.

Andrew

Gentlemen. Welcome to the 53rd edition of MNTS.

2024 LC 70 4.0L Hard Top 3 Door VXR

Legitimately depressed that this little fella isn’t available in the US and is basically impossible to import and drive in California. If anyone knows of a loop hole I’m very interested.

The Lydian Stone

High probability this is the only book I read in 2025 published in 2025. Very excited is an understatement.

Google Arts and Culture App

App I'm enjoying for increasing my exposure to art of all kinds. The Explore and Browse by Topic feature has been a major upgrade to my habitual scrolling and is a treasure trove of historic imagery.

A couple of artists I’m mesmerized by at the moment.

J.M.W. Turner - master of moon light

Canaletto - crisp perspective

Things Hidden

Documentary I’m watching. Raising twins provides a front-row seat to mimetic desire in action. Every five minutes, I witness Girard's theory play out in stereo – one child suddenly desperate for whatever toy (or parent) their sibling just engaged with. For the uninitiated, this documentary offers the most approachable introduction to Girard's work I've found. His framework didn't just help me understand my twins; it became a mirror for examining my own desires and their origins.

I published additional thoughts and highlights here.

Made In USA Print Directory

If you are into made in USA stuff this is an indispensable resource. Pairs well with the final nog latte of the season.

Ploughman’s Lunch

graciously featured my candid photography piece in his end of year round up. I’m genuinely flattered to be included in this group of writers and thinkers. Here’s to another year of courage and finesse.

Cow We Doin'

Ploughman's Lunch: End of the Year Edition

M.F.K Fisher wrote a lovely book titled How to Cook a Wolf. While she doesn’t give any instruction on how to actually cook a wolf, written in 1942, the book does contain several terrific essays on food and on eating during the shortages of World War II. Opining on “How to Be a Wise Man” — because, as the epigraph of the chapter states, “a wise man alway…

Read more

a year ago · 20 likes · 11 comments · Lou Tamposi

Notebooks

I start every year with a fresh notebook and these Monocle Leuchtturms with cloth covers are elite. So far, this duo has been my favorite note taking setup by a wide margin.

On media diet

Big mood this year.

“I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid,” …“and I find myself much the happier.”

- Thomas Jefferson

From my camera roll

That’s a wrap on 53.

Happy New Year!

Until next time — Vividus Invictus1

AP

Commentary

I can't lie - this documentary had me heavy-lidded, transported straight back to fourth period, creaking AV cart stalled front and center, overhead fluorescents extinguished so a dim flood of blue could sedate the angsty class.

That said, this documentary is worth fighting through. Girard is the rare individual who rode the line between the intellectual and divine. His revelations regarding mimetic desire and scapegoating are blinding simplistic in hindsight, yet remain deeply profound. Once seen, they cannot be unseen.

The documentary sparked an unexpected contemplation: the interplay between agency and mimesis. When should we exercise our individual will, and when might we better serve ourselves - and the collective - by embracing the mimetic current? Mimesis often gets maligned when viewed through an individualistic lens, but its value to the collective survival feels increasingly apparent.

And speaking of intellectual resonance - because I’m currently re-reading Taleb's Incerto, I can't help but notice how his ideas might derive their power precisely from their anti-mimetic nature. This is speculation, mind you, but the revelation is too interesting to ignore. Another parallel is in Antifragile, Taleb warns us about the systemic dangers of inadvertently creating single points of failure. Then there's this eerie quote from Girard:

"When the world becomes globalized with mimetic desire, one match can set the whole thing on fire."

Grab your favorite caffeinated beverage and hunker down. The payoff is immense.

Highlights

So what Cervantes wants to show us  there is a character who is carried away by his dream, but his dream is not really his own.  His dream is borrowed from the books he’s read.

Aristotle famously said in the Poetica that  man is the most imitative of animals. We   imitate one another in behavior and  especially in our desires. We don't know what to desire. We need models.  And so we imitate good models and bad models. But between the subject and the  object of desire, there's a third party, a third entity, and that's the other: parents,  peers, society, media, the social other.

I started not only there to talk about mimetic  desire, but to say there are different types   of mimetic desire. If your model does not  exist, or if he is far enough from you, you preserve a certain independence. Don  Quixote is a happy man because he has no rival,   because the knights errant he imitates, he's never  going to encounter them in the field pursuing the  

same goal he's pursuing himself. Now, if you look  at many characters in the 19th century, they have   real models, live models. They see a gentleman  who has more money, more prestige, who's a little   bit older than himself. And they imitate him. And  they are going to fall in love with the same girl. If your model is your school friend, your  neighbor, you get into a world of dreadful  

competition, rivalry, envy, jealousy and so forth.  These bad sentiments are the same finally on both   sides, because as the model is imitated, he  starts imitating his own imitator. Therefore,   you have a vicious circle of imitation that  gets worse and worse between model and rival. Which is in a way typical of the world of  politics, even the world of scholarship,

much of my theory of human relations is  already there. What is hinted behind it   is a history of the Western world as more and  more competition, as less and less distance   between models and their imitators.

And  we feel we are constantly moving toward  more happiness as we become more equal. But in  fact, we're always moving towards more rivalry. And this history at the same time  is the history of what happens to   the Christian world, which becomes  less and less Christian with time,   which is a history of modern individualism,  which is a rebellion against religion.

my true conversion, had occurred  before my great Lenten scare. If it had occurred afterwards, I would never have  truly believed. My natural skepticism would have   convinced me that my faith was a result of the  scare I had received. God had called me to order   with a jot of humor that deep down was just what  my mediocre case deserved. I am convinced that   God sends human beings a lot of signs that have  no objective existence whatsoever for the wise  

and learned. The ones those signs don't concern  regard them as imaginary. But those for whom they   are intended, they can't be mistaken, because  they are living the experience from within

‘The title of hero of a novel must be reserved  for the character who triumphs over metaphysical   desire in a tragic conclusion, and thus becomes  capable of writing the novel. Therefore,   every conclusion is always a memory. It  is the eruption of a memory which is more   true than the perception itself. Every  novelistic conclusion is a beginning.’

And René Girard was able  to show how from the theory of mimetic desire you   can generate a theory of the origin of the sacred.  Human culture is fundamentally sacrificial.

So there we have a situation which is suddenly  one of peace, and the community rejoices. The   community is free from that crisis.  But that freedom is not going to last,   and very quickly mimetic rivalry will come  back. So then these people will remember that   a victim saved them. Therefore, they are  going to try to do it again, period. They  

are going to deliberately choose other victims  and kill them collectively in the hope that it   will reconcile them another time. And it does.  And this is the invention of ritual sacrifice. Robertson Smith, he says, tells us about  sacrifice, but he doesn't tell us anything   about sacrifice. Why are people doing it?  What is it about? And his analysis of it,  

which is that we need to do some kind  of violence in order to control our   own violence, so that we get a scapegoat and  we project our violences, and that heals us. The society is responsible for it,  the group is responsible for it,   was disrupted first and reconciled by the victim,  but it's going to project the whole trajectory of   events on that victim, saying, ‘That victim  tells us to do again what reconciled us.’

The scapegoating   is effective only if it is unconscious. If  you cannot call it scapegoating, but call it   justice.

One must  work towards success, but without illusions,   adding to the pure pleasure of working just enough  of an external goal to make the work more ardent.

The fundamentalist interpretation of  the apocalypse is just God destroying   the world. Of course, the atheists also think  of God as fundamentally violent. And Girard   would have said that the atheists and the  fundamentalists make the same mistake of   projecting human violence onto God. And so  the apocalypse is just nuclear weapons. It   is just runaway technology with humans to have  nothing but their death instincts to guide them. If there are people on Mars who are watching  us, they must be wondering why even though we have scriptures that talk about the destruction of  man by himself we pay absolutely no attention to   it now.

as René  said, when the world becomes globalized with mimetic desire, one match  can set the whole thing on fire.

Gentlemen. Welcome to the 52nd edition of MNTS.

For the inaugural “Shop Talk” podcast, I sat down with David Bessis, author of Mathematica -A secret world of intuition and curiosity. This marks the first of what I hope will be many deep dives with interesting people doing interesting things. Let me know what you think.

Donald D Hoffman on Consciousness

If you are interested in going down the consciousness rabbit hole Bessis and I briefly touch on, this episode is wild. I’ve added Hoffman’s book to my reading list after listening to this and his personal site is worth exploring. h/t to for the recommendation.

Australia’s Post Punk Renaissance

post-punk is less a genre than a space of possibility. “What unites all this activity,” Simon Reynolds suggests in his book Rip it Up and Start Again, “is a set of open-ended imperatives: innovation; wilful oddness; the wilful jettisoning of all things precedented or ‘rock’n’roll.”

I don’t know exactly what is going on in AUS. right now but there are a bunch of really impressive, young, post punk bands emerging. It feels like something special is brewing and it’s worth keeping a pulse on. I’m up to my eyeballs in the movement at the moment and pretty bummed this scene is happening 8,000 miles from California. It’s positively electric.

A few bands worth exploring - Radio Free Alice, The Belair Lip Bombs, Girl and Girl, Sex Mask, DUST, Gut Health, Armlock - incredible band names for what it’s worth.

Unabashedly Cyber Punk

is back at it again with his LOOK BOOK NO. 07. His latest work reads like a storyboard for a delightfully unhinged William Gibson adaptation we desperately need. Hollywood, take note: your Neuromancer costume designer is already doing the work.

On Gratitude

In an age of digital ephemera, there's something defiantly human about putting pen to paper to express appreciation. After searching fruitlessly for thank you notes that carried the quality and authentic sentiment I was after, I designed and printed my own. They're available here if you, too, believe in the power of analog appreciation.

The Marls

American Trench makes great socks. I own an absurd amount of them already but have (irrationally) added their latest offering to the collection.

Wooden Choir Ensemble

I imagine this wooden choral ensemble performing Christmas carols from your shelf to be bizarrely charming.

Butter Knife

If you’ve been around a while you know I take my butter consumption rather seriously. A purpose-built tool for applying the noblest of toppings just feels right. The branding and aesthetic from Allday Goods is also spot on. Fun stuff.

On Randomness

Start stressing personal elegance at your next misfortune. … The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior. Good luck.

- N.N. Taleb

For more on this see my latest Book Notes:

From my camera roll

That’s a wrap on 52.

Until next time, gents — Vividus Invictus1

AP

Start stressing personal elegance at your next misfortune. … The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior. Good luck.

Commentary

I came to Taleb's work backwards, stumbling into Skin in the Game in late 2019. It felt like walking into an intellectual salon with the heavy weights of history realizing I'd been shadowboxing my whole life. It's the kind of writing that turns you upside down shaking the lint from your pockets - after which I found it impossible to go back to my previous reality. Reading the fifth book of the Incerto first was like first stumbling into the final scene of The Matrix, watching Neo bend reality without understanding how he first learned to see through the illusion.

That experience sent me back to the beginning, and now, almost five years to the day, I'm embarking on a mission to re-read the Incerto, in order this time1: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game. My second reading of Fooled by Randomness hit differently. What once felt like intellectual mountaineering - concepts and characters floating just beyond my grasp - now feels like revisiting a wise but cantankerous mentor who delights in demolishing everything you thought you knew about probability, success, and the treacherous nature of randomness in our lives.

Reading Taleb is like learning a new language - one that helps you decode the complex grammar of reality. Fooled by Randomness isn't just his opening statement, it's a foundational perspective on reality - the one that opens the other four doors of the Incerto. Once you grasp the principles in Fooled by Randomness, you can't help but see the world differently. And maybe that's the point: not to make us more certain, but to help us become more comfortable being uncomfortable. As Taleb writes, "Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance."

What I’m stealing

On Survival and Randomness

The core of Taleb's wisdom lies in his understanding of how randomness can either destroy or empower us. These are the principles I find myself returning to daily:

• Frequency of success is irrelevant if a single failure is too costly to survive

• Things that come with the help of luck can be taken away by luck rapidly and unexpectedly

• Things that come with little help from luck are more resistant to randomness

• No rare event should harm me. In fact, I would like all conceivable rare events to help me

• Take the best of what the past can give you without its dangers. Use statistics and inductive methods to make aggressive bets, but do not use them to manage risks and exposure

On Intellectual Rigor and Modern Myths

Beneath Taleb's arrogant wit lies a deep commitment to clear thinking. His most powerful insights about knowledge and uncertainty have become my intellectual compass:

• Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate, rather than to compute

• A random series will always present some detectable pattern. Beware of fitting the data

• Due entirely to luck/randomness - A counterintuitive point is that a population composed of only bad managers will produce a small amount of them with great track records

• Beware conflating the absence of evidence for evidence of absence

• It is not the estimate or the forecast that matters so much as the degree of confidence of the opinion

On the Path to Excellence

Here lie the practical insights about achievement and recognition that challenge conventional wisdom:

• There are routes to success that are nonrandom, but few, very few, people have the mental stamina to follow them. Those who go the extra mile are rewarded. Most people give up before the rewards

• Whenever I hear "work ethic" interpret as inefficient mediocrity

• Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they win or lose

• The nonlinear effect behind success in anything: It is better to have a handful of enthusiastic advocates than hordes of people who appreciate your work. Better to be loved by a dozen than liked by the masses.

On Cultural and Personal Wisdom

Finally, these are the broader philosophical insights that have shaped my worldview beyond mere probability and risk:

• Embrace a natural interest in a variety of intellectual subjects

• Age is beauty, the new and the young are generally toxic

• Nothing can be more bland than translated poetry

• We do not need to be rational and scientific when it comes to the details of our daily life‚ only in those that can harm us and threaten our survival

• Art is a tool for the investigation of Truth

• We are mere animals in need of lower forms of tricks

Supplemental Resources

fooledbyrandomness.com

Dog ears, highlights, marginalia

I got sucked into the implications of the difference between Montaigne and Descartes‚ and how we strayed by following the latters quest for certitudes. We surely closed our minds by following Descartes‚ model of formal thinking rather than Montaigne, brand of vague and informal (but critical) judgment.


Hard work, showing up on time, wearing a clean (preferably white) shirt, using deodorant, and some such conventional things contribute to success they are certainly necessary but may be insufficient as they do not cause success. The same applies to the conventional values of persistence, doggedness and perseverance: necessary, very necessary.


Black swans, those rare and unexpected deviations, can be both good and bad events.


few claim that art is a tool of investigation of the Truth‚ rather than an attempt to escape it or make it more palatable.


Probability theory is a young arrival in mathematics; probability applied to practice is almost nonexistent as a discipline.


My colleague Bob Jaeger (he followed the opposite course of mine of moving from philosophy professor to trader) presents a more potent view of the dichotomy: There are those who think that there are easy clear-cut answers and those who dont‚ think that simplification is possible without severe distortion (his hero: Wittgenstein; his villain: Descartes). I am enamored of the difference as I think that the generator of the Fooled by Randomness problem, the false belief in determinism, is also associated with such reduction of the dimensionality of things. As much as you believe in the ‚keep-it-simple-stupid‚ it is the simplification that is dangerous.


(his hero: Wittgenstein; his villain: Descartes).


Things that which came with the help of luck could be taken away by luck (and often rapidly and unexpectedly at that). The flipside, which deserves to be considered as well (in fact it is even more of our concern), is that things that come with little help from luck are more resistant to randomness.


it does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.


what the French call a coup de foudre, a sudden intense (and obsessive) infatuation that strikes like lightning.


Note that such use of mathematics is only illustrative, aiming at getting the intuition of the point, and should not be interpreted as an engineering issue. In other words, one need not actually compute the alternative histories so much as assess their attributes. Mathematics is not just a numbers game it is a way of thinking. We will see that probability is a qualitative subject.


one does not observe the barrel of reality.


The interesting thing about these physicists did not lie in their ability to discuss fluid dynamics; it is that they were naturally interested in a variety of intellectual subjects and provided pleasant conversation.


Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.


As a derivatives trader I noticed that people do not like to insure against something abstract; the risk that merits their attention is always something vivid.


Much of what rational thinking seems to do is rationalize ones actions by fitting some logic to them.


the mental probabilistic map in one’s mind is so geared toward the sensational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news.


volatility seems to be determined not by the actual moves but by the tone of the media. The market movements in the eighteen months after September 11, 2001, were far smaller than the ones that we faced in the eighteen months prior‚ but somehow in the mind of investors they were very volatile. The discussions in the media of the terrorist threats, magnified the effect of these market moves in people’s heads. This is one of the many reasons that journalism may be the greatest plague we face today the world becomes more and more complicated and our minds are trained for more and more simplification.


Any reading of the history of science would show that almost all the smart things that have been proven by science appeared like lunacies at the time they were first discovered.


Age is beauty, almost always, and the new and the young are generally toxic.


The American public was recently exposed to one of these characters with the Unabomber, the bearded and recluse mathematician who lived in a hut and took to murdering people who promoted modern technology. No journalist was capable of even coming close to describing the subject matter of his thesis, Complex Boundaries,as it has no intelligible equivalent complex number being an entirely abstract and imaginary number that includes the square root of minus one, an object that has no analog outside of the world of mathematics.


The Monte Carlo man‚ realism without the shallowness, combined with the mathematician‚ intuitions without the excessive abstraction. For indeed this branch of mathematics is of immense practical use, does not present the same dryness commonly associated with mathematics. I became addicted to it the minute I became a trader. It shaped my thinking in most matters related to randomness.


Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate, rather than to compute.


For instance, someone with no formal knowledge of geometry can compute the mysterious, almost mystical Pi. How? By drawing a circle inside of a square, and shooting random bullets into the picture (as in an arcade), specifying equal probabilities of hitting any point on the map (something called a uniform distribution). The ratio of bullets inside the circle divided by those inside and outside the circle will deliver a multiple of the mystical Pi, with possibly infinite precision. Clearly, this is not an efficient use of a computer as Pi can be computed analytically, that is, in a mathematical form, but the method can give some users more intuition about the subject matter than lines of equations. Some people’s brains and intuitions are oriented in such a way that they are more capable of getting a point in such a manner (I count myself one of those). The computer might not be natural to our human brain; neither is mathematics.


a mathematician would be interested in improving mathematics (via theorems and proofs). I proved incapable of concentrating on deciphering a single equation unless I was motivated by a real problem (with a modicum of greed); thus most of what I know comes from derivatives trading options pushed me to study the math of probability. Many compulsive gamblers, who otherwise would be of middling intelligence, acquire remarkable card-counting skills thanks to their passionate greed.


