Wonders of Life by Brian Cox

Excerpts of new book based on hit BBC series Wonders of Life by Brian Cox.

I confess that when we began thinking about Wonders of Life, my first thought was "Why me?" as I gave up biology as an academic subject in 1984. But then I looked in the mirror and I thought: "Yeah. That's amaaazin." Evolution, DNA and butterflies. They're amaaazin, too. I mean, look at this blade of grass. It's basically made of the same shit as you and me. That's like, mind-blowin. More so for me than for you. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

Now take a look at this picture. Do you notice anything unusual about it? Yes, that's right. I'm not in it. It's just a boring shot of cyanobacteria under the microscope. So let's move on. Air. Weird how something so light can be so heavy to explain. Like when did it first support life? I mean, what is life anyway? Not even Schrödinger knew for sure. So here I am on the Taal volcano in the Philippines to purr on about the first law of thermodynamics. Are you getting sweaty? I know I am. Try hard and you can measure your desire.

Now let's think about photosynthesis and entropy. On second thoughts, let's not. Let's just look at some more amaaazin pictures of animals and birds and fish and insects and all sorts. Some of them are really, really big and some of them are really, really small and the totally amaaazin thing is that it's not a coincidence. We're all one big family made out of the same molecular compounds. Though some of us are arranged rather more photogenically. And the most amaaazin thing of all is that we are all still evolving, so it's possible that there will one day be a scientist even lovelier than me.

There's so much left to say about carbon and quasars and mitochondria, but what really does my head in is that there are over half a trillion galaxies in the observable universe; the idea that there are no other planets out there with webs of life at least as complex as our own seems to me an absurd proposition. Which means that somewhere in a parallel space-time continuum, there is another drop-dead gorgeous rock legend standing on a Pacific atoll as David Attenborough whispers from on high: "Verily it is written that you are the chosen one."

A Day In India

- via Kottke

Quote of the Day

Pigeons form a far richer picture of the world than a person can manage, through three senses unavailable to humans: an instinctive ability to navigate by the sun, an ability to detect magnetic fields that provides them with an inbuilt compass, and an ability to hear infrasound.

- How Pigeons Find Their Way Home?

Why Why Antifragile Companies Will Become the New 1%

As the world becomes more transparent and connected, the truth about how companies treat their various stakeholders (whether it be their employees, customers, business partners, communities, or the environment) will be exposed. This will create a high level of fragility for companies who derive their competitive advantage through exploiting their stakeholders as for the first time ever, the exploited have a voice and are empowered to join together and fight back. This will result in the fragile companies having a much higher risk profile and lower than anticipated future growth profile which from a discounted cash flow perspective, will lead to a double negative multiplier effect, leading to accelerated erosion in value. On the positive side, this will create a high level of antifragility for companies with heart and soul that have built up strong relationships and have established a high level of trust with their stakeholders. As Taleb states “word of mouth is a potent naturalistic filter. Actually, the only filter.” These antifragile companies will have a much lower than assumed risk profile and higher than anticipated further growth profile which from a discounted cash flow perspective, will lead to a double positive multiplier effect, leading to accelerated creation in value.

I am still baffled about how little attention the investment community gives to soft qualitative factors such as a company’s culture, core values, and its relationships with its stakeholders. I just returned from a three-day Institutional Investor Conference sponsored by a major brokerage firm. After a three-year hiatus from the Street, it was another wake-up call to me about how it is just all about the hard cold numbers – as of the twenty-five plus company presentations I sat through, only two of the CEOs actually made mention of their values and their company culture. Taleb seems to be critical of this as well as he states “A corporation does not have natural ethics; it just obeys the balance sheet. The problem is that its sole mission is the satisfaction of some metric imposed by security analysts…”

When you think about it, our newly launched Customer Value Index 200 is based on Taleb’s concept of antifragility. Whereas Social Responsible Investing is focused on reducing exposure to companies that create negative externalities, thereby creating a less fragile or resilient portfolio, our strategy is to increase exposure to companies that generate positive externalities. By screening for companies with superior competitive strength that are transparent, authentic, and engaging in terms of their core values, culture, and community, we have tried to identify those antifragile companies that will thrive and prosper as the Social Revolution shakes up the soil of the corporate root system. It’s exciting as since we launched the Customer Value Index 200 on November 15th, it is up 13.0% versus 11.1% for the S&P 500, an outperformance of 290 basis points, the majority due to stock selection. However, it is important to keep in mind that we are looking for our social capital investment thesis to play out over the next decade as we see a widening gap between the fragile and antifragile. As Taleb states “few realize that we are moving into the far more uneven distribution of 99/1 across many things that used to be 80/20: 99 percent of Internet traffic is attributable to less than 1 percent of sites, 99 percent of book sales come from less than 1 percent of authors…Almost everything contemporary has winner-take-all effects….”


- More Here and treat yourself by reading Taleb's new book Antifragility:Things That Gain From Disorder