The two greatest minds to me, Einstein and Keynes,


As for Keynes, to the literate person he is not the political economist that tweed-clad leftists love to quote, but the author of the magisterial, introspective, and potent Treatise on Probability. For before his venturing into the murky field of political economy, Keynes was a probabilist.


I never considered myself better than an unenthusiastic equation solver and was rarely capable of prowess in the matter‚ being better at setting up equations than solving them. Suddenly, my engine allowed me to solve with minimal effort the most intractable of equations. Few solutions became out of reach.

**Note:** This is how i feel about LLMs


I have two ways of learning from history: from the past, by reading the elders; and from the future, thanks to my Monte Carlo toy.


Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but, rather, to get out of trouble rapidly and have progeny. If they were made for us to understand things, then we would have a machine in it that would run the past history as in a VCR, with a correct chronology, and it would slow us down so much that we would have trouble operating.


There are instances where I like to be fooled by randomness. My allergy to nonsense and verbiage dissipates when it comes to art and poetry. On the one hand, I try to define myself and behave officially as a no-nonsense hyperrealist ferreting out the role of chance; on the other, I have no qualms indulging in all manner of personal superstitions. Where do I draw the line? The answer is aesthetics. Some aesthetic forms appeal to something in our biology, whether or not they originate in random associations or plain hallucination. Something in our human genes is deeply moved by the fuzziness and ambiguity of language; then why fight it?


regardless of whether the poetry was obtained by a Monte Carlo engine or sung by a blind man in Asia Minor, language is potent in bringing pleasure and solace. Testing its intellectual validity by translating it into simple logical arguments would rob it of a varying degree of its potency, sometimes excessively; nothing can be more bland than translated poetry.


Four decades ago, the Catholic church translated the services and liturgies from Latin to the local vernaculars; one may wonder if this caused a drop in religious beliefs. Suddenly religion subjected itself to being judged by intellectual and scientific, without the aesthetic, standards. The Greek Orthodox church made the lucky mistake, upon translating some of its prayers from Church Greek into the Semitic-based vernacular spoken by the Grecosyrians of the Antioch region (southern Turkey and northern Syria), of choosing classical Arabic, an entirely dead language. My folks are thus lucky to pray in a mixture of dead Koiné (Church Greek) and no less dead Koranic Arabic.


We do not need to be rational and scientific when it comes to the details of our daily life—only in those that can harm us and threaten our survival. Modern life seems to invite us to do the exact opposite; become extremely realistic and intellectual when it comes to such matters as religion and personal behavior, yet as irrational as possible when it comes to matters ruled by randomness (say, portfolio or real estate investments).


Darwinian ideas are about reproductive fitness, not about survival.


Whenever there is asymmetry in outcomes, the average survival has nothing to do with the median survival.


it is just that reality does not have the same closed and symmetric laws and regulations as games. This competitive nature got him into ferocious fighting to “win.” As we saw in the last chapter, markets (and life) are not simple win/lose types of situations, as the cost of the losses can be markedly different from that of the wins.


Sadly, I learned quite a bit from Niederhoffer, mostly by contrast, and particularly from the last example: not to approach anything as a game to win, except, of course, if it is a game. Even then, I do not like the asphyxiating structure of competitive games and the diminishing aspect of deriving pride from a numerical performance. I also learned to stay away from people of a competitive nature, as they have a tendency to commoditize and reduce the world to categories, like how many papers they publish in a given year, or how they rank in the league tables. There is something nonphilosophical about investing one’s pride and ego into a “my house/library/car is bigger than that of others in my category”—it is downright foolish to claim to be first in one’s category all the while sitting on a time bomb.


centuries). I suddenly felt financially insecure and feared becoming an employee of some firm that would turn me into a corporate slave with ‚ work ethics‚ (whenever I hear work ethics I interpret inefficient mediocrity). I needed the backing of my bank account so I could buy time to think and enjoy life.


the difference between Newtonian physics, which was falsified by Einstein‚ relativity, and astrology lies in the following irony. Newtonian physics is scientific because it allowed us to falsify it, as we know that it is wrong, while astrology is not because it does not offer conditions under which we could reject it. Astrology cannot be disproved, owing to the auxiliary hypotheses that come into play. Such point lies at the basis of the demarcation between science and nonsense (called the problem of demarcation).


I am an exceedingly naive falsificationist. Why? Because I can survive being one. My extreme and obsessive Popperism is carried out as follows. I speculate in all of my activities on theories that represent some vision of the world, but with the following stipulation: No rare event should harm me. In fact, I would like all conceivable rare events to help me. My idea of science diverges with that of the people around me walking around calling themselves scientists. Science is mere speculation, mere formulation of conjecture.


Like Pascal, I will therefore state the following argument. If the science of statistics can benefit me in anything, I will use it. If it poses a threat, then I will not. I want to take the best of what the past can give me without its dangers. Accordingly, I will use statistics and inductive methods to make aggressive bets, but I will not use them to manage my risks and exposure. Surprisingly, all the surviving traders I know seem to have done the same. They trade on ideas based on some observation (that includes past history) but, like the Popperian scientists, they make sure that the costs of being wrong are limited (and their probability is not derived from past data). Unlike Carlos and John, they know before getting involved in the trading strategy which events would prove their conjecture wrong and allow for it (recall that Carlos and John used past history both to make their bets and to measure their risk). They would then terminate their trade. This is called a stop loss, a predetermined exit point, a protection from the black swan. I find it rarely practiced.


beware the middlebrow: A small knowledge of probability can lead to worse results than no knowledge at all.


Nero Tulip,


By living on Park Avenue, one does not have exposure to the losers, one only sees the winners.


The first counterintuitive point is that a population entirely composed of bad managers will produce a small amount of great track records.


This “reversion” for the large outliers is what has been observed in history and explained as regression to the mean. Note that the larger the deviation, the more important its effect.


Again, one word of warning: All deviations do not come from this effect, but a disproportionately large proportion of them do.


Remember that nobody accepts randomness in his own success, only his failure.


survivorship bias


We need to know the size of the population from which he came. In other words, without knowing how many managers out there have tried and failed, we will not be able to assess the validity of the track record. If the initial population includes ten managers, then I would give the performer half my savings without a blink. If the initial population is composed of 10,000 managers, I would ignore the results.


I am fitting the rule on the data. This activity is called data snooping. The more I try, the more I am likely, by mere luck, to find a rule that worked on past data. A random series will always present some detectable pattern. I am convinced that there exists a tradable security in the Western world that would be 100% correlated with the changes in temperature in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.


Plutarch


people patronize what other people like to do. Forcing rational dynamics on the process would be superfluous, nay, impossible. This is called a path dependent outcome, and has thwarted many mathematical attempts at modeling behavior.


which ones achieved early sales and, over time, which firms dominated.”


As I said in Chapter 3, mathematics is merely a way of thinking and meditating, little more, in our world of randomness.


Once again the important fact is knowing the existence of these nonlinearities, not trying to model them.


Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For instance, you study every day and learn something in proportion to your studies. If you do not feel that you are going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized. But reality rarely gives us the privilege of a satisfying linear positive progression: You may study for a year and learn nothing, then, unless you are disheartened by the empty results and give up, something will come to you in a flash. My partner Mark Spitznagel summarizes it as follows: Imagine yourself practicing the piano every day for a long time, barely being able to perform “Chopsticks,” then suddenly finding yourself capable of playing Rachmaninov. Owing to this nonlinearity, people cannot comprehend the nature of the rare event. This summarizes why there are routes to success that are nonrandom, but few, very few, people have the mental stamina to follow them. Those who go the extra mile are rewarded. In my profession one may own a security that benefits from lower market prices, but may not react at all until some critical point. Most people give up before the rewards.


I am also realizing the nonlinear effect behind success in anything: It is better to have a handful of enthusiastic advocates than hordes of people who appreciate your work—better to be loved by a dozen than liked by the hundreds. This applies to the sales of books, the spread of ideas, and success in general and runs counter to conventional logic. The information age is worsening this effect. This is making me, with my profound and antiquated Mediterranean sense of metron (measure), extremely uncomfortable, even queasy. Too much success is the enemy (think of the punishment meted out on the rich and famous); too much failure is demoralizing. I would like the option of having neither.


Normative economics is like religion without the aesthetics.


This is the most significant distortion and the one that carries the most consequences. In order to be able to put things in general context, you do not have everything you know in your mind at all times, so you retrieve the knowledge that you require at any given time in a piecemeal fashion, which puts these retrieved knowledge chunks in their local context. This means that you have an arbitrary reference point and react to differences from that point, forgetting that you are only looking at the differences from that particular perspective of the local context, not the absolutes.


evolutionary psychology,


This might be a platitude to those who frequent the Greek and Latin classics, but we never fail to be surprised when noticing that people a couple of dozen centuries removed from us can exhibit similar sensibility and feelings. What used to strike me as a child upon visiting museums is that ancient Greek statues exhibit men with traits indistinguishable from ours (only more harmonious and aristocratic). I was so wrong to believe that 2,200 years was a long time. Proust wrote frequently about the surprise people have when coming across emotions in Homeric heroes that are similar to those we experience today. By genetic standards, these Homeric heroes of thirty centuries ago in all likelihood have the exact identical makeup as the pudgy middle-aged man you see schlepping groceries in the parking lot. More than that. In fact, we are truly identical to the man who perhaps eighty centuries ago started being called “civilized,” in that strip of land stretching from southeastern Syria to southwestern Mesopotamia.


The real problem is, as I have mentioned, that such a natural habitat does not include much information. An efficient computation of the odds was never necessary until very recently. This also explains why we had to wait until the emergence of the gambling literature to see the growth of the mathematics of probability. Popular belief holds that the religious backdrop of the first and second millennia blocked the growth of tools that hint at absence of determinism, and caused the delays in probability research. The idea is extremely dubious; we simply did not compute probabilities because we did not dare to? Surely the reason is rather because we did not need to. Much of our problem comes from the fact that we have evolved out of such a habitat faster, much faster, than our genes. Even worse, our genes have not changed at all.


I will present the theses of two watershed works presented in readable books, Damasio’s Descartes’ Error and LeDoux’s Emotional Brain. Descartes’ Error presents a very simple thesis: You perform a surgical ablation on a piece of someone’s brain (say, to remove a tumor and tissue around it) with the sole resulting effect of an inability to register emotions, nothing else (the IQ and every other faculty remain the same).


Joseph LeDoux’s theory about the role of emotions in behavior is even more potent: Emotions affect one’s thinking. He figured out that much of the connections from the emotional systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems. The implication is that we feel emotions (limbic brain) then find an explanation (neocortex). As we saw with Claparède’s discovery, much of the opinions and assessments that we have concerning risks may be the simple result of emotions.


We think with our emotions and there is no way around it.


What is less unpleasant: to lose 100 times $1 or lose once $100? Clearly the second: Our sensitivity to losses decreases. So a trading policy that makes $1 a day for a long time then loses them all is actually pleasant from a hedonic standpoint, although it does not make sense economically.


One example to illustrate further option blindness. What has more value? (a) a contract that pays you $1 million if the stock market goes down 10% on any given day in the next year; (b) a contract that pays you $1 million if the stock market goes down 10% on any given day in the next year due to a terrorist act. I expect most people to select (b).


The most common one concerns the interpretation of evidence. They most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of absence,


I translate it well, the journalist claims to provide an explanation for something that amounts to perfect noise. A move of 1.03 with the Dow at 11,000 constitutes less than a 0.01% move. Such a move does not warrant an explanation. There is nothing there that an honest person can try to explain; there are no reasons to adduce.


Finally, a proper confidence level needs to be given to the factor itself; if it is less than 90% the story would be dead. I can understand why Hume was extremely obsessed with causality and could not accept such inference anywhere.


I managed to build an instinctive way of knowing if something serious is going on. The trick is to look only at the large percentage changes. Unless something moves by more than its usual daily percentage change, the event is deemed to be noise. Percentage moves are the size of the headlines. In addition, the interpretation is not linear; a 2% move is not twice as significant an event as 1%, it is rather like four to ten times. A 7% move can be several billion times more relevant than a 1% move! The headline of the Dow moving by 1.3 points on my screen today has less than one billionth of the significance of the serious 7% drop of October 1997. People might ask me: Why do I want everybody to learn some statistics? The answer is that too many people read explanations. We cannot instinctively understand the nonlinear aspect of probability.

Note: This is very Demming-esq


is not the estimate or the forecast that matters so much as the degree of confidence with the opinion.


We can see that my activity in the market (and other random variables) depends far less on where I think the market or the random variable is going so much as it does on the degree of error I allow around such a confidence level.


believe that I need my emotions to formulate my ideas and get the energy to execute them.


I am just intelligent enough to understand that I have a predisposition to be fooled by randomness—and to accept the fact that I am rather emotional. I am dominated by my emotions—but as an aesthete, I am happy about that fact. I am just like every single character whom I ridiculed in this book. Not only that, but I may be even worse than them because there may be a negative correlation between beliefs and behavior (recall Popper the man). The difference between me and those I ridicule is that I try to be aware of it. No matter how long I study and try to understand probability, my emotions will respond to a different set of calculations, those that my unintelligent genes want me to handle. If my brain can tell the difference between noise and signal, my heart cannot.


This mechanism I also call Wittgenstein’s ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.


Recall that the accomplishment from which I derive the most pride is my weaning myself from television and the news media. I am currently so weaned that it actually costs me more energy to watch television than to perform any other activity, like, say, writing this book. But this did not come without tricks. Without tricks I would not escape the toxicity of the information age.


What is the trick? I have the volume turned completely off.


A little brooding revealed that my life until then had been governed by mild superstitions, me the expert in options, the dispassionate calculator of probabilities, a rational trader! It was not the first time that I had acted on mild superstitions of a harmless nature, which I believed were instilled in me by my Eastern Mediterranean roots: One does not grab the salt shaker from the hand of another person risking a falling out; one is to knock on wood upon receiving a compliment; plus many other Levantine beliefs passed on for a few dozen centuries. But like many things that brew and spread around the ancient pond, these beliefs I had taken with a fluctuating mixture of solemnity and mistrust. We consider them more like rituals than truly important actions meant to stave off undesirable turns of the goddess Fortuna—superstitions can instill some poetry in daily life.


We need tricks to get us there but before that we need to accept the fact that we are mere animals in need of lower forms of tricks, not lectures.


probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive. Recall that mathematics is a tool to meditate, not compute.


let us go back to the elders for more guidance—for probabilities were always considered by them as nothing beyond a subjective, and fluid, measure of beliefs.


As the skeptics’ main teaching was that nothing could be accepted with certainty, conclusions of various degrees of probability could be formed, and these supplied a guide to conduct.


One author from antiquity who provides us evidence of such thinking is the garrulous Cicero. He preferred to be guided by probability than allege with certainty—very handy, some said, because it allowed him to contradict himself.


What characterizes real speculators like Soros from the rest is that their activities are devoid of path dependence.


My lesson from Soros is to start every meeting at my boutique by convincing everyone that we are a bunch of idiots who know nothing and are mistake-prone, but happen to be endowed with the rare privilege of knowing it.


Stoicism is not the stiff upper lip, but the illusion of victory of man against randomness.


one of the greatest poets who ever breathed is C. P. Cavafy. Cavafy was an Alexandrian Greek civil servant with a Turkish or Arabic last name who wrote almost a century ago in a combination of classical and modern Greek a lean poetry that seems to have eluded the last fifteen centuries of Western literature.


While shaken with emotion. No stiff upper lip. There is nothing wrong and undignified with emotions—we are cut to have them. What is wrong is not following the heroic or, at least, the dignified path. That is what stoicism truly means. It is the attempt by man to get even with probability.


The stoic is a person who combines the qualities of wisdom, upright dealing, and courage. The stoic will thus be immune from life’s gyrations as he will be superior to the wounds from some of life’s dirty tricks. But things can be carried to the extreme; the stern Cato found it beneath him to have human feelings. A more human version can be read in Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, a soothing and surprisingly readable book that I distribute to my trader friends (Seneca also took his own life when cornered by destiny).


Start stressing personal elegance at your next misfortune. Exhibit sapere vivere (“know how to live”) in all circumstances. Dress at your best on your execution day (shave carefully); try to leave a good impression on the death squad by standing erect and proud. Try not to play victim when diagnosed with cancer (hide it from others and only share the information with the doctor—it will avert the platitudes and nobody will treat you like a victim worthy of their pity; in addition, the dignified attitude will make both defeat and victory feel equally heroic). Be extremely courteous to your assistant when you lose money (instead of taking it out on him as many of the traders whom I scorn routinely do). Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame. Never exhibit any self-pity, even if your significant other bolts with the handsome ski instructor or the younger aspiring model. Do not complain. If you suffer from a benign version of the “attitude problem,” like one of my childhood friends, do not start playing nice guy if your business dries up (he sent a heroic e-mail to his colleagues informing them “less business, but same attitude”). The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior. Good luck.


research on happiness shows that those who live under a self-imposed pressure to be optimal in their enjoyment of things suffer a measure of distress.


But if you randomize your trigger point, sometimes overreacting at the slightest joke, people will not know in advance how far they can push you. The same applies to governments in conflicts: They need to convince their adversaries that they are crazy enough to sometimes overreact to a small peccadillo. Even the magnitude of their reaction should be hard to foretell. Unpredictability is a strong deterrent.


One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.*

In this wide-ranging conversation, David Bessis, mathematician and author of Mathematica - A Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity, discusses the nature of mathematical thinking, creativity, and learning. Bessis shares personal insights about his journey from pure mathematics to writing for a general audience, explaining how it took him 20 years to properly articulate his ideas about mathematics and cognition. He offers fascinating perspectives on the connection between religious mysticism and mathematical discovery, arguing that what mathematicians historically attributed to divine inspiration might be better understood through the lens of modern neuroscience. The discussion covers practical advice for parents wanting to nurture mathematical thinking in their children, including gamifying concepts through everyday activities like elevator rides and spatial awareness games. Bessis also shares his thoughts on artificial intelligence, his writing practice, and how he uses tools like Claude as a "Greek chorus" to provide feedback on his work. Throughout the conversation, Bessis emphasizes that mathematics is less about innate talent but rather a skill that can be developed through proper training and understanding.

Chapters

00:00 Morning Routines and Musical Influences

02:12 The Nature vs. Nurture Debate

05:09 Writing Retreats and New Projects

08:10 Mathematics: Talent vs. Training

11:07 The Journey of Mathematical Understanding

14:01 Personal Experiences with Mathematics

16:49 The Role of Social Media in Writing

19:21 Influences of Taleb and Other Thinkers

22:14 Descartes and Misinterpretations

24:27 The Intersection of Mathematics and Spirituality

37:07 The Dual Influences of Mysticism and Mathematics

41:45 Conceptualism and the Game of Truth

49:19 The Nature of Reasoning and Reality

56:24 Intuition vs. Language Models

59:25 Dream Journaling and the Art of Expression

01:06:13 The Interplay of Geometry and Algebra

01:11:34 Psychological Barriers in Mathematics

01:16:17 The Disturbing Clarity of Mathematical Truths

01:20:29 Fostering Mathematical Curiosity in Children

01:24:41 Practical Approaches to Adult Mathematical Learning

01:28:01 The Art of Writing and Clarity

01:39:45 The Future of Writing and Communication

Links

Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations

Kraftwerk - Transeuropean Express

Quanta Article: Mathematical Thinking Isn’t What You Think It Is

We’ve been wrong about math for 2300 years

A Visual Companion to the audio edition of Mathematica

Nassim Taleb’s Incerto

Complete Essay’s of Montaigne

Rene Descarte’s Discourse on Method

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Donald D. Hoffman

Donald D. Hoffman on the Tim Ferris Show

A Million Dots

Three Blue One Brown

Leadership Lab: The Craft of Writing Effectively

Anthropic Claude LLM

Gentlemen. Welcome to the 51st edition of MNTS.

I’ve been distracted and off my regular schedule the last week or so, but for good reason. Thanks to the serendipity engine that is the internet, I’ve connected with David Bessis, the author of Mathematica. We’re scheduled to record what will be the first episode of The Mettleist – Shop Talk podcast (hopefully, the first of many). I’ve been pouring my meager spare time into preparing for it, so once this is in the rearview mirror, I’ll get back to publishing book notes and MNTS on a regular basis.

I hope you all are as excited about the interview as I am! If you have any burning questions you'd like me to ask, feel free to leave a comment.

Without further ado—let’s cook!

We’ve been wrong about Math for 2300 years

is also now on Substack. His first essay is a banger and he essentially distills the main argument of his book Mathematica, in it. I wrote about his book here a couple weeks back and I looking forward to chatting with him.

Along the way, we also failed to articulate the most compelling value proposition of mathematics: math is an imagination technique that makes you smarter.

This is what really struck me as I was writing my book: once you read Descartes, Grothendieck, and Thurston in parallel, you start to notice that they speak almost only of imagination. Each describes the use of imagination in new modalities, discovered by accident and breaking with what they’d been taught. They all view this as the secret to their success. If we don’t communicate this dimension of math, we’re missing an essential piece.

Wait, when did preference become God?

OG friend of the newsletter published this biting take on contemporary culture. Great piece. Love to see it!

Religious wisdom? Nah, preference beats that. Philosophy’s greatest hits, debated by history’s greatest minds? Sorry, preference wins. Cultural knowledge built over thousands of years? Preference says no. Biology’s basic drives? Preference doesn’t care. Your entire ancestral line? Preference shrugs.

Saul Leiter - Color

I shared this in my candid photography memo but it warrants repeat viewing. Leiter’s colors are insane.

For Demming nerds

Demonstrates the importance of understanding natural variation and the ill effects of process tampering.

New Father John Misty Album

Really enjoying this new album. Big CAKE vibes from a few of these tracks and I’m not mad about it at all.

Mini Stainless Whisk

This little guy has become an indispensable side kick in the kitchen. A major process improvement tool for dijonaise, vinaigrettes, marinades, heck I even use it to mix in electrolytes and EAAs into my water. Far superior to a shaker ball.

Flux Adapt Runners

I’m on my third pair of these and they made some nice improvements since I last purchased them. The new pair feels lighter and the grip on the bottom is highly improved. It’s also worth noting this updated version runs a half size smaller than the previous shoes. While I don’t consider these barefoot shoes (the stack height is too high to truly be considered barefoot imo), these are super functional and comfortable daily running shoes. They check all the boxes zero drop, wide toe box, low-key color options, durable and reasonably priced.

Nietzsche vs. John

Murphy breaks down Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity in Genealogy of Morals and contrasts it with his interpretation of The Gospel According to John, from the New Testament. It’s quite a compelling take and these ideas have been pin balling around my dome for the better part of two weeks now.

On Good Sense

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

— Rene Descartes

From my camera roll

That’s a wrap on 51.

Enjoy some decadent food and bonus time with family this week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Vividus Invictus!1

AP

This topic is especially timely as we approach the holiday season and these opportunities become more abundant. It feels a shame to let another season pass without an earnest effort to capture some of the magic. Whether it's your kiddos experiencing unrestrained joy, reuniting with rarely-seen relatives, or simply documenting friends in their element, taking candid pictures is a meaningful way to capture memories, tell stories, and spread some love.

For a bit of context, I have historically been a disappointing photographer. It’s only recently that I’ve overcome this deficit and have “unlocked” my ability to embrace the art. For this reason I felt compelled to share a few insights with the intention being to perhaps help you capture more of these golden moments yourself. What follows below should set you on the right path. Making you dangerous enough with a camera to have fun and get started on a path toward meaningful progression.

Principles for Better Candid Photos

In my journey to improve, I discovered Greg Williams' course, Candid Photography Skills and out of all the content I’ve consumed on the subject I think his principle-based tutorials have had the greatest impact on improving my photos.

Let me share what I've learned from Greg’s approach, starting with the fundamentals.

Working with Subjects

There are two primary approaches to candid photography: being a participant or an observer. Greg seems to primarily work as a participant - he moves with his subjects, dances when they dance, runs when they run. He engages in conversation, makes funny faces, and uses his personality to capture authentic reactions. This approach was completely foreign to me, I never even considered how my behavior was reflected back at my subject. I will note that this approach is definitely more advanced and requires a level of fluency with your camera and technical settings, as you'll need to make fine adjustments while staying engaged with your subjects.

As a relative beginner, I've found it more comfortable to start as an observer. This means finding a quiet corner or staircase during gatherings and discretely capturing moments as they unfold. It's less demanding technically and allows you to focus on composition and timing while you build confidence with your equipment.

Understanding Light

Light is often the limiting factor for low skill photographers, but Greg's perspective was totally liberating: He’s fond of saying “there's no such thing as bad light”, “there is a good photo in every lighting situation”, “Make people look good in ugly light”. This mindset shift viewing lighting as a fun challenge or puzzle to be solved as opposed to good light vs. bad light has been a massive, albeit potentially obvious creative unlock.

The fundamentals of light I keep in the back of my mind while shooting are as follows:

• Size (like the sun versus a lamp)

• Source (natural or artificial)

• Diffusion (clouds, screens, or other materials that scatter light)

• Distance from the subject

The key light - or dominant light source, plays a crucial role in composition. Outdoors, it's typically the sun; indoors, it might be a window or main room light. Understanding where this light comes from helps you position yourself and your subjects for the best odds of capturing magic.

Backlighting - Greg's favorite technique involves backlighting (the opposite of what I assumed made for a great snap), not directly behind the subject, but capturing some light source in the frame. This approach can smooth imperfections and create flattering portraits. I have found this rather difficult to achieve in practice but is definitely worth the failed attempts when you nail it.

Technical Elements

Exposure is fundamentally about controlling light through your lens. The key is to notice how your subject's brightness compares to their background.

Two things to keep in mind when adjusting your exposure:

• When shooting against a dark background, lower your exposure;

• When shooting against a lighter background, raise it.

On smartphones, you can adjust this by tapping and dragging your finger up or down on the screen; on cameras there's typically a dedicated dial.

Composition and Environment - Greg emphasizes that great pictures can be found anywhere - it's about your perspective and creativity. He recommends giving yourself three minutes to find the perfect shot - long enough to explore angles but short enough to maintain energy and spontaneity. Especially useful to keep in mind when shooting toddlers.

Look for "frames within frames"2 - doorways, car windows, picture frames, or natural elements that draw the eye into the image. These create depth and interest while leading viewers to your subject. Roads, paths, and architectural elements can create vanishing points that add visual energy to your compositions.

Rule of thirds - important to understand, but don't be afraid to break it. Sometimes, the most compelling images come from deliberately breaking traditional composition rules. The key is understanding the rule well enough to know when breaking them will enhance, rather than detract from what you are trying to convey. I don’t currently break it that often and even keep the guides on my camera display.

Focus and Editing - Sharp focus on your subject is crucial, but don't feel confined to conventional wisdom like always focusing on the eyes. Sometimes focusing on a different feature - a cheek, nose, or mouth - can create more interesting or intimate portraits.

When it comes to editing, it's more about selecting images for their information density rather than technical perfection. Look for photos that tell a story or capture authentic reactions. Greg's editing process is surprisingly simple:

• Start with cropping - cropping is by far my favorite editing technique. I find it can transform a very mid picture into something extraordinary simply by tightening up the frame.

• Adjust exposure - this is better to do while shooting, but slight adjustments can be made in post.

• Fine-tune brilliance, highlights, and shadows - I personally don’t mess with this too much on the back end, but prefer to use the Ricoh recipes to set these ahead of time.

Black and white photos - ensure you have at least one pure white and one pure black element in the frame - don't rely solely on mid tones.

For those wanting to dive deeper into technical elements, the next progression, and where I’m currently spending the majority of my time, would be to explore and understand how exposure value, metering, f-stop, ISO, and shutter speed settings effect a photo and which situations certain combinations of these settings work well in.

The Social Angle

Everyone appreciates a thoughtful and flattering photo of themselves, so being capable of capturing candid moments makes you an indispensable addition to any gathering. While taking on the role of photographer can mean missing out on being in photos yourself, it's a noble and worthy sacrifice that allows you to give others the gift of preserved memories. It's particularly valuable to promote and scale this skill to as many members of your social and familial circles as possible - ensuring everyone gets to be in photos rather than one person always being behind the camera. Teaching is also one of the best ways to learn and solidify your knowledge.

Who I’m studying

Henri Cartier-Bresson - The father of modern photojournalism and master of the "decisive moment," the man that started the candid movement.

"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life."

I think if you’re a photographer, to only cultivate your talent with photography is pretty dull. You have to read, you have to look at sculpture and paintings. That’s how you build this talent.

Vivian Maier - A former nanny whose candid photography was discovered posthumously. A true master. Every photo is stunning.

Gary Winogrand - Known for his fast-paced street scenes. He has an eye for candid oddities. Easter eggs abound.

Bruce Gilden - Known for his close-up, flash-heavy street portraits. Gangster.

Greg Williams - Love the Greetings series. A bit unfair because photographs the most beautiful and expressive people on the planet, but still worthy of appreciation.

Dewey Nicks - cool guy taking cool photos.

Saul Leiter - captures the quiet beauty of city life in subtle and abstract ways. Another master. His color and composition are so so good. Unreal.

Mark Cohen - capturing the essence of decades as if stumbling on private moments.

Scott Schuman - The Sartorialist, street fashion OG. Sadly, it seems his original blog is no longer in existence.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, the goal is to capture images that tell stories in a single frame - photos dense with information that reveal something new each time you fix your gaze on them. These are the images you'll want to display, share, and revisit over the years. They become touchstones for memories and connections, making photography not just a technical skill but rather a social one. Strengthening relations and preserving those golden moments.

My simple recommendation is to start by photographing what matters most to you - your daily life, your loved ones, your personal world. The most meaningful photos will always be those that express something unique from your personal perspective.

Gentlemen. Welcome to the 50th edition of MNTS.

Quick one this week.

Let’s get it!

Hunter S. Thompson on the Honolulu Marathon

We are talking about two distinct groups here, two entirely different marathons. The Racers would all be finished and half drunk by 8 in the morning, or just about the time that the pack was pouring through the halfway point. They run smoothly, almost silently, with a fine-tuned stride. No wasted energy, no fighting the street or bouncing along like a jogger. These people flow, and they flow very fast. Watching the Racers race is like watching Kobe Bryant in the open court or Michael Vick turning the corner. Each one of them is literally one in a billion. A racer in full stride is an elegant thing to see.

Kamakura Denim Button Down

I own multiple of these and they are in heavy rotation this time of year. They get better with every wear and wash. Damn near perfect off the rack. Extremely versatile. A wardrobe staple.

The Last Men’s Shop

Never had Buffalo on the list of destinations to hit, but damn, this is trad men’s wear mecca.

Obscure music I’m enjoying

Radio Free Alice (RFA) - post punk Aussie kids crooning about young love. Their entire discography is 10 songs and they are all pretty great. Good cunts.

Subscriber Care Packages are in route

Hooking up our most engaged subscribers with some The Mettleist swag. Wear it well gents. ✌️☝️

Ricoh GR III HDF

After an overwhelming few months of research trying to find the perfect camera for my needs and skill level, I finally pulled the trigger on the Ricoh GR III HDF. I’m still getting the hang of it, but I’m very excited about the potential of this little camera. It’s powerful, pocketable, and discreet. Even though I’m still all thumbs while shooting, I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality of the output.

I found this tutorial to be extremely helpful for dialing in the settings and functions.

And Ritchie’s Ricoh Recipes website and app for all the various film simulations. Fun stuff!

From my camera roll

That’s a wrap on 50.

Vividus Invictus!1

AP

A discovery always begins with the simple and innocent desire to understand. You invent new actions not because you want to do something new and original, but because you can't get where you want to be with the existing techniques. Without any reference point, without someone to guide you, you have to listen to what your body is telling you. You have to get used to feeling your body in a new way.

Commentary

Mathematica by David Bessis is the rare read that bridges complex mathematical thinking with practical wisdom. I found myself highlighting passages with such frequency that it rivaled my experience with Nassim Taleb's Anti-Fragile - a personal benchmark for transformative reading.

This book held me hostage. I literally neglected all non-essential aspects of life to sit and read it. I find this to be fleetingly rare so I tried not to fight it. Instead, allowing my exuberance to pull me through each page.

My excitement for this work stems from my personal journey with mathematics. Like many, I fell into the "I'm just bad at math" trap during my freshman year of high school, resigning myself to the limited world one inhabits with that mindset. Over the past couple of decades, I've made a concerted effort to override this self-imposed limitation.

My first significant breakthrough came by way of Nassim Taleb's Skin in the Game, which showed me how mathematical concepts could be communicated in accessible, non-mathematical language.

What makes Bessis' book extraordinary is how it illuminates Taleb's thinking process in ways that Taleb himself might find too obvious to explain. It's like being given a window into the machinery behind Taleb's popular theories and principles.

I've heard Taleb mention on podcasts that he writes his books purely from intuited conjecture, only later hunting down academic citations to support his ideas.

For anyone who has read Taleb's work, this seems almost impossible - how could someone intuit such sophisticated frameworks for probability, decision-making, risk, and uncertainty?

Bessis' book not only explains how this is possible but offers practical applications to develop our own intuitive thinking skill by borrowing from mathematics greatest thinkers.

In the end, what Bessis has created here isn't just another book about mathematics. It's a manifesto for intellectual growth, a roadmap for developing better intuition, and a kick in the pants to anyone who's ever said "I'm just not good at math."

What I’m stealing

1. Be interested in things with an unwavering commitment, intensity and tenacity

2. Listen to the dissonance between intuition and logic

3. Repeatedly collide your intuition with reality

4. Intuition is your strongest intellectual resource

5. Big ideas are ridiculously simple

6. Words don’t come easily and don’t come right away

7. Listen to what your body is telling you, get used to feeling your body in a new way

8. Books should be at our service, rather than the reverse

9. One person’s clear mental image is another person’s intimidation

10. Listen to the voice of things

11. Progress is always slow because the body needs time to transform itself

12. The essence of mental plasticity is to transform audacity into competence

13. Nothing is more exciting than a big glaring error

14. Understanding is making something intuitive for yourself. Explaining something to others is proposing simple ways of making it intuitive

15. It’s normal not to understand

16. Approach the search for truth like a martial art

17. Doubt is a forcing function for clarification and specificity

18. Rationality is a guide rather than the ultimate judge

19. Candor and sensitivity are powerful intellectual weapons

Supplemental Resources

Eric Nehrlic, Urepentant Generalist

Rene Descartes Discourse on Method and Mediations on First Philosophy

Math is Still Catching up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan

Dog ears, highlights, marginalia

To be passionately curious means to have the ability to be interested in things with an unwavering commitment, with an intensity and tenacity that never fails.

the magic power of mathematicians isn't logic but intuition.


In their minds, the ideas are luminous, simple, and powerful. On paper, they become stunted and sad.


There's a way to become good at math. This method is never taught in school. It doesn't resemble any academic method and goes against the traditional tenets of education. It tries to make things easier rather than more difficult. You can compare it to meditation, yoga, rock climbing, or martial arts. It includes techniques to overcome our fears, conquer our flight reflex in the face of the unknown, and find pleasure in being contradicted. The method's exact scope is actually broader than math. It's a universal method for reprogramming our intuition and, in that sense, it's a method for becoming more intelligent.


They know very well that being bad at math means they won't be able to go into any number of professions, including some of the most prestigious and best paid. Maybe they don't understand why math is so important, but they know that it is. They feel excluded, which gives them an excellent reason for hating it.


I want to convince you that the only possible explanation is that it's all a giant misunderstanding. People aren't good at math because no one has taken the time to give them clear instructions. No one has told them that math is a physical activity. No one has told them that, in math, there aren't things to learn, but things to do.


Studying math the same way that you study history or biology is useless. You might as well take careful notes during a yoga class so that you don't forget anything. If you don't practice any breathing exercises, it's worth nothing at all.

Explaining math is getting others to see things they've never seen before.