Cognitive Restructuring Exercises

• Track the Accuracy of a Thought - Example: Your rumination-related thought is "If I think a lot about my problem, it'll help me find a solution." For this example, you might write down each time you notice yourself ruminating (overthinking) in one column, and in a second column note if the rumination actually lead to useful problem solving. At the end of the week, determine what percentage of the times you ruminated it led to useful problem solving? Another great idea is to record the approximate number of minutes you were ruminating each time you notice it. Then you can determine how many minutes of rumination you did for each useful problem solving idea.
• Behaviorally Testing Your Thought - Example: Your thought is "I don't have time to take breaks." For a week (week 1), you could follow your usual routine and at the end of each day, rate your productivity on a 0-10 scale. For week 2, you could take a five minute break every 60 minutes and do the same ratings. You would then compare your productivity ratings across the two weeks.
• Evaluate the Evidence For/Against Your Thought - Example: Your thought is "I can never do anything right." You could write one column of objective evidence (column A) that supports the idea that you can never do anything right, and one column of objective evidence that your thought is not true (column B). Then, you'd write a couple of balanced thoughts that accurately reflect the evidence, for example: "I've made some mistakes that I feel embarrassed about but a lot of the time, I make good choices." You don't need to completely believe the new thoughts. For a start, just experiment with trying them on for size.
• Mindfulness Meditation - Mindfulness meditation involves picking a focus of attention, such as your breathing. For a set number of minutes, you focus on experiencing the sensations of your breathing, as opposed to thinking "about" your breathing.  Whenever any thoughts come into your mind, gently (and without self-criticism) bring your attention back to experiencing the sensations of your breathing. Mindfulness meditation isn't specifically a tool for cognitive restructuring but it's a great way to train yourself to be mindful (aware) of when you've become lost in thought. Mindful awareness of what thoughts you're having is an essential first step in cognitive restructuring.
• Self-Compassion - Self-compassion involves talking to yourself kindly whenever you have a sense of suffering. Like mindfulness meditation, self-compassion isn't specifically a tool for cognitive restructuring, but it has that effect. Example: you've done something silly and normally you'd call yourself a "stupid idiot." Instead you take a self-compassion approach. You acknowledge you've made a mistake, that you feel embarrassed, and that this is part of the universal human experience. Over time, if you replace self-criticism with self-compassion, your thoughts will change. As you do this, you might notice your thoughts about other people becoming kinder and more accepting too.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation—a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

- Franz Kafka

Wisdom Of The Week

Last year while I was reading Susan Cain's brilliant book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, the theory of restorative niche made sense but I was able to live through it only this year.

“Restorative niche” is term for the place you go when you want to return to your true self. It can be a physical place, like the path beside the Richelieu River, or a temporal one, like the quiet breaks you plan between sales calls. It can mean canceling your social plans on the weekend before a big meeting at work, practicing yoga or meditation, or choosing e-mail over an in-person meeting. Acting out of character too long without restorative niches might lead to health and emotional issues. 

I had tooth ache, fever, cold within span of 3 weeks. I had forgotten about the power of restorative niche and kept running on that out of character treadmill. Last weekend, I forced myself to dwell in that niche and Voila! I bought back to life the person who lived for Max again. 

Quote of the Day

Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.

- George Saunders and his new book is Tenth of December: Stories is his best ever!!

New Sensitivity Gene Discovered

Rising superstar Rachael Grazioplene and colleagues focused on the cholinergic system— a biological system crucially involved in neural plasticity and learning. Situations that activate the cholinergic system involve “expected uncertainty” such as going to a new country you’ve never been before and knowing that you’re going to face things you’ve never faced before. This stands in contrast to “unexpected uncertainty”, which occurs when your expectations are violated, such as thinking you're going to a Las Vegas family friendly Cirque Di Soleil only to realize you’ve actually gotten a ticket to an all-male dance revue called "Thunder from Down Under" (I have no idea where that example came from). Those sorts of experiences are more strongly related to the neurotransmitter norepinephrine.

Since the cholinergic system is most active in situations when a person can predict that learning is possible, this makes the system a prime candidate for the differential susceptibility effect. As the researchers note, unpredictable and novel environments could function as either threats or incentive rewards. When the significance of the environment is uncertain, both caution and exploration are adaptive. Therefore, traits relating to anxiety or curiosity should be influenced by cholinergic genetic variants, with developmental experiences determining whether individuals find expected uncertainty either more threatening or more promising.

To test their hypothesis, they focused on a polymorphism in the CHRNA4 gene, which builds a certain kind of neural receptor that the neurotransmitter binds to. These acetylcholine receptors are distributed throughout the brain, and are especially involved in the functioning of dopamine in the striatum. Genetic differences in the CHRNA4 gene seem to change the sensitivity of the brain's acetylcholine system because small structural changes in these receptors make acetylcholine binding more or less likely. Previous studies have shown associations between variation in the CHRNA4 gene and neuroticism as well as laboratory tests of attention and working memory.

Individuals with the T/T variation of the CHRNA4 gene who were maltreated showed higher levels of anxiety (Neuroticism) compared to those with the C allele of this gene. They appeared to be more likely to learn anxious and fearful responses to situations with higher levels of uncertainty. In contrast, those with the T/T allele who were not maltreated were low in anxiety (Neuroticism) and high in curiosity (Openness to Experience). What’s more, this effect was independent of age, race, and sex. These results suggest that under normal parenting environments, the T/T allele (which is much rarer in the general population than the C allele) may be beneficial, bringing out lower levels of anxiety and increased curiosity in response to situations containing expected uncertainty.

- More Here and don't forgot to read David Dobbs brilliant 2009 piece The Science of Success

Quote of the Day

Before you go to college, or send your child to a four-year school you better check their balance sheet. How much debt does the school have? How many administrators making more than $200,000 do they have? How much are they spending on building new buildings — none of which add value to your child's education, but as enrollments decline will force the school to increase their tuition and nail you with other costs. They just create a debtor university that risks going out of business.

There will be colleges and universities that fail, declare bankruptcy or have to re-capitalize much like the newspaper industry has and long before the class of 2018 graduates.

The smart high school grad no longer just picks a school, borrows money and wings it. Your future depends on your ability to assemble an educational plan that gets you on your path of knowledge and discovery without putting you at risk of attending a school that is doomed to fail , and/or saddling you with a debt heavy balance sheet that prevents you from taking the chances, searching for the opportunities or just being a fuck up for a while. We each take our own path, but nothing shortcuts the dreams of a 22 year old more than oweing a shitload of money.

- Mark Cuban