Sure, your intuition is wrong every now and then, but not always. Often it's right. And you can make it so that it's right more often. You can train it to see more clearly and distinctly. Starting from the same point as you, mathematicians construct a visionary intuition that is powerful and trustworthy. They get there using simple methods, like those taught in this book.

your intuition is your strongest intellectual resource. In a sense, it's your only intellectual resource.

That's why you never have complete confidence in logical arguments and you're much more at ease with what you understand intuitively.


If you've been able to do these things, rest assured: you have the genetic potential and the intellectual faculties to become very good at math. From the biological perspective, that's all that's needed. The other ingredients aren't genetic, and they're also at your disposal. It's simply a matter of sincerity, patience, desire, and courage.

The big ideas are always intuitive and always simple. They're even ridiculously simple.

This is a universal law of human cognition. It states that our science was invented by humans and that humans are, at the deepest level, all made of the same stuff.

The great discoveries are made by people who are simply trying to understand. They just want to make things clear for themselves.


And when you think you see a math whiz, it's never really a math whiz, it's always just someone who has a way of seeing numbers that turns calculations that you find complex and scary into something easy and even obvious.

The main difference between a math whiz and you is that their bag of tricks is bigger than yours and they're more used to playing with them.

If you find that the math you do understand is too easy, it's not because it's easy, it's because you understand it.


This is what happens when you run up against the limits of language.

In order to express what you feel, you have to invent new words, or create a new usage for words that already exist. Fleeting impressions cease being fleeting only after you find a way to pin them down with words. It takes time to get there. Words don't come easily, and they don't come right away.

The initial phase of a discovery is a spiritual experience. You think outside of language. The world is illuminated. You have epiphanies.

You see things that until then were hidden. Things so new they don't yet have a name.


Understanding a mathematical notion is learning to see things that you could not see before. It's learning to find them obvious. It's raising your state of consciousness.


But math, because it relies on unseen actions, can't be learned through imitation.

A discovery always begins with the simple and innocent desire to understand. You invent new actions not because you want to do something new and original, but because you can't get where you want to be with the existing techniques. Without any reference point, without someone to guide you, you have to listen to what your body is telling you. You have to get used to feeling your body in a new way.

Finding the solution means thinking what had been unthinkable. It's like augmenting the cognitive capacity of human beings.

To truly learn a movement, you have to understand it beyond words. You have to feel it within your own body, and find it natural and intuitive.

Math is mysterious and difficult because you can't see how others are doing it. You can see what they're writing on the blackboard or on a sheet of paper, but you can't see the prior actions they performed in their heads that enabled them to think and write those things.

Math itself is simple but the mental actions that allow us to make sense of it are subtle and counterintuitive. These actions are invisible.

We can't simply imitate what others do. We lack the adequate words to explain how to do it, and in any case words will always miss the main point: what we really feel inside ourselves.


But they know that getting lost is a normal stage in the understanding process. They won't get upset. They won't pretend to understand what they can't understand. They won't even try to take notes. They'll simply stop listening.

If they really want to understand, they'll find another way.


If you really want to, if you have enough time for it and you've chosen the right book, it's well worth the effort. Get ready for a few months of hard work. This initiation rite will transform you. In my lifetime I've really succeeded in reading only three or four math books.

I don't regret the time and effort. It gave me unexpected powers, as if I'd drunk a magic potion. This power remains with me today. But the potion was hard to swallow.


In fact, you should do whatever you feel like doing. You can leaf through the book for ten seconds, one hour, or three monthswhatever. The underlying principle is never to force yourself to follow the pages in order, but to follow your own desire and curiosity.

The book should be at our service, rather than the reverse. It will never work if we try to read a math book like a "normal" book, if we let the book dictate the pace, if we wait for it to take us by the hand  and tell us a story. We're not there to listen passively. We don't have the patience and, frankly, we're just not interested.


In the end, the page that interests us the most may end up being the least difficult for us. First of all because we're interested in it: interesting things are a whole lot easier. And also because it's necessarily tied to something we already understand-otherwise it wouldn't interest us.

Following your desire is the only way of giving the book a real chance. If you start at the beginning, you run the risk of getting discouraged by page 2.


At a profound level, math is the only successful attempt by humanity to speak with precision about things that we can't point to with our fingers. This is one of the central themes of this book and we'll come back to it a number of times.

What is rare, and what our culture doesn't push you to do, is to be aware of your capability for synesthesia and to try to develop it systematically. Secret math is a mental yoga whose goal is to retake control over our ability for synesthesia.

He told me how an idea had been invented and how you need to understand it "morally."

"Morally" understanding something means being able to explain it to yourself intuitively and cite the reason why it's true: the moral of the story.


The trips mathematicians take allow the diffusion of new ideas with an efficiency otherwise impossible. We love long-term stays. We need time to talk, take coffee breaks, scribble on the blackboard, and pick up the discussion the next day with a question that came to us when we woke up. A Japanese mathematician, Kyoji Saito, wanted to understand the "thoughts between the lines" of one of my articles, so he often invited me to Kyoto. For my part, it allowed me to better understand the "thoughts between the lines" of his articles. These types of trips are part of a mathematician's life.


"Bad" teachers are the ones who recite the 198 steps to assemble the toaster as if that were the end of the story. "Good" teachers do their best to explain what a toaster is. They constantly look their students in the eyes, because it's in their eyes that they will know if they've understood.

"One person's clear mental image is another person's intimidation, Thurston wrote.

It's hard to share mental images, as they are evanescent and profoundly subjective. Our common language is incapable of transcribing them with precision. It's precisely because our intuition is so secretive and so unstable that logical formalism was invented.


for the most creative mathematicians, mathematics is a sensual and carnal experience that is located upstream from language.


Grothendieck had a different explanation: "The quality of the inventiveness and the imagination of a researcher comes from the quality of his attention, listening to the voice of things."

Interrogating things, listening to the voice of things, means trying to imagine them, examining the mental images that form within you, seeking to solidify these images and make them clearer, working at unveiling more and more details, as when you try to recall a dream.

mathematical understanding  is achieved by gradually modifying the way we represent things to ourselves, and making them clearer, more precise, closer to reality.


Our prodigious faculty for learning and invention has its origih in our unconscious ability to constantly reconfigure the fabric of associations of images and sensations that, literally and figuratively, comprise the real structure of our thought.


It is in this continuous effort to articulate the inarticulable, to define what is as yet unclear, that the particular dynamic of mathematical work (and perhaps as well all creative intellectual work) is perhaps found.

Mathematical writing is the work of transcribing a living (but confused, unstable, nonverbal) intuition into a precise and stable (but as dead as a fossil) text.

Or, rather, it would be a simple job of transcription if the intuition was from the outset precise and correct. But intuition is rarely precise and correct from the outset. At first it's vague and wrong, and it always remains a bit so. Through the work of writing, intuition becomes less and less vague and less and less wrong. This process is slow and gradual.

In that sense, mathematical definitions have the power of creation: they bring things into existence. It may seem silly to speak so pompously, but that's what really happens.

When you see things that others don't yet perceive, sharing your vision requires finding a way to get others to re-create those things in their own heads. A mathematical definition serves this purpose. It provides detailed instructions allowing others, starting with things they are already able to see, to mentally construct those new things.


But before getting to this simple understanding, while you still don't have the right mental images, you'll have to go through a lot of trial and error.


Writing mathematics, that is, transcribing mental images with enough clarity and precision to allow others to understand and reproduce them, is an art.

 What makes it so difficult is that your mental images are often a lot less clear than you think.


the art of mathematical writing is really a dual task of the clarification of ideas and the refinement of language.


Learning to write math is learning to have clear ideas. Wouldn't it be a shame to deprive yourself of that?


The others aren't blind. They are biologically capable of seeing the same shapes as you. But they haven't yet learned how. Their brain receives the same raw visual information but doesn't structure it in the same way.


Mathematical comprehension is precisely this: finding the means of creating within yourself the right mental images in place of a formal definition, to turn this definition into something intuitive, to "feel" what it is really talking about.


The real pleasure of mathematics is waking up one day and realizing that you can see stars in your head, which you'd never been able to do before.

The secret techniques of mathematicians aim to facilitate and accelerate this intuitive understanding. Mathematicians use logic and language as an apparatus for learning to see.


If you've never learned to think in multiple dimensions, you've missed out on one of the great joys of life. It's like you've never seen the ocean, or never eaten chocolate.


Visual intuition makes certain mathematical properties clear, that without the mental image wouldn't be clear at all. This is why transforming mathematical definitions into mental images is so important.


Contrary to common belief, it's never abstraction that makes math difficult to understand. Abstraction is our universal mode of thinking. The words that we use are all abstractions. Speaking, making sentences, is to manipulate and assemble abstractions. In that respect, four-dimensional geometry isn't any more abstract than two dimensional geometry. The problem with four-dimensional geometry has nothing to do with abstraction. The problem is that it's hard to visualize and hard to draw.


Vector spaces are usually represented by letters and linear maps by arrows connecting these letters. But when I chose to picture vector spaces as bigger or smaller barrels (according to their dimension) and linear maps as bigger or smaller pipes (according to their rank) connecting those barrels, then all the exercises on these concepts suddenly became obvious.

It wasn't much. That was a tiny subject and there were plenty of other exercises that I was unable to solve. But in this subject, not only was I able to solve the exercises, they became as obvious to me as 1,000,000,000 I = 999,999,999. They became so obvious that it seemed absurd that you'd even have to ask, and even more absurd that there were people who didn't know how to solve them.

These barrels and pipes made my life simpler, but where did they come from? Was that how you're supposed to do it? What was going on in other people's heads? How were they imagining mathematical concepts?


The second approach consists of refusing to learn. It takes on math as a sensory experience. The sole function of mathematical statements is to help you generate mental images, and only these images will lead to comprehension. Once you have the correct mental images, everything else becomes clear.


At the time, thankfully, this didn't last long. After a few weeks, without any conscious effort, I ended up accepting the idea that you could reason with letters, that is, reason with numbers without knowing the actual number. I understood that not knowing the actual number was in fact the whole point. Reasoning with letters was a way of reasoning with all numbers at once. It was doing an infinite number of computations with a finite number of words.


I knew perfectly well that they were false. It was obvious. But since it was so obvious, was I able to say exactly in which way they were false?

Today, when I try to describe this intellectual method, I sum it up like this: I began to listen to the dissonance between my intuition  and logic,


I failed to express myself clearly.

I didn't have the right words to talk about these issues. It took me decades to find a proper way to talk about them.

**Note:** Taleb mentions a similar sentiment. Thinking for 20 years before writing his books.


In the space of a few weeks, my way of studying was transformed.

I began to use class as a benchmark for my intuition. I tried to predict what the teacher was going to say. Most of the time I got it wrong, but that let me figure out where my intuition was already correct.

The things I understood, I understood so well that I could rely on them and concentrate on the others.

I kept going back to what I didn't understand until I understood why I didn't understand it


Behind our false beliefs about mathematical intelligence, behind our superstitions and inhibitions, there lies our ignorance about menral plasticity and the laws that govern it.


It's important to be able to guess what is true, what is false.

Then I don't remember statements which are proved. I try to have a collection of pictures in my mind. More than one picture, all false but in different ways, and I know in which way they are false.


Mathematical work isn't a series of lightning insights and strokes of genius. It's first of all a work of reeducation based on the repetition of the same exercises of imagination.

 Progress is slow because the body needs time to transform itself.

It doesn't help to force it, which may end up hurting you. You just need to commit to a regular training schedule, keep your cool, keep going even when it seems you're not making any progress. It's like going to the speech or physical therapist, except you're all alone and inside your head.


A conjecture is a mathematical statement that someone believes is valid but isn't yet able to prove. Making a conjecture is feeling something is right without being able to say why. It is by nature a visionary and intuitive act.


I don't know what Thurston really saw, but when I look at his mathematical work, I haven't the slightest doubt that he saw many things I don't. His style of writing gives the impression that he's just trying to share them with us. He'd love to show the things directly, in real life, but he knows that's impossible. So he writes math papers.


And maybe you've already had the fascinating experience of waking up one morning and knowing, without even having opened your eyes, that it snowed during the night, because the texture of the silence has changed.


No human is capable of solving these equations in the way that school teaches us to solve equations, by applying a conscious and mechanical method. But the specificity of our mental plasticity is to:

give us an unconscious means of solving problems without ever stat ing them, by training our minds to recognize a multitude of subtle patterns that evade our consciousness.


You have the same magic abilities as anyone else. It's just a question of will, patience, and openness to the world.


As for echolocation, it seems that you can get significant results by working an hour per day for two to three weeks. In the end, it's a bit like learning how to drive.

When you want to learn a new sport, a new language, or a new job, you go through a similar process. You have to throw yourself into it and accept that you'll be feeling about for a bit, thinking that you'll never be any good, until the moment you find, as if by magic, that you're getting the hang of it.

The essence of mental plasticity is to transform audacity into competence.

The process is slow and invisible, and at first success seems unachievable: that's the biological reality of our learning mechanisms.


That's why we so often limit ourselves to learning only what's of ficially possible to learn (things that have introductory or professional development courses), what you can learn by imitating others, or what comes naturally.

The rest, the secret and invisible apprenticeships, are said to be "gifts," "talents," "supernatural powers." No one tells us that we can learn to see in five dimensions, get our bearings through echolocation, or tell the sex of dogs and cats by looking at their heads, so we never even try.


Reconnecting with your early childhood capacity for learning means to stop believing in these absurd stories of gifts and talent. It means to become once again capable of devoting ten or twenty hours  to something that may or may not be impossible, without being distracted by the feeling of your own uselessness. It means to rediscover the world with an open mind, trying something just to see what happens, for fun, because you want to.

My basic technique hadn't changed: lending an ear to the dissonance between my intuition and logic. This technique remained my instrument for exploring the world,

I stopped believing that our way of seeing and thinking about the world was a given fact, and that we each had a predefined amount of intelligence that we had to make do with.

In place of that, I began to believe that we had the freedom to ceaselessly refashion our way of seeing and thinking, and to construct our own intelligence day after day.

This change of approach had one initial practical consequence: I became a creative mathematician. I began to have ideas no one had had before, to see things no one had seen before, to prove theorems no one had yet proven at first easy theorems, and later in my career theorems that had till then seemed far beyond my capabilities. Mathematical creativity has the reputation of being a great mystery that science can't explain. In my experience, however, it emerged as a natural phenomenon once I had adopted the correct psychological attitude.

System 3 - When I need to make an important decision in my life, if my intuition tells me to choose option A and my reason tells me to choose option B, I tell myself there's something going on and I'm not ready to make the decision.

That's the moment to resort to what I call System 3.

lending an ear to the dissonance between my intuition and logic.

I force myself to translate my intuition into words, to tell it like a simple and intelligible story. Vice versa, I try to picture what logical reasoning is actually expressing, to experience it in my body, to hear what it's trying to say. I ask myself if I really believe it. I fumble about. It takes time but it's not a real effort. It's more like a meditation on running water, something going on in the background that might stop and start, then all of a sudden become clear days, months, or even years later.

I'm personally incapable of thinking against my intuition and I have serious doubts as to the sincerity of people who claim they can.

**Note:** The IYI

Your intuition will always be more powerful and better informed than the most sophisticated of language-based reasonings.

My intuition isn't any less fallible than yours. It's always getting things wrong. I have, however, learned never to be ashamed of it. I don't disdain my mistakes, I don't push them aside, because I don't think that they betray my intellectual inferiority or some cognitive biases hardwired in my brain. On the contrary. Nothing's more exciting than a big glaring error: it's always a sign that I'm not looking at things in the right way, and that it's possible to see them more clearly.

When I'm able to put my finger on an error in my intuition, I know it's good news, because it means that my mental representations are already in the process of reconfiguring themselves.

My intuition has the mental age of a twoyear-old-it has no inhibitions and always wants to learn. If you stop mistreating your own, you'll see that it's exactly like mine, only asking to be allowed to grow.


System I has an edge: it isn't bound by the constraints of language and writing.

The most important messages, the ones you should always bear in mind, are these:

1. You can reprogram your intuition.

2. Any misalignment between your intuition and reason is an opportunity to create within yourself a new way of seeing things.

3. Don't expect it all to come at once, in real time. Developing mental images means reorganizing the connections between your neurons. This process is organic and has its own pace.

4. Don't force it. Simply start from what you already understand, what you can already see, what you find easy, and just play with it. Try to intuitively interpret the calculations you would have written down. If it helps, scribble on a piece of paper.

5. With time and practice, this activity will strengthen your intuitive capacities. It may not seem like you're making progress, until the day the right answer suddenly seems obvious.

You'll need a number of training sessions. Exactly how many, I don't know. It's not worth tiring yourself out-better to split it up into short five-minute sessions, and think about it in the shower or while on a walk. Above all, take your time. It's good to think about it only once a week or once a month. Most important, keep at it and don't let it drop. It will come eventually.

Understanding something is making it intuitive for yourself. Explaining something to others is proposing simple ways of making it intuitive.

But a few people choose to rely on their System 3. They're not aware that they're doing anything special. Math just feels easy to them. It doesn't even feel like work. They're just seeing pictures in their heads, and spending a couple of minutes a day looking at these pictures and asking themselves naïve questions.


There are no tricks. There never were any and there never will be.

Believing in the existence of tricks is as toxic as believing in the exisof truths that are counterintuitive by nature.


Look ing for and finding the right way of seeing things is the driving force of mathematics. It's the main source of pleasure you can take from it.


When you give free rein to your imagination, it is nearly without limits.

These domains each have their own vocabulary and intuitions. It's like they correspond to different ways of using our bodies, different  regions in our brains, different ways of focusing our attention

**Note:** Referring to the different domains of mathematics, but applies more broadly than that.

the probabilistic approach is a sort of kung fu that focuses your attention on a single number while your subconscious does all the heavy lifting.


If you want to validate your intuition and transform it into rigorous thinking, if you really want to understand why the average is 50.5 rather than 50, you need to listen to yourself, to your unconscious processes and their mechanisms.


To get to really know a mathematical object, you have to observe in for a long time, with intensity and detachment, with curiosity and open-mindedness. You need to take the time to play with it and create an intimate relationship, a relationship that takes place outside of language.


mathematical intelligence was something you constructed for yourself. It's the natural byproduct of a physical activity that everyone is free to practice: mathematical imagination.

Mathematics is the science of imagination. Between those who allow themselves to imagine, observe, and manipulate mathematical objects and those who don't, there's an enormous divide.


Contrary to popular belief, logic isn't the enemy of imagination.

It can even be a close ally. The real enemy of imagination, that which blocks understanding and makes us feel like fools, is fear.

Fear is our real limitation.

paying attention to the dissonance between my intuition and logic

Mathematics is a practice rather than knowledge.


You're at the edge of what's socially acceptable. Your credibility is at stake. If you acknowledge how lost you are, you'll look like a fool.

The social norm is to let it go.

This situation is typical of all failed math conversations, those we learn nothing from, those that serve only to reinforce our certainty that we're the worst of the worst.


I have fashioned a method by which, it seems to me, I have a way of adding progressively to my knowledge and raising it by degrees to the highest point that the limitations of my mind and the short span of life allotted to me will permit it to reach.


there are two levels of understanding. The first level consists of following the reasoning step by step and accepting that it's correct.

Accepting is not the same as understanding. The second level is real understanding. It requires seeing where the reasoning comes from and why it's natural.

It's normal not to understand. It's normal to be afraid. It's normal to have to struggle to contain your fear. It is, in fact, precisely what's at stake.

Descartes. In order not to leave any doubt, he opens his book with a sentence in the form of a slogan: "Good sense is the most evenly distributed thing in the world!"


we all know that rationality serves a purpose, just as we all know that math is extraordinarily powerful. Even if we have a hard time explaining why.

Discourse on Method is a self-help book whose message is simple: we have the ability to construct our own intelligence and selfconfidence.

If you open Discourse on Method looking for a glorification of System 2, you'll be sadly disappointed. Descartes's great innovation was to put intuition and subjectivity at the heart of his approach to knowledge. He was distrustful of established knowledge and what was written in books. He placed little credit in authorities. He preferred to reconstruct everything by himself, in his head. His method closely resembles that of Einstein, Thurston, and Grothendieck. It is, of course, System 3, the slow and careful dialogue between intuition and logic, with the aim of developing your intuition


. However, this is precisely where Descartes has the most to teach us.

As long as we conflate rationality and logic, as long as we reduce truth to its social and linguistic dimensions, as long as we see it only as a matter of consensus or authority, we completely miss the point of the Cartesian approach.

For Descartes, truth was a matter of life and death. He perfectly embodies this singular and powerful aspect of mathematical psychology his relationship to the truth is physical, almost carnal: “I constantly felt a burning desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, to see my actions for what they were, and to proceed with confidence through life.”

Descartes cared less for easy truths, those that are supposed to be true because tradition or such-and-such a person says so, or simply because they seem true. What interested him were solid truths, those that weren't going to change overnight, the ones you can rely on to become stronger and more confident, to make the right choices in life.

He approached truth as a martial art, an instinct you develop and that becomes embodied in action.

Everything else‚ the philosophical arguments, the "opinions" of intellectuals with no skin in the game was all just talk and of no interest to him: "For it seemed to me that I could discover much more truth from the reasoning that we all make about things that affect us and that will soon cause us harm if we misjudge them, than from the speculations in which a scholar engages in the privacy of his study, that have no consequence for him."

He had forced the Christian world to consider this existential question: is the truth necessarily what is written in books, or do we, as human beings, have the ability to discover it ourselves?

A bit later, Descartes realized that the dictionary was damaged.

Then the man and the books disappeared. Without waking up, Descartes interpreted the dictionary as a symbol of science and the etry collection as a symbol of philosophy and wisdom. The substance of the dream was precisely that: it is necessary to reconstruct science while being inspired by the techniques of poets who, through "the divinity of enthusiasm" and "the force of imagination," are able to uncover "the seeds of wisdom (which are found in the spirit of all men, like the sparks of fire in stone)."

Descartes thus invented rationality. Upon awakening, he was convinced that the Spirit of Truth had descended upon him to "open the treasures of all the sciences" by revealing that truth is not to be found in books, but in our heads. We have the ability to discover it ourselves, by the power of our thought.

For Descartes, the experience of understanding mathematics is the sole means of understanding what "understanding" really means.


This lead him to adopt a dualist stance: he imagined a separation between mind and body. Our mind is of an immaterial nature, created by God in his image, and thus capable of attaining Truth as if by magic.

You can't doubt with words, you can doubt only silently, in your head. Doubt is personal and intimate. If you only pretend to doubt, if you don't go all the way, if you don't take the plunge, it's worth nothing.

It's only through a relentless confrontation with doubt that forces you to clarify and specify each detail until it all becomes transparent that you're finally able to create obviousness, doubt is a technique of mental clarification. It serves to construct rather than destroy.

His "burning desire," as we've seen, was the exact opposite: "to proceed with confidence through life."


Descartes discovered that when we make a sincere attempt at introspection, when we're attentive to our cognitive dissonance, when we force ourselves to grasp our most fleeting mental images and put words to them, when we have the courage to face the internal contradictions of our imagination, when we have enough calm and selfcontrol to look beyond our prejudices and see things as they really are, it has the result of modifying our mental representations, of making them more powerful, solid, coherent, and effective.


Practiced right, doubt can induce a state of profound compre hension that amazed Descartes, as it amazes all those who experience it. It's an experience that leaves you transformed, and that in itself is well worth the effort.

Doubt is not only the secret behind Descartes's achievements, it's also the secret of his incredible chutzpah.

Seen in this way, Discourse on Method is a master class in self-confidence. His version of rationality is concrete, personal, rooted in our deepest aspirations. The whole point is to make us stronger:
"This assurance is one side of a mindset, whose other side is an openness to doubt: an attitude of curiosity that excludes all fear as regards one's own mistakes, that allows us to detect and constantly correct them."

This last quote, taken from Grothendieck's Harvests and Sowings, perfectly summarizes this fundamental lesson from Descartes, and captures a unique aspect of the mathematical ethos.

“Arrogant people who love being contradicted, show-offs who smile when you prove them wrong, dogmatists ready to change their mind in a heartbeat: I've encountered this singular attitude only among very good mathematicians.”

In losing the possibility of imitation, we lose much more than our main learning method. We also lose our main driver of desire.


If I could show it, the math that goes on in my head would intrigue a lot of people. But it serves no purpose to say so, since I don't have any means of showing it.


As an adult, I've developed my own way of making use of the special state of mind just before falling asleep. Rather than focusing on subjects that preoccupy me, I've learned to simply let myself be filled with them. The nuance is subtle but fundamental. Focusing is thinking intensely, in search of solutions. It never works and it keeps you from sleeping. Being filled with something means contemplating it without a goal, in a decentered and disinterested manner. It's almost like dreaming.

I might be wrong, but it seems to me that this technique of falling asleep increases my chances of waking up the next morning with interesting ideas.


If you want to practice switching viewpoints, here is a good exercise:

1. Choose a random reference point around you, for example, the corner opposite from you in a room, or the window of a house when you're walking in the street.

2. Try to imagine what you'd see if you were looking in your direction from this reference point.

It's not a binary exercise in which there are those who can and those who can't do it. The exercise is hard for everyone.


creativity is simply the ultimate form of understanding, which itself is but a natural product of our mental activity. It emerges when we force ourselves to continue looking at things that intimidate us until they finally become familiar and obvious.


Here is an exercise of the imagination that helped me a lor when I was trying to improve in these subject areas. I looked at an object, for example, a bottle of shampoo sitting in the bathroom, and asked myself the following question: if my body were shaped like the bottle, how would it feel physically

When you're sincerely preoccupied with something, when you're in trouble, when you have problems at work or problems at home, you instinctively call on the method used by mathematicians.

At night, in your bed, you try to understand the issue. You mull it over. You replay in your head mental images that you dig up from the depths of your memory and imagination. You play Lego with these images. You try to organize them, fit them together and assemble something meaningful, something that makes sense

Descartes's method has the effect of modifying your mental representations and your intuitions and gradually reinforcing their internal consistency.

It's in fact the whole point of the approach. By anchoring our convictions in indisputable evidence and rigorous deduction, we can turn them into certitudes that, over time, become as strong as reinforced concrete.

Except that sometimes these certitudes are false.


Here is the reason why there was a riddle: human language is structurally incompatible with logical reasoning, and we can never have 100 percent certainty in truths expressed in human language and arrived at through deductive logic.

That goes for all kinds of "truths," the ones coming from official science and the ones coming from our small everyday reasoning that we employ all the time.

Outside of mathematics, rationality remains under constant threat from the fragility of our language and our way of perceiving the world.

without this rigidity, no language can be compatible with logical reasoning. It may be annoying, but that's how it is.

In the end, rationality should be used as a guide rather than an ultimate judge. The reality that's before our eyes always merits more attention than the certitudes in our heads. Rationality is great, but empiricists do have a point.

Trusting reason too much, using human language as if it had all the attributes of mathematical language, as if words had a precise meaning, as if each detail merited being interpreted and the logical validity of an argument sufficed to guarantee the validity of its conclusions, is a characteristic symptom of paranoia. When applied outside of mathematics and without any safeguards, mathematical reasoning becomes an actual illness.


To find out, to understand how math really works and what it can really do for us, we cannot continue to overlook its most direct practical aspect: math works on our brain and modifies how we see the world.


Is the elephant young or old? Dangerous or harmless? Is it angry? Does it have a lot of self-confidence? Do you feel sympathy or distrust?

You've never taken a class on interpreting drawings and yet you know how to answer these questions, immediately and without any effort. All that from a few lines drawn on a page.

How is such a miracle even biologically possible?


Intelligence is what is called an emergent property: individually our neurons are primitive and limited, but vast assemblies of neurons make incredibly sophisticated behaviors "emerge" that can't be attributed to any neuron by itself these large-scale behaviors are what we call intelligence.


From the outset in this book, I've discussed a number of power ful and mysterious phenomena that have perplexed me throughout my mathematical career: mental plasticity, the inevitable ambiguity of human language, the role of time and trial and error in trying to understand things, the necessity to ask stupid questions, the feeling of obviousness that comes after the fact.

another phenomenon takes place in the background. It happens at a much slower pace, and is so discrete that we can't perceive it. The correct metaphor isn't lightning, but organic growth. It's the process through which we learn. It's the basis of what we have called System 3, our ability to gradually modify the way we represent the world to ourselves.

Math is first and foremost an inner tool. Its main purpose is to enhance human cognition, With the correct exercises of imagination, we have the ability to develop an intuitive and familiar understanding of mathematical notions. We can appropriate them and make them an extension of our bodies.


They can understand mathematical objects only in a perceptual manner, via false human interpretations, approximations, translations from mathematical vocabu lary into human language.

In fact, this is precisely why math is so beneficial for us: it forces us to enrich our human vocabulary and our human perception.

from a purely practical standpoint, math is indistinguishable from fiction.

Learning math is an activity of pure imagination.


Yes, ideas come unexpectedly, "as if summoned from the void," but that's normal. Yes, plasticity is a slow and silent mechanism that occurs without any real effort on our part, provided we're exposed to the right mental images. Yes, we learn precisely when we force ourselves to imagine things that we don't yet understand, which unfortunately is the same exact thing that most people run away from. Yes, paying attention to the small details that trouble us is of the utmost importance, and the fastest way to learn is to follow the path of maximum perplexity. Cartesian doubt, within this framework, can be interpreted as an "adversarial" hack to accelerate our learning.


How do you teach math to someone who believes that their intuition and perception of reality are given and impossible to reprogram?


Yet using our imagination isn't navigating an ethereal layer of the cosmos. Nor is it a parasitical activity that we should seek to suppress. It is, instead, a genuine physical activity that is central to human cognition.


If we day dream, it's because this allows us to fabricate understanding. What we imagine modifies the actual wiring of our brain and literally changes the way we see the world.

There are a thousand and one ways to imagine. We haven't yet learned to recognize them all, and still less to name them. Think, meditate, reflect, visualize, analyze, fantasize, reason, dream: we use these words haphazardly, without really knowing what they mean, and without realizing how much they have in common.

It's through this vagueness that all the misunderstandings slip in.

No one cared to even tell us that there are right and wrong ways of using our imagination. Some make us stupid. Some make us crazy.

And some have the power of making us incredibly smart.

34 Now that we're teaching machines the secrets of intelligence, it's about time we start teaching humans.


The secret math, the one that deals with human understanding, will never possess the rigor and objectivity of official math. Because of this, it will never be considered as a "serious" topic.

This "nonserious" topic, however, is arguably much more important than most properly mathematical questions.


Failing to place human understanding at the center of mathematics is failing to acknowledge the very nature of mathematics.


I have tried to approach it in my own way, starting from a simple premise: talking about math as I have experienced it, in the simplest way possible, examining what it really consists of, the things you do inside your head, and how to approach it concretely.


This is precisely why math is difficult: it requires looking straight at what is beyond our comprehension. We must become genuinely interested in it. We must force ourselves to imagine it and put words to all our impressions, without being distracted by our constant feeling of inferiority. And we must do that precisely when our instinct tells us to run away as quickly as we can.

I know now that my candor and my sensitivity are my most powerful intellectual weapons. The mathematical approach is one of integrity and being in tune with oneself.

My advice is to have no shame in starting at the beginning, with the most classical and elementary proofs. Since it won't be easy for you to know if you really understand them, try explaining them to someone else, perhaps a child.

When we try explaining things to others, we often realize that our own ideas aren't as clear as we thought. It's a painful and humiliating experience, but one that you can get over, and it's precisely by getting over it that you get ahead in math.

The later works of Wittgenstein are an excellent complement to this chapter as well as to chapter 19. The most accessible is perhaps On Certainty, a short text assembled posthumously from his notes (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1975).


Proofs without Words: The Example of Ramanujan Continued Fractions notes: http://www.xavierviennot.org/coursIMSc2017/lectures_files/Ramanujan  Inst_2017.pdf; video recording

Other works cited in this chapter:

Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910).


 


 

Gentlemen. Welcome to the 49th edition of MNTS.

Let’s rock and fire.

Greg Maddux One of a Kind Documentary

Maddux represents absolutely everything I loved about baseball. This is so good.

School is Not Enough

Sarris is on fire lately. This makes me so pumped to be a parent.

The goal of education is to create a path to mastery or responsibility. If a child can sell the fruit of his labor, so much the better. But the essential lesson is that every difficult thing attempted acts as a multiplier on his confidence and the rest of his knowledge. Drudgery is sometimes confused with building character, and I think this is a mistake. It is building skill itself that builds self-possession. After selling thousands of dollars worth of pastries over the summer, a child does not only know that he can make pastries. He knows that he can make anything.

Rory Sutherland on TikTok fame

Eventually Sutherland and Ogilvy bought the account from its creator and have continued the upload process themselves. “I don’t have any sense that this was a resentment because he thought of doing it and I didn’t, I can only be grateful for him for spotting it,” he says.

Sutherland’s reaction to this is quite telling of his character. He could have just as easily been outraged and lawyered up. It’s always a pleasure to see someones behaviors align with what they espouse when the chips are on the table.

“It occurs to me that there’s a lot of knowledge in ad agencies or the marketing departments of Unilever, or whatever. Knowledge which … if every small business, if every cafe in Britain, got just a little better at understanding the stuff then you could put a percentage point or two on GDP,” he says.

Ray Bradbury on intuition, agency, and love.

We are big fans of Mr. Bradbury.

“The man who cannot laugh freely is a sick man.

The man who cannot cry and releases tears in that direction there's a sick man.

The man who cannot be violent through exercise, through sports, through acting out his violence on paper, or painting, or acting on a stage is a sick man”.

Private Train Cars

Can we get a NetJets but for private rail cars? I’m buying.

Rubato

The folks at Rubato are absolutely nailing it. Overall, super thoughtful and well executed. I love every piece they conjure up. They make garments worthy aspiration. I’ve watched this whimsical day dream of a brand video for their latest collection more times than I care to admit. I’m struck by the masterful use of natural light, texture, and color/color grading in the cinematography and how perfectly harmonized all the imagery is. Really fun stuff.

If you want to nerd out on the brand a bit more like I did, this interview with the founders is great.

Music I’m Enjoying

Something about this season of the year calls for jazz. These are two of my favorites albums in rotation this fall.

Ethiopiques, Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz 1969-1974

Getz/Gilerto ‘76

Quote that’s been on my mind lately

What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate selfdefence.

- Thucydides

From my camera roll

That’s a wrap on 49.

Vividus Invictus!1

AP

While running is not as obviously creative as music, it too is an outlet for human expression and requires well-honed technique beyond the physical realm. Just as with dance, there is a rhythm and a beauty to running that transcends mere pavement pounding and elevates the act of running well to artistry.

Commentary

I bought this book on a whim several years ago at a used book store. Just recently, I felt compelled to pick it up. The descriptions, references, and quotes made this an unexpectedly fun read. It turned out to be the perfect timing in my running journey to read it.

I suspect that if I had read this at the start of my running practice, it would have been far less valuable. I did find a handful of facts I wish I would have known much earlier in my athletic career, so I might recommend flipping through the contents of it if you are just starting out. However, this is definitely a book written for a runner by a runner. I would put this in the same category of books as Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons. The deeper you go into the practice, the more insightful they become. I suspect I will revisit this one frequently as my running skill progresses.

From a technique standpoint my running form was not terribly far off from this, but I have been tightening up the loose bits and focusing on implementing and maintaining the pose in my daily runs and I have experienced the following:

1. My calves are sore as hell, but they are adapting.

2. I am running at the same sustained pace while keeping my hear rate about 20 beats lower. (a portion of this is definitely the slightly lower temps, but still significant)

3. Post run my legs and body are far less fatigued.

4. It’s easier to maintain the pose the faster I run

5. My feet are much quieter interacting with the pavement

6. When I’m able to disassociate my upper and lower body I really feel zoned in, like I can run forever.

What I’m stealing

1. Injuries are the biggest enemy of consistency.

2. Transfer the force of gravity into horizontal movement

3. Stride frequency, not length, is the key to running faster.

4. Minimize bounce and maintain a high stride rate.

5. Disassociate the body from the legs

6. Reduce tension and concentrate on muscular elasticity

7. Develop a heightened level of sensitivity to my movements.

8. Great running is a physical manifestation of extremely strong mental ability.

Supplemental Resources

I can’t help but be moved by her performance.

Oddly enough, Army Holistic Helath and Fitness Drills I shared in MNTS #47 uses the Pose Method in their training instruction.

Pose Method website

Pose Method YouTube

Dog ears, highlights, marginalia

If you want to be healthy - run, if you want to be handsome - run, if you want to be smart - run.

Ancient Greek aphorism

The Racers run smoothly, with a fine tuned stride like a Wankel rotary engine.

No wasted energy, no fighting the street or bouncing along like a jogger.

These people flow and they flow very fast.

Hunter S. Thompson

Journalist Hunter S. Thompson, whose quote from his book The Curse of Lono opened this chapter, vividly described this transition from "The Racers" to "The Runners" as he described the Honolulu Marathon:

The Runners are different. Very few of them flow, and not many run fast. And the slower they are, the more noise they make. By the time the four-digit numbers came by, the sound of the race was disturbingly loud and disorganized. The smooth rolling hiss of the Racers had degenerated into a hell broth of slapping and pounding feet.

injuries are the biggest enemy of consistency

In Gary Guten's book, he notes the four factors that contribute to sports injuries: change, alignment, twisting, and speed. The first one, "change", is very common with runners and refers to a sudden increase of mileage, distance, frequency, or intensity of training by more than 10% per week. In other words, the runner wants to see some fast improvement and instead commits the most basic training error of all, overdoing it and winding up injured instead of faster


I wanted the runner to get the maximum benefit out of the gratuitous forces of gravity, muscle elasticity and inertia and minimize voluntary muscular efforts that require the expenditure of energy.


Instead of pounding the pavement, you now are virtually hovering above it. Listen. Instead of thud, thud, thud you now hear tap, tap, tap. Focus on the tapping. As your leg speed increases, you want the tapping to become less and less audible. Each brief tap is your only contact with the ground. You are no longer thudding the full weight of your body through the pavement, you're keeping it suspended above the pavement. This is the Incredible Lightness of Running.


Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

Goethe


When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything.

Shunyro Suzuki


In fact, the role that gravity plays in human movement is so critical that you could say trying to run without understanding gravity is like trying to sail without understanding the wind.

Remember, the boat doesn't use the force of the sailor to move forward; it is the skill of the sailor in capturing the force of the wind that moves the boat forward. In running, it will be your skill in transferring the force of gravity into horizontal movement that determines just how far and fast you can run.

Simply put, superior running technique is the art of releasing the body to fall freely.


Running is simply the changing of support from one leg to the other. Simple as that. One instant, you are in the Running Pose supported on one leg, the next you are in the Running Pose supported on the other leg. Your only objective is to alternate your Running Poses from one leg to the other as quickly as possible. Running is what takes place in between. Running happens.


How fast a body moves is determined entirely by how quickly (Fig.13.2) and efficiently (Fig. 13.3) it changes its support. Interestingly, the perfect change of support comes from the body's willingness to fall.

All the muscular effort to remove the foot from the ground comes from the hamstring. The action of the hamstring initiates the release of the foot from the ground and sets up the direction of the shin and foot movement under the hip.

we don't want to think about trying to use the legs to move the body forward

Instead, all we need to do is pick the foot up under the body nothing more. With respect to the ground, the vertical movement of the body should be minimized as much as possible. The feet move up and down under the body. The body itself remains as still as possible.

In order to reorient that mindset, focus on the lower trunk of your body as you run. Disregard the watch and the visual cues and feel your trunk, in all its stillness, moving forward. The trunk isn't doing any work, yet as the turnover rate of the legs beneath it gets faster and faster, you can actually feel the trunk accelerate. This is the feeling you're looking for - a complete disassociation between the body, which is being accelerated by gravity, and the legs, which are merely changing support at an increasing rate.

The hamstring lifts the foot from the ground, the body begins to fall, the foot returns softly to the ground, and the body stays upright while moving forward. The faster you change support and alternate your poses, the faster you run. It's just that simple.

The lesson here is that the faster a runner's stride, i.e. the faster he changes support from one foot to the next, the faster his forward speed will be. Stride frequency, not length, is the key to faster running.


In his 1997 book Daniels' Running Formula, the respected American coach Jack Daniels noted that there is data from his many years of practical observation that indicates elite runners tend to run with a stride frequency of not less than 180 strides per minute, which he links to good technique.


There's a common phrase race commentators use when the form of a competitive runner begins to deteriorate in the latter stages of a race and it couldn't ring any truer. "It looks like the wheels have come off," they say, and when you look at the runner, you know exactly what they mean. The form and efficiency are gone and the runner is now struggling to finish, no longer a contender for victory.

The meaning of the wheel concept is really very simple: to move with wheel-like efficiency, we must minimize bounce (vertical oscillation), land with support directly under the body and maintain a high stride rate. The Pose Method of Running is designed to accomplish all three of these goals.

While running, you must always remain is this pose as you change support from one foot to the next. By faithfully staying in the pose you maximize the use of your muscular elasticity and resilience and thus reduce your energy expenditures. In fact, a 1964 study (2) indicated that mechanical efficiency of running increased up to 50%, due to contributions from elastic storage and return of energy...

The payoff to "elastic" running is that you can maintain a high stride rate without "going anaerobic" and using up your body's available energy supply of ATP (adrenotriphosphate), the fuel of your highest intensity sprints. Elastic running gives you the ability to run faster for greater distances and still keep something in reserve (1, 3 & 4).

if we attempt to run with a longer stride, we slow down. Why? Again, the answer is simple. In order to lengthen the stride, we thrust the leg out in front of the body. As soon as the leading foot strikes the ground, it is planted there until the entire body passes over it. So, instead of changing support very quickly, the long stride means that it changes very slowly, which interrupts the pull of gravity and slows the forward progress of the body.


The faster you change support, the more permission you give to your body to freefall.

And the faster you fall, the faster you run. Your running speed is directly related to your stride frequency or cadence.

do everything in your power to avoid unnecessary effort and tension. Concentrate and use your muscular elasticity to pull your foot just off the ground, making only the effort necessary to break the point of contact between foot and ground. Focus your efforts on carefully synchronizing your increased stride frequency with the rate at which your body is falling forward and you will soon be running faster...and further... than you would ever have imagined

it's quite a lot to think about. You've got to keep all your joints bent, constantly fall forward, land on the balls of your feet, pick your foot off the ground as rapidly as possible, keep your trunk very still, focus on a rapid stride rate, etc.


Let gravity do the work of returning your foot to support. What this means is that as soon as you have used your hamstring to lift the foot from the ground, you must completely relax the leg and "let" it fall softly back to the ground. Doing this will synchronize the return of the foot to support with the passage of your body over that spot, meaning that your footfall will be exactly where it is supposed to be, in line with your trunk, neck and head.


Practice and thought might gradually forge many an art.

Virgil


The Greeks, those masters of thought, gave us the word "technique", from the root word "techne", which means "art" or "mastery.

While running is not as obviously creative as music, it too is an outlet for human expression and requires well-honed technique beyond the physical realm. Just as with dance, there is a rhythm and a beauty to running that transcends mere pavement pounding and elevates the act of running well to artistry.

Let's return for a moment to the discussion of the previous chapter where we compared learning to run to learning to play classical piano. When a musician is playing the piano, his or her skills directly depend on personal sensitivity in hearing, music tone,  rhythm, etc., which have to be developed to an extraordinary level and then translated into the performance. In a sense, the pianist shuts out the outside world and develops a protective bubble occupied only by music.

As runners, we must develop the same heightened level of sensitivity to our movements.

to truly appreciate what we are doing as runners, we must identify these sensations and then develop them to a heightened state. The two most important sensations are gravity and free falling, but to develop them, we have to "tune in" to other feedback: the contact of our feet with the ground, a feeling of effortlessness, shortened time on support, and an overall sensation of lightness.


As you get more and more skilled in developing your running sensibility, you'll become more sensitive to critical sensations like muscular elasticity, effortless increase of cadence and an overall sense of flow in your movement.

what you "feel" would be hot coals. As you're making these light skipping movements, imagine that every time your foot touches down it has just touched a blazing white-hot coal. Your reaction will be swift and purposeful.

The Pony

Stand in the Running Pose, both knees slightly bent, the ankle of the non-support foot slightly elevated (Fig. 24.3). Simultaneously lift the ankle of the support foot while allowing your body weight to shift to the opposite leg, which is relaxed and falling. Sounds simple, doesn't it. It is, but you have to focus on the following sensations in order to it properly:

1) Initiate every movement by lifting the support leg, not by pushing down on the non-support leg;

2) Lift the support ankle vertically, with neither forward or backward direction;

3) Shift your weight without inducing any muscular tension;

4) Allow the non-support leg to fall.


Foot Tapping

Instead, you want to lift the ankle, vertically, so that the ankle, hip, shoulder and head remain in a straight line. So instead of lifting the knee, you want to lift the ankle.


Concentrate on the following:

1) Rapid firing of the hamstring. If you are working with a partner, have him or her gently tap your hamstring every time your foot touches down. This will cue you to fire your hamstring and initiate early muscular contraction.

2) Keep your entire musculature relaxed after the initial firing of the hamstring. If you're successful at this, your leg will decelerate as it is going up, then accelerate as it drops back down. Both the slowing down and the speeding up will be due to gravity, not muscular effort. Remember - don't continue lifting your leg. Just fire the hamstring once and then let gravity take over.


This progression is key in creating the simple biomechanical framework of the Pose Method: the hamstring does the work and gravity pulls you forward.


As you run, you can quickly run through that checklist over and over again, until it becomes a sort of mantra for your run.

1) Check the pose: Am I relaxed and balanced? Am I landing lightly on the ball of my foot, with my foot directly underneath my body? Are my knees still bent?

2) Check the fall: Do I have any muscular tension? Am I braking myself with any body part? Am I leaning with my whole body?

3) Check the foot pull: Am I pulling my foot...and not my leg?

Am I pulling the instant my foot touches the ground? Aml pulling straight up?

As you settle into the run, this mantra or formula for your run can be shortened into a rhythm. Pose-fall-pull, Pose-fall-pull.


From a technical standpoint, it is actually easier to run fast than it is to run slowly in the Pose Method. Where before you might have run like a wheezing pick-up truck, with the Pose Method you now have the technology of a race car built into your body, and everybody knows that race cars love to move fast. At slow speeds, you are staying too long on support, you are standing up too straight, you are landing with too much of a thud, but as you accelerate, everything smoothes out. Your running machine begins firing on all cylinders.


In keeping with the old aphorism "Mens sana in corpore sano", we have to realize that not only does "a healthy body contain a healthy spirit', but the converse proves the rule, without a healthy spirit, you are unlikely to have a truly healthy body.

Great running, like excellence in golf, gymnastics or ballet is really a physical manifestation of extremely strong mental ability.

by stripping away all of the excess and wasted energy in reducing the act of running to its elemental form, we have increased the dependence on mental strength. The technique of the Pose Method is more than just the mechanics of running; it is an integrated approach that demands utter concentration.


 
 

Gentlemen. Welcome to the 48th edition of MNTS.

Let’s boogie.

Hamlet Hail To The Thief

A frenetic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet haunted by Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief

Unexpected, but incredible collab. Perhaps this is your sign to take another pass at Hamlet. Comments section going off.

Breadcrumbs

This is part of why I write — the interesting people I have found I did not first meet in person, but found their breadcrumbs online: blogs, projects, videos, stories, photo reels, some of them produced years before I found them. People understand the idea of a famous author’s or director’s body of work, but there is no reason this concept can’t apply to everyone in some small way. I think it does.

Rodney Mullen on Science, Language, Innovation and Intuition

This talk is as wild as his skateboarding. Legend.

For an invention to become an innovation, it has to match the ethos and the usage of the culture adopting it. Big lesson for us.

So the deliberate maintenance of these very subtle skillsets are what are instrumental to setting people apart to do what we do at these levels.

Row 7 Seed Company

Produce optimized for flavor, what a concept.

Today, we are partnering with regional organic growers to bring Row 7 produce to the grocery aisle, ensuring that each vegetable is grown for place and picked (and eaten) at the perfect moment. The end goal? Tastier food, healthier soil, more diverse and nutritious diets for as many people as possible. In other words, a revolution we can all get behind.

The Lindy Guide to Lighting

Perhaps the most impactful and cost effective design decision you can make to improve the feel-good factor in your home is being considerate about lighting choices.

Humans evolved in environments where the primary source of light was the sun, and much of that light was horizontal. During early morning and late afternoon, the sun sits lower in the sky, producing horizontal light that is softer and more scattered. This period coincides with humans' natural peak activity times during our evolutionary past. That’s when humans were most active during our evolutionary past. It's when our bodies were primed for work, hunting, gathering, and movement.

All types of light are useful and pleasing used in the correct context. These are my simple parameters for how I think about lighting. Brighter, bluer, overhead light earlier in the day. Great for staying alert and focused, but can cause some serious dis regulation if used too early or too late in the day. Transitioning to dimmer, warmer, horizontal light as the day progresses aligns with our circadian cycles and helps to facilitate winding down for restful sleep.

Bon Iver - SABLE, EP

New music I’m enjoying.

From my camera roll

That’s a wrap on 48.

Vividus Invictus!1

AP

For me, the trick to it wasn't just in keeping my mouth shut: it was in learning how and when to lower the volume in my head, so that once I made up my mind, I wouldn't rethink or unthink a wellconsidered decision my gut had already signed off on.

Commentary

Reading Authentic felt like hanging out with your grandpa—wholesome, corny, but in a satisfyingly nostalgic and charming way. Somewhat surprisingly, I picked up echoes of Munger, Taleb, and Thorpe, and Walton throughout the memoir. Paul Van Doren was a man of his era, but the wisdom he shares is timeless.

As a Southern California native, I’ve always been a bit of a Vans diehard. If I were held at gunpoint and forced to choose just one style of shoe for the rest of my life, it would be, without hesitation, the Vans Authentic 44 DX Anaheim Factory edition. My love for their classic simplicity only grows stronger with time—it’s the perfect all-purpose shoe for Southern California living. Nothing else comes close.

I bought1 my first pair of Vans in 1996 and have had multiple pairs in rotation2 ever since. Sadly, my introduction to Vans came through the cold-cured “Wally,” which arguably defined the dark ages in Vans' history. During that era, the leadership was less than competent, shipping all manufacturing to Korea, where the shoes were “cold-cured” instead of heat-cured through Vans’ traditional vulcanizing process.

What I’m stealing

1. Get your hands dirty. Cut out distractions. Find a way to keep everything moving forward.

2. When you have good people with you, the odds are with you, too

3. Beauty lies in simplicity

4. Companies are built person by person, not brick by brick

5. If you do things better than most, the odds are in your favor

6. Teach by good example

7. There is dignity in being of service — dignity and pride in a job well done.

8. Instigate and fuel discourse

9. Don't bet the ranch if you don't have all the details

10. When someone affords you a chance to rethink a hasty decision, consider accepting that act of mercy with grace

11. Figuring out who isn't going to win is just as important as knowing who is

12. Don’t rethink or unthink a wellconsidered decision your gut had already signed off on

13. Be a dedicated student of probability and the nature of chance

14. Success is more important than who gets the credit for it

15. Think outside of traditional productivity metrics when aligning incentives

16. The only reason things don't get done is because someone doesn't want to do them.

17. No chasing after pigeons

18. You don't know what you don't know, and if you don't know, ask.

19. “No’s” are opportunities to innovate.

20. Take a genuine interest in how your customers live life with your product

Supplemental Resources

A Brief History of Vans: "Off the Wall" Since '66

Pillowheat.com - “stock hunters & collectors by trade. we scour the earth for deadstock rarities & deliver vintage heat which is.....as cool as the other side of the pillow!"

The J.Crew x Vans collabs are always excellent.

I haven’t listened to this yet, but I have it the queue.

Dog ears, highlights, marginalia

it crystallized for me what I would be willing to work my ass off to avoid


What I considered most important about people was their attitude, their integrity, and their desire to do things the right way.

Without knowing it at the time, I was initiating what would eventually become the Vans empire by molding the inclusive, people-centric family vibe that became our signature Vans culture. I was building it person by person, not brick by brick


Over the years and throughout his life, he devised all sorts of gadgets. He also happened to be a checkers champion and a hell of a card player. He could engineer anything, build anything, fix anything, and outsmart just about anybody about anything. His projects were endless, and he loved doing them. Dad was a very wise, gifted, and creative man.

if you do something no one else can do, or do something better than most, the odds are in your favor for success.

The property's crowning glory was Dad's workshop.

Actually, his shop was a series of buildings: there was a utility room, a boiler room, a woodworking shop, a packing room, a printing room, and a saw room.


My parents taught me so much, more than I ever learned in school. Most of the positive attributes I still carry with me were taught by their good example. My parents taught me long ago that people were the most important thing in your life-more important than money or prestige or possessions. My father believed that family always came first. So do I-that's how I've conducted my own life and run my business.


Even back then there were child labor laws, but none of us-parents or children-ever questioned the expectation that we would contribute to the group. Neither of my parents offered validation or gratitude in exchange, and I didn't need it. We all participated in the family business, and there was dignity in being of service-dignity and pride in a job well done.


The Van Dorens were a raucous, loudmouthed bunch. My people communicate in decibels, and when we fight, man, do we fight. Whoever bellowed loudest won.


If the Van Dorens had a coat of arms, it would feature a lasagna and a bullhorn.


My father made it his job to instigate and fuel discourse and did so, I think, to get our dander up, to get us to take a position. All my childhood, there was always an argument about something. We were always looking at something two different ways.


He had just taught me a painful lesson: don't bet the ranch if you don't have all the details. I would argue that's another lesson best learned early.


That afternoon, Dad also taught me a lesson in strategy: when someone affords you a chance to rethink a hasty decision, consider accepting that act of mercy with grace.

The truth is that almost everything in life hangs in the balance of likelihoods or odds. That sounds ominous, but it should be of some comfort that odds are driven by basic arithmetic anyone can understand. In other words, math.

In almost every race, there are many unknowns and even more variables. And in almost every race, it's just as important to figure out who isn't going to win as who is.


Dad had taught me to watch and listen carefully to what was being said around me. His lessons in situational listening taught me the wonders of keeping my mouth shut. I'd listen to the owners, jockeys, and oddsmakers and then distill what I'd overheard.cd For me, the trick to it wasn't just in keeping my mouth shut: it was in learning how and when to lower the volume in my head, so that once I made up my mind, I wouldn't rethink or unthink a wellconsidered decision my gut had already signed off on.

I was a dedicated student of probability and the nature of chance.

As far as I could tell, the bottleneck hinged with the stays,


It did not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Randy's routines, methods, and procedures did not make sense.


If someone had a better idea than mine, of course I would adopt that. I really didn't care if I didn't get credit. I didn't need credit; I needed success.


The boss was telling me, "Don't do it."

I said he was wrong and then I proved it. Most people won't do that-which is why things don't get done.


I really had to hustle to get everything in place. The next day, the moving truck arrived. For most of that night, I set up furniture and unpacked every single box. When I was finally done in the wee hours of the morning, I thought the house looked like a model home.

**Note:** Surprise and delight


No surprise, they did. What was not to love? This was California in the sixties, the land of endless sun, snazzy convertibles, and the Beach Boys.


Back in Massachusetts, I had gotten into the habit of washing my car at least once a week. As the kids got old enough, they would come out and help. I would hose and they would wipe.

Since the weather in California was nice virtually all year round, I expanded the family tradition. Every day when I got home from work, I would call out, "Hey, kids! Dad's home!" and everyone would troop out to the driveway with buckets and hoses.


It might sound like I was a slave driver, but we had a lot of fun splashing and sudsing and catching up with what everyone had done that day.


We followed this same routine most every day for years.


My daughter Cheryl says, "It taught us responsibility, and that there was no value in not doing things the right way."

If Serge's company was going to make the uppers for Randy's West, I wanted it done right. I devised a simple sample kit that would instruct anyone on how to stitch a tennis shoe upper correctly.

, "Honestly, I don't know how you are ever going to defeat the union."

I knew I wouldn't have to; the workers themselves would do it when they realized I was on their side, which I was.


The reason I had developed the idea of incentives in the first place was because I'd had a problem with production quotas versus quality. When I focused on production numbers, quality went down.

When I worked on quality, production went down. It was frustrating.

Finally, I convinced the workers that if they produced the quota for eight hours of work and made whatever parts they were assigned to produce at top quality, but did it in fewer hours, they were free to go home early that day.

We eventually reached the point where we agreed that if the workers accumulated enough hours, we'd allow them to take Friday off. The goal was to make in four days what used to take five days.

This meant they worked a four-day week but were paid for five days.

As long as they maintained their production quotas and quality, everyone was a winner.

That day at the US Open of Surfing, Duke Kahanamoku was there along with Fred Hemmings, a world champion surfer who went on to become a Hawaii state senator later in life, as well as Butch Van Artsdalen, Corky Carroll, and Paul Strauch. They were all wearing matching blue Hawaiian shirts.

When Duke Kahanamoku came by our booth to check out the shoes, I introduced myself. Looking at those shirts, I was suddenly struck by an idea. iceb dod "Say, I could make you a pair of sneakers that match your shirt


Really, I have found the only reason things don't get done is because someone doesn't want to do them.


no chasing after pigeons


Navajo white was the color of choice.


one of the most important business lessons: you don't know what you don't know, and if you don't know, ask.


My mother was Catholic, and I was raised going to church, but by that point in my life, I didn't go very often. I couldn't deal with things like confession: you could rob a bank, but if you went ahead and confessed it the next day, it was okay. That didn't wash with me.


Those annoyingly sticky soles would turn out to be a huge selling point for skateboarders, so eventually I learned to love the sticky.


The soles were cracking across the ball of the foot after only a short time in use. We ended up adding nine vertical lines to the pattern over the ball area to create a denser woven pattern there-and voila! Our signature feature.

Our bread-and-butter was style no. 44, a classic deck shoe that later became known, aptly, as "the Authentic." Deck shoes were the kind of casual footwear popular all over the country then, but ours was the first to feature an extra-thick waffle sole. Our version of the generic shoe shape called a CVO, which stands for circular vamp oxford, came in both canvas and suede: since any material being vulcanized must be heat resistant, the upper material is typically  limited to suede, leather, and cotton with metal hardware. There were five eyelets for the laces.


we offered our four standards in canvaslight blue, navy blue, loden green, and white-and we carried them in sizes for men, women, boys, and girls. The suede shoes came in white, blue, gold, and red.


The first supplier to reject us was the guy we had contracted to make our shoeboxes. He reneged on a deal we had made, and ultimately refused to work with us at all, ever. I took the opportunity to come up with a new type of box.


My novel solution was to use a single, flat piece of cardboard, which could be folded with a built-in, folddown lid. I might have held a grudge against Japan for Pearl Harbor, but the origami I'd seen when I'd first visited my backer Serge there had inspired me.


the sign over our first retail store would read "House of Vans."


Getting a pair of Vans should be a really terrific and satisfying experience. That's the difference: people wear Vans all day, every day.


the mom is really the boss of the family. Mom is almost always the one who decides when, where, how, and everything else about shopping for the family. This changed my entire perspective on our core market.

We had to get more moms. Selling shoes to moms took longer, because our shoes just lasted for a while, and sometimes they wouldn't come back for sixteen weeks or so. We just kept sewing our shoes with moms in mind-that's what we did, for years and years and years.


I had noticed that almost everyone wore white cotton socks with their sneakers, regardless of style. Why not sell white socks in our stores?

We contacted the rep for the Trimfit brand


store walls would be painted the usual Navajo white, with blue trim.


The formula we came up with for the placement of a Vans store was to choose a small, free-standing building on a busy street, rather than one that was sandwiched between two other stores. That seemed to work best for us


Mel was the one who pointed out to me, during a conversation about a mural for one of our first half-dozen buildings, the importance of opening a business not just on a busy street, but in a location where drivers had a right-hand view of the outside wall.


But from that time on, we never opened a store with the exposed wall on the left side of the street


Our lines of customers got so long that we decided to institute a sort of fast-track reservation system. We gave people a ticket to come back during a certain time slot later in the day. That way, they wouldn't have to waste time standing in line but could go right into the tent when they returned.

The system worked great, and our customers really appreciated the efficiency.


The best advertising decision we made at the fair was to put every sale we made into one of our large, bright-red handled bags with the name Vans emblazoned across both sides. They were roomy and sturdy, so most people would put all their fair purchases and doodads into our bag. By the end of each day, there were hundreds of ing our brand.


When skateboarders adopted Vans, ultimately, they gave us an outward culture and an inner purpose.


Our patternmaker called it the "jazz stripe.


I guess I always felt that my wife did not appreciate what I did.

Sometimes if things weren't going right at Vans, I didn't come home for days. I wasn't running around; I was working.


a lack of focus always jams things up, while putting on blinders has the potential to serve a greater good. What I am saying is when leaders limit distraction, they're better able to lead.


Spicoli. Not only did he skate and surf, but he was also in a band



If jealousy is a lack of confidence, then greed is an excess of ego,


It strikes me that I always seem to remember being slighted or snubbed-even the illusion of it-more keenly than I do being rewarded. For me, I remember when someone overlooked or  dismissed me more clearly than the times I was chosen or I made my own choice.


To give customers what they want, you have to know what they want. To that end, VF launched a Global Consumer Insights Assessment, a comprehensive survey of twenty-six thousand customers in twelve countries to determine who and what constituted our core market. Imagine that!

They asked customers what they liked about Vans, how they viewed themselves in terms of subculture, and how our shoes fit into their lives. The marketing team actually went into people's homes and even into their closets to see what they wore for both clothing and shoes and asked them what they do in life.

in 2007 Vans also decided to reissue the very first authentic Hawaiian-print surfer shoe I had made for him


accessible brand to people around the world, not just because of the focus on action sports, but also because of the company's "center point, creative selfexpression.


If I have to tell you what I stand for, I'm not doing something right.


California is Vans' "secret sauce.

It's a Southern California by-the-beach company. If you shut down a collaborative gathering there, you really lose something vital.


when you have good people with you, the odds are with you, too. And the longer I live, the more I see the truth of it


hard work, honesty, and caring for people are what yield success. The beauty lies in simplicity, so don't overcomplicate things. Instead, focus on blocking and tackling, consistently, one day at a time.

**Note:** XI

What I've accomplished comes down to one thing: my knack for identifying and then solving problems. What I do better than anything else is cut out distractions. If a system isn't working efficiently, I can see where it's jammed, eliminate the problem, and find a way to keep everything moving forward

**Note:** xiii

Pay attention to the people using your product or even better, work with them to create something completely new.

**Note:** xiv


Many of my guiding principles are equally simple, and they've served me equally well. Don't sit still or rest on your laurels. Do the work-don't just look on as others do it. My famous credo: get your hands dirty.

**Note:** xv


I also say find honorable people to be your partners, work with creative people, and be fair. Be kind. Give a shit about how you treat people and be aware of how your actions might disturb or distress them. In other words, don't be a jerk. Stand up for others. Until our last breath, we can do something good for someone else.


got their hands dirty and worked for tacos

**Note:** xvi


 

Gentlemen. Welcome to the 47th edition of MNTS.

Let’s ride!

In Praise of Desire

By

I highlighted 15 passages from this piece. So good.

Desire is a beautiful emotion. One must look with the freshness of a child’s vision to see the poeticism that we even want things. We want to go places. We want to love people. We want to be happy. We want healthy bodies and humble friends. We want the future to be better than the past. On good days, we believe it can be.

ACL Weekend Update - on Nike and Starbucks

Not all efficiency is good. Sometimes we need surprise and delight in the form of physical spaces, experiences and partners.

channeling some Dr. W Edwards Demming and Danny Meyer, not sure if it was intentional, but love to see it.

“To optimize the whole, we must sub-optimize the parts.”

— W. Edwards Deming

But to tell people that “hospitality” was a completely different word than “service” was something they hadn’t heard before, that hospitality describes an emotional transaction whereas service describes a technical transaction – and you need them both.

— Danny Meyer

I finished Authentic a couple weeks ago, the autobiography of Paul Van Doren, the Vans founder, and came across this article from Cedric Chin over at CommonCog on the Brooks turnaround.

Based on my assessment, Nike appears primed for a similar “Boom, bust, boom” business cycle. Both Vans and Brooks suffered from (and overcame) eerily similar fates. All three companies over-indexed on commoditization, short-term direction from leadership, organizational bloat, and a lack of focus on their core customers.

I haven’t owned a pair of Nikes since the J. Crew Killshots circa 2018. Nikes have become the pumpkin spice latte of footwear; they scream basic. The good news for Nike is the playbook for a turnaround exists; all they have to do is execute. Exciting to see Nike on the road to a comeback.

On Feeling Connected

Look at people on the train and remind yourself that they have an entire world inside their head—and feel how a sense of connection flows from you. You can do this with animals, too, and plants, and objects, and ideas. Pay attention to things as if they are too big to fit in your head—and feel love seep out of you. Do small acts of kindness and don’t take credit. Care more than necessary.

Things Hidden

Very excited about this Rene Girard documentary. Bummed I missed the screenings in my neck of the woods, but perhaps you can still catch one.

El Jadida Naval Trouser

Love the fit of these in theory.

August.build

Database of “Buy once, cry once” gear. I’ve been eyeing these Kutrite kitchen shears for a minute.

Why these are special.

Findlay - Off & On

Album I’m revisiting. Natalie Findlay was ahead of her time with this one. Still fresh over a decade later.

Gankas on Golf Is Hard

I don’t know how many Pros get off my mat and they go “dude, that kid stripes it over there. Whats he shoot?” and I go bro he don’t know how to play golf he shoots 80. And then he’s like he hits it way better than me, and I’m like yeah he does but he don’t know how to score. Scoring is a different game.

Unclassified ARMY HOLISTIC HEALTH AND FITNESS DRILLS AND EXERCISES

Makes you wonder what the classified stuff looks like.

A few snaps form my camera roll

That’s a wrap on 47.

Until next time, gents.

Stay spirited, stay resilient.

AP

When people ask me what it took to become a scratch golfer, my simple answer now is, “I learned to control the face of the club at impact.”

- Jon Sherman

Commentary

As a former competitive, low-handicap golf obsessive, I’ve read my fair share of golf books. The vast majority of them, I cannot recommend. However, The Four Foundations of Golf is one of the best, and it will join the short stack of books alongside Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons and Dave Stockton’s The Art of Scoring, which I deem required reading for any serious golfer.

Sherman lays out many facets of the game that I’ve intuitively grasped over the years but does so with simplicity, clarity, and rigor—no small feat.

I believe golfers of all levels will take away different insights from Four Foundations, and it’s a book to revisit as one's skill progresses.

I wish someone had handed me this book when I first caught the golf bug. I spent countless hours on the range and course, working on swing mechanics and shot patterns that, in hindsight, play an insignificant role in skill progression and the overall enjoyment of the game.

What I’m Stealing

• Avoiding three-putts, improving speed control, and modestly increasing make rates inside of 10 feet is a realistic recipe for lowering scores.

• Understanding your dispersion patterns and tendencies is key to optimizing strategic play.

• Greens in regulation is the most meaningful statistic for lowering handicaps.

• Advance the ball as far as possible while avoiding major trouble.

• Start every hole thinking “driver first,” then find a compelling reason not to hit it.

• Successful tee shots are more about keeping the ball in play and avoiding trouble than hitting fairways.

• Fairway bunkers, trees, penalty areas, and out-of-bounds cost golfers far more strokes than ending up in light rough.

• “Pin avoidance” saves strokes. Resisting the urge to aim for the pin is a universal concept that helps all golfers.

• Once proficient at reading greens, shift focus almost entirely to speed control.

• Green speeds vary daily. Constantly recalibrate. This is a skill in itself.

• Randomize practice sessions by introducing changes with each repetition.

• Experiment with ball position and tee height.

• Learn to control the clubface at impact.

• Elite professionals and amateurs have a driver dispersion of 60-70 yards.

• Track the Following in Each Round:

  • Fairways hit.

  • Successful tee shots: advancing the ball near your average distance with a clear path to the green and a reasonable lie (including light rough).

  • "Oops Swings"—when your ball ends up in a recovery situation, penalty area, or out of bounds.

• Putting skills: speed control, face control, and green reading ability.

Give up a significant amount of control. Embrace the randomness.

Supplemental Resources

Two pivotal moments took my golf game to new heights almost overnight. The first was learning how to properly sequence my body to generate clubhead speed. The second was mastering the path/face ratio. The path/face ratio is perhaps the least intuitive concept in golf, but once you understand and practice controlling it, your ability to manage curvature and dispersion becomes virtually limitless.

The course strategy outlined in the video below completely transformed my psychology off the tee box. Similarly, I’ve developed a simplified version of this. One of my favorite hacks for lowering scores is using the in-cart GPS screen (when available) to locate the widest part of the hole and hit a club that advances the ball to that distance. The number of times I’ve hit what felt like a huge block or slinging draw off the tee, only to end up a few feet into light rough using this strategy, has saved me from countless double bogeys. Knowing you’re aiming for the broadest part of the hole is also liberating psychologically.

Towards a Biomechanical Understanding of Tempo in the Golf Swing

My thoughts on tempo are that it is the outcome or side effect of proper sequencing. Min Woo Lee, Adam Scott, Ernie Els, Fred Couples, and Ben Hogan are often considered tempo gods, and I can guarantee they didn’t spend much time practicing with a metronome. By sequencing the backswing properly and building inertia, the slight pause at the top happens naturally as the body changes direction and unloads stored energy to generate clubhead speed, resulting in a natural tempo.

There are also examples of successful swings that likely fall outside of the ratio described in the paper—such as Hideki Matsuyama's.

Four Foundations of Golf Website

Dog ears, highlights, marginalia

Keep reminding yourself that you don’t need to be perfect to play your best golf; you need to be patient. At a minimum, one part of your game can feel like a struggle on any given day.

Putting is perhaps the most difficult and misunderstood part of golf. Golfers have their best chance of holing putts inside of 8 feet, and outside of those distances, it becomes more of a test of speed control and proximity.

Three-putt avoidance and improved speed control are how most players lower their scores while modestly increasing their make rates inside of 10 feet.

Putting is not as influential in scoring differential as we first assumed. Broadie assigned 15% importance to putting in determining any player’s score. It turns out putting is much harder than we all thought, and it’s harder for golfers to separate themselves from one another with the flat stick.

I always liken golf strategy to playing poker, or even gambling in general. You have to weigh the odds and try to make rational decisions on every shot, but your emotions make that very difficult to do.

Smart strategy in golf is like smart investing. Have a long-term view, and avoid the temptation to make decisions based on short-term disruptions.

The majority of this book is about helping you limit double bogeys. This concept is so important to me that the phrase "fighting the war on double bogeys" is the official tagline of my website Practical Golf. Double bogey avoidance is crucially important when it comes to strategy.

Aggressive decision-making, particularly on approach shots and greenside wedges, is counterproductive.

Think of birdies as an occasional bonus. Overall, you should not pursue them; it will create more mistakes than it’s worth.

A typical PGA Tour player averages about 3.5 birdies per round, and most of those occur on Par 5s.

start thinking of yourself as a disciplined golfer that plays the wise odds on each shot.

It is a very low-percentage play based on my tendencies.

I am thinking about what I can do to avoid the main trouble on the hole,

I have a plan going in, and I decide on each shot based on the hole layout and my tendencies.

If you're playing a shot into the wind, spin and trajectory are your enemies. A nicely executed punch shot will keep the ball low and reduce the spin on the ball. Despite executing those shots well on the practice tee, I've found I tend to strike it heavy or hook the ball too much in an actual round. It requires muscle memory outside of my normal swing, and I don't find enough practice time to make it work. Do you know what I do to solve this problem? I use more club. If my standard shot called for a 7-iron, I take a 4 or 5-iron. The lower loft on the club will take care of lowering the spin and trajectory on its own.

Strategy changes on approach shots. I believe that shifting into a more conservative mode will yield lower scores. The primary goal is to land the ball on the putting surface regardless of the pin position.

A golfer's ability to hit a green in regulation is perhaps the most crucial statistic for lowering handicaps. It’s one of the few traditional statistics that I believe is still a predictor of scoring.

The optimal strategic play combines the dispersion of your shots with how far you are from the hole.

Rich showed me how his team improved their performance using strokes gained analysis and Mark’s app, Golfmetrics. Then he showed me how he planned all of his players’ tee shots for each round using a combination of satellite imagery from golf courses and his players’ dispersions that he verified with launch monitor testing. He could map out optimal targets and club selections based on the typical shot patterns. Rich told me it had improved the players’ confidence off the tee and helped their scoring averages. They were able to hit driver where it made sense on a line that mitigated the risk from big trouble and lay back on holes where the landing area between big trouble was too narrow.

reaction was, “wow...that makes complete sense!!!” Naturally, I wanted to know where he got the idea from, and he told me it was from a guy named Scott Fawcett. His DECADE course management system was becoming extremely popular amongst college teams (eventually, the NCAA banned his seminar because they deemed it an unfair advantage). In a nutshell, Scott analyzed shot distribution data from tons of elite players using strokes gained analysis, as well as satellite imagery of golf courses to determine the optimal club selection and aim off the tee. I would urge all of you to search YouTube and watch the video “NGCAA Driving Video” - a lightbulb will likely go off in your head. I also highly recommend his DECADE app.

advance the ball as far as possible while avoiding the big trouble.

Overall, if you want to play your best golf, I fully agree with Scott Fawcett’s philosophy, which states you start each hole thinking driver first, and then you have to find a good reason not to hit it.

Successful tee shots are more about keeping the ball in play and avoiding trouble than hitting fairways. Fairway bunkers, trees, penalty areas, and out of bounds cost golfers far more strokes than hitting it in light rough.

No matter what level of golfer you are, “pin avoidance” can save you strokes. I know coaches who teach strategy to professional golfers and top-level college players who have improved their players’ scores by convincing them not to aim at pins. I’ve seen major championship winners who admitted that going for the pin most of their career prevented them from winning more. Resisting the pin is a universal concept that can help all golfers.

No matter the situation, if you can resist the urge to pin hunt, you will save strokes!

More skilled ball strikers can use yardages closer to the middle of the green more often. However, always avoid playing to the front of the green yardage even if the pin is there! As you get closer to the hole, particularly inside of 100 yards with your wedges, you can adjust your target a little closer to the hole. But always aim away from the pin, and closer to the center of the green - avoid being short-sided at all costs!

Remember, if you make a bogey, you are keeping pace with PGA Tour players.

once you become more proficient at reading greens, you must shift your focus almost entirely to speed control.

I highly recommend using the DECADE app or Golfmetrics. Another solution would be from a popular GPS app called 18Birdies.

Two of my favorites are Blue Golf (www.bluegolf.com) and the 18Birdies App, which you can use on your phone.

I have found the following formula from Andrew Rice, a top 50 instructor, to be helpful when hitting into the wind: 5 mph = 5% of the total distance + 5 yards 10 mph = 10% of the total distance + 5 yards 15 mph = 15% of the total distance + 5 yards 20 mph = 20% of the total distance + 5 yards

The following formula from Andrew Rice can help estimate club selections when hitting shots downwind: 5 mph = 2% of the total distance 10 mph = 3% of the total distance 15 mph = 5% of the total distance 20 mph = 7% of the total distance

Random practice introduces some kind of change on each repetition. Some research indicates that it is more effective at building long-term skills and improving performance.

No matter what method of practice you choose, engagement and focus are critical factors for success.

Another experiment I love to do is altering tee height. Start adjusting your tee in low, medium, and high positions. See how it changes your impact location on the driver’s face (or other clubs you use off the tee). Your goal is to reduce strikes towards the bottom of the face and get them more towards the center or above it.

In 2004 he published his findings in the best-selling book Tour Tempo, and then again in 2011 with Tour Tempo 2 (which offered an update with the short game). He also has created various training aids, the most popular being his series of tones that golfers can use to help hone their tempos. I did not stumble upon John's findings until around 2016. I'm thrilled I did because understanding the concept of tempo has made me a better ball striker and plenty of readers of Practical Golf as well.

The paper is entitled “Towards a Biomechanical Understanding of Tempo in the Golf Swing.”

Garrity believes that once the players figured out they could speed up their swings while maintaining the proper swing tempo, they started to add considerable distance while maintaining control.

The first step is working with the tones from the Tour Tempo app (you can find it on most app stores through your phone, which costs $24.99).

I have found a couple of other methods that are a little easier but will require further investment. Currently, Garmin has two GPS watches with a tempo training feature - the Approach S60 and Approach S62.

found a product called the Divot Board.

FACE TO PATH RELATIONSHIP

When people ask me what it took to become a scratch golfer, my simple answer now is, “I learned to control the face of the club at impact.”

YouTube - search for “The Royalty of Shot Shape.” It’s a great video from Andrew Rice explaining these concepts using chess pieces.

However, I’d suggest that doing more blocked practice with your driver and repeating the same setup (once you figure out what works best) over and over again can help ingrain positive habits and produce better results on the course. That’s why I’ll spend some time exploring how experimenting with ball position and tee height is so beneficial.

Tee Claw

most elite professionals and amateurs have a 60-70 yards driver dispersion.

Another helpful cue is how your shoulders/spine are titled at address and focusing on weight distribution. A common side effect of moving the ball up in the stance is that a golfer will feel like they need to place most of their weight on the lead foot. This can cause your spine and shoulders to tilt forward. As a result, this can cause a downward angle of attack.

Speed control requires more feel and adjusting technique (another way to describe skill). It’s hard for any golfer to expect to develop speed control if they cannot play or practice it much. Whether you’re playing the same course, or different ones all the time, green speeds change daily. You have to adjust and recalibrate constantly.

Alternatively, if you are not using a stat-tracking system, you could use my definition of a successful drive as a better measuring stick. You could track the following three scenarios in each round: Fairways hit Successful tee shots: you advanced the ball close to your average distance, have a clear path to the green, and a reasonable lie (think light rough). “Oops Swings” - whenever your ball ends up in a recovery situation, penalty area, or out of bounds.

The three primary putting skills are speed control, face control, and green reading ability.

The biggest problem I see is relevancy. Every golfer has multiple puzzle pieces in their swing. The goal is to make them all fit together to hit functional golf shots by satisfying various impact fundamentals. When you start taking random pieces, like changing your takeaway or your wrist angles at the top of your swing, and inserting them into your swing puzzle, often they don’t fit.

Fit For Golf app.

You can learn more at www.fitforgolf.blog

DST Compressor training aid

Overall, golf has so much randomness that you will have to give up a significant amount of control.

One of the few nuggets of wisdom he did impart on me sticks out to this day. He told me that he tries to do everything exactly the same when he plays in tournaments. While that might sound generic, Tom said that even the rhythm he walks and picks up his tee after a shot is identical.

Gentlemen.

Welcome to number 46.

Let’s ride!

Etran de L’Air

Can’t get enough of these guys at the moment.

Recalling the driven politician and the quiet family man

Mr Lee's favourite question is "So?". If you update him on something, he will invariably reply with "So?". You reply and think you have answered him, but again he asks, "So?". This "so?" question forces you to get to the core of the issue and draw out the implications of each fact. His instinct is to cut through the clutter, drill to the core of the issue, and identify the vital points.

Mr Lee's rich insights on issues come from a capacious and disciplined mind. He listens and reads widely, but he does so like a detective, looking for and linking vital clues while discarding the irrelevant.

Mrs Lee was supportive, without intruding - she was certainly not "just a busybody", and anyone who had the chance to observe them together would know just how close a couple they were, and how much strength her presence gave to her husband

On Landscapes

bringing the heat with this one.

By giving these ideas a name — “Sacred Silence,” “Wide Angle Vision,” “Heart Connected” — it solidifies them in your brain. It makes them real. And, as I discovered — or, really uncovered, since I think I knew this intuitively⁴ all along — that’s what I’ve been doing each week as I write this newsletter. Retelling and reenforcing and realizing stories.

The way we experience the world hasn’t changed in the hundreds of thousands of years we’ve evolved in it — but our connection has. And, how sometimes, we just need a reminder that the connection is still there.

How to Ruin a Great Conversation

Guest Essay by Brian Daskam

I have a rather underdeveloped theory that goes like this: Every enjoyable conversation feels a little like a conspiracy. A family telling inside jokes at dinner, office mates gossiping together after work, a couple huddled together in a restaurant booth… Each group is a distinct caucus in which each member is known, and each member belongs. Or, put another way, anyone who is not part of the conversation is an outsider. That feeling of belonging is one of the key pleasures of great conversation

These Chore Coats

Noah Johnson can take a hike. Terrible take.

Olithica Heirlooms

These are bang on.

Shakespeare Bust

My neighbor 3D-printed this Shakespeare bust for me. It’s taking every bit of discipline I have not to run out and buy a printer—so many possibilities! My neighbor, who turns out to be somewhat of an expert on this type of thing, recommends this one.

Rory Sutherland - Are We Now Too Impatient to Be Intelligent

Love me some Rory Sutherland, always a delight.

…going quite a bit faster when you're going slowly is a really big gain, going very fast when you're already going fast is actually the action of a dickhead. Basically, once you hit a comfortable 65 or 70 on the road; okay, don't bother that's enough it's a waste of time because the risk you actually incur on yourself and the risk you effectively impose on other people by going any faster is utterly pointless in term terms of time saved

Premium AeroPress Coffee Maker

Been waiting for a non-plastic version of this to be available, very excited.

The Mettleist sample hats

Need to make a few tweaks before I submit a production run, but getting closer.

A snap from my camera roll

That’s a wrap on 46.

Vividus Invictus!1

AP

When I'm criticized unjustly (from my viewpoint, at least), or when someone I'm sure will understand me doesn't, I go running for a little longer than usual. By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel.

Commentary

I first read Kafka on the Shore fifteen years ago, at the recommendation of a friend who was an English major. For some strange reason, I can still recall vivid feelings and details from the book—the metaphysical undercurrents, and even the dark green Miata with gold rims. Murakami’s writing has a way of sticking with you like that.

Before reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, I listened to the Founders podcast episode on it, which is not my usual order of things. But I was so struck by what David Senra outlined that I knew I had to experience the book for myself.

Right now, I'm in a season of life where I relate deeply to Murakami. In an almost eerie similarity, I started writing and running at the age of 33. Working to improve at both has been profoundly enriching, and I look forward to continuing both practices into old age.

After reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, I feel like Murakami and I would have been fast friends—kindred spirits, if you will. While I’ll likely never write a novel, I do plan to run my first marathon in 2025. I believe the insights Murakami shared about the writing process have deeply infiltrated my consciousness, in a way that will pay dividends for the rest of my life.

What I’m stealing

1. Keep up the rhythm. Get the flywheel spinning at a set speed. Let momentum carry you.

2. Embrace the void.

3. Quietly absorb things for release later.

4. Commit to practices that reveal physical and mental potential.

5. Tinker away like the village blacksmith.

6. There is honor in physical decline.

7. Taking time, in many cases, is the shortcut.

8. Always grasp a concrete lesson, no matter how small.

Supplemental Resources

Blog post with some cool pictures and info on his hi-fi setup - Murakami’s Listening Room

Dog ears, highlights, marginalia

I think that one more condition for being a gentleman would be keeping quiet about what you do to stay healthy. A gentleman shouldn't go on and on about what he does to stay fit.

Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy. I couldn't agree more. No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.


To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed-and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.


The point is whether not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.


Sometimes when I run, I listen to jazz, but usually it's rock, since its beat is the best accompaniment to the rhythm of running. I prefer the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gorillaz, and Beck, and oldies like Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beach Boys. Music with as simple a rhythm as possible. A lot of runners now use iPods, but I prefer the MD player I'm used to. It's a little bigger than an iPod and can't hold nearly as much data, but it works for me. At this point I don't want to mix music and computers. Just like it's not good to mix friends and work, and sex.


I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.


So the fact that I'm me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.


When I'm criticized unjustly (from my viewpoint, at least), or when someone I'm sure will understand me doesn't, I go running for a little longer than usual. By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel.


To tell the truth, I didn't think I had much aptitude for business either. I just figured, though, that since failure was not an option, I'd have to give it everything I had. My only strength has always  been the fact that I work hard and can take a lot physically. I'm more a workhorse than a racehorse.


And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what? I could try writing a novel. I still can remember the wide open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfy ing crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it.


I shipped it off without making a copy, so it seems I didn't much care if it wasn't selected and vanished forever.

This is the work that's published under the title Hear the Wind Sing. I was more interested in having finished it than in whether or not it would ever see the light of day.


Running has a lot of advantages. First of all, you don't need anybody else to do it, and no need for special equipment. You don't have to go to any special place to do it. As long as you have running shoes and a good road you can run to your heart's content


I only began to enjoy studying after I got through the educational system and became a so-called member of society. If something interested me, and I could study it at my own pace and approach it the way I liked, I was pretty efficient at acquiring knowledge and skills.


I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.


In other words, you can't please everybody.

Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one out of ten enjoyed the place and said he'd come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it the other way, it didn't matter if nine out of ten didn't like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business.


The main thing was not the speed or distance so much as running every day, without taking a break.


The more I ran, the more my physical potential was revealed.


For the reasons I give above, I think this physical nuisance should be viewed in a positive way, as a blessing. We should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible.


At any rate, that's how I started running. Thirty-three+ that's how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died.

The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill.

That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.


One other way I keep healthy is by taking a nap. I really nap a lot. Usually I get sleepy right after lunch, plop down on the sofa, and doze off. Thirty minutes  later I come wide awake. As soon as I wake up, my body isn't sluggish and my mind is totally clear.


This may be the reason why, while I'm training for my next marathon-the New York City Marathon-I'm also writing this. Bit by bit I'm remembering things that took place when I was a beginning runner more than twenty years ago. Retracing my memories, rereading the simple journal I kept (I'm never able to keep a regular diary for very long, but I've faithfully kept up my runner's journal) and reworking them into essay form, helps me consider the path I've taken and rediscover the feelings I had back then. I do this to both admonish and encourage myself. It's also intended as a wake-up call for the motivation that, somewhere along the line, went dormant. I'm writing, in other words, to put my thoughts in some kind of order. And in hindsight-in the final analysis it's always in hindsight-this may very well end up a kind of memoir that centers on the act of running.


Let's go back to 1983. A nostalgic era now, back when Duran Duran and Hall and Oates were cranking out the hits.

In July of that year I traveled to Greece and ran by myself from Athens to the town of Marathon.


Greece is the home of the original marathon course,


Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.


I think certain types of processes don't allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform-or perhaps distort-yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality.


Muscles are like work animals that are quick on the uptake. If you carefully increase the load, step by step.

they learn to take it. As long as you explain your expec tations to them by actually showing them examples of the amount of work they have to endure, your muscles will comply and gradually get stronger.


Our muscles are very conscientious. As long as we observe the correct procedure, they won't complain.

If, however, the load halts for a few days, the muscles automatically assume they don't have to work that hard anymore, and they lower their limits. Muscles really are like animals, and they want to take it as easy as possible; if pressure isn't applied to them, they relax and cancel out the memory of all that work.


I have to maintain a certain tension by being unsparing, but not to the point where I burn out.

These are tactics that all experienced runners learn over time.


While I've been in Japan a new short-story collection of mine, Strange Tales from Tokyo, has come out, and I have to do several interviews about the book. I also have to check the galleys for a book of music criticism that's coming out in November and meet with people to discuss the cover. Then I have to go over my old translations of Raymond Carver's complete works. With new paperback editions of these coming out, I want to revise all the translations, which is time consuming. On top of this, I have to write a long introduction to the short-story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, which will be published next year in the U.S. Plus I'm steadily working on these essays on running, though nobody in particular has asked me to. Just like a silent village blacksmith, tinkering away.

**Note:** Village blacksmith


Even if there were two of me, I still couldn't do all that has to be done. No matter what, though, I keep up my running. Running every day is a kind of lifeline for me, so I'm not going to lay off or quit just because I'm busy. If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.


Even if the skill level varies, there are things that only runners understand and share. I truly believe that.


: focus-the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever's critical at the moment. Without that you can't accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you'll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it.


focus and endurance-are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You'll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you'll expand the limits of what you're able to do.


This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner's physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee the results will come.


How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate-and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself.


Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.


When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place. (Please excuse the strange analogy: with a fugu fish, the tastiest part is the portion near the poison.


remember to get the audience to laugh to put them at ease.


Since I was on autopilot, if someone had told me to keep on running I might well have run beyond sixty-two miles. It's weird, but at the end I hardly knew who I was or what I was doing. This should have been a very alarming feeling, but it didn't feel that way. By then running had entered the realm of the metaphysical.


Thick, meaningful clouds, like something out of a nineteenth-century British landscape painting, covered the sky.


the most significant fallout from running the ultramarathon wasn't physical but mental. What I ended up with was a sense of lethargy, and before I knew it, I felt covered by a thin film, something I've sinced dubbed runner's blues. (Though the actual feeling of it was closer to a milky white.)


And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do. Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it's been moving ever forward without a moment's rest. And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.

Competing against time isn't important. What's going to be much more meaningful to me now is how much I can enjoy myself, whether I can finish twenty six miles with a feeling of contentment. I'll enjoy and value things that can't be expressed in numbers, and I'll grope for a feeling of pride that comes from a slightly different place.


Vernon Duke, "Autumn in New York."


"18" Til I Die," the name of a Bryan Adams hit. It's a joke, of course. Being eighteen until you die means you die when you're eighteen.


Seventy percent of the records I bought were jazz, the rest classical, plus a few rock records. I'm a very (or perhaps I should say extremely) enthusiastic record collector.


In order to get there you have to stubbornly, rigorously, and very patiently tighten all the screws of each individual part. This takes time, of course, but sometimes taking time is actually a shortcut.

**Note:** On learning to swim


It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.


My time, the rank I attain, my outward appearance all of these are secondary. For a runner like me, what's really important is reaching the goal I set myself, under my own power. I give it everything I have, endure what needs enduring, and am able, in my own way, to be satisfied. From out of the failures and joys I always try to come away having grasped a concrete lesson. (It's got to be concrete, no matter how small it is.)


The title of this book is taken from the title of a shortstory collection by a writer beloved to me, Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.