Arman's Antics (#040)
The latest from attention point squanderer Arman Khodadoost
Hey everyone!
Coming to you live from Austin, Texas. Here’s your weekly dose of Arman’s Antics. A choose-your-own-adventure style newsletter that is sure to include something that will make you think, laugh, cry (or a nasty combination of the three).
Welcome to the four new subscribers receiving this for the first time (276 total). Enough with the pleasantries, let’s dive in.
Essay I wrote last week
Is time really our most precious resource?
Society wants us to believe so, but it’s not.
The seconds tick by at the same rate for us all. But there’s another (invisible) ticker that counts down a resource even more precious than time.
And how we choose to allocate it will be the reason for our rise or our downfall.
100 Attention Points
If you and I had a dollar for every time we’d been fed the mainstream line, “Time is our most precious resource”, then we’d be able to quit our day jobs. Ah, but recall that we’re some curious contrarians. So we’ve got to question this commonly held belief.
YouTube is my longform TikTok
I have taken great pride in resisting the urge to download TikTok. I refuse to let myself be infected with TikTok brain. I personally can’t handle hundreds of opinions at lightning speed on God knows what topics.
But as I was sitting on my couch scrolling through my YouTube recommendations I realized I’m no different from the TikTok scrollers.
My video content of choice is a bit longer and maybe slightly less addicting, but it hit me that YouTube is my long form TikTok.
Book I’m rereading that I’m finally absorbing
If I ever create The Curious Contrarian starter pack, this book may be the only one I include as required reading.
Taleb coined the term “antifragile” to mean the exact opposite of “fragile” since there was no existing word for it in the English (or any other) language.
Think of a package containing porcelain dolls that you want to ship to your cousin in central Mongolia. You’d definitely want the package to say:
Nothing good could possibly happen if someone carelessly tossed it around, right?
Now think of another package containing something that actually benefited from being mishandled. You’d want it to say something like: “Please mishandle” or “Don’t handle with care”.
We think we make society better by removing stressors and “smoothing” things out. But the exact opposite is true. Society benefits from the right amount of disorder which makes us stronger and better prepared for what’s to come. This is true in health, business, relationships, technology, and more.
This is my third time reading this monster of a book (500+ pages) and I’m realizing that unless you’ve read a book at least three times, you haven’t really absorbed it.
All five of his books in the Incerto (worth reading) focus on one central theme — what do we do in life when we don’t know what’s going on? Spoiler: we never know what’s going on.
Fun fact: Mr. Taleb blocked me on Twitter and for some reason that makes me respect him even more.
Calling myself out
You may remember in Arman’s Antics (#027) on March 28, 2023, I mentioned that Balaji Srinivasan had predicted the price of Bitcoin to surge up to $1M by mid-June 2023. I believed him and brought it to your attention.
Well, mid-June has come and gone. The price of Bitcoin didn’t quite reach the $1M threshold. It’s currently $970,000 off.
First of all, I hope you didn’t take my financial advice and put your life savings into Bitcoin.
Second of all, I love having a record of my past thoughts and ideas so I can go back through them with a fine-toothed comb.
To take another Nassim Taleb idea, I had some skin in the game when I brought this up because I put some of my own hard-earned shekels into Bitcoin. So I stood to gain from the upside but also to lose from the downside of the prediction.
Too many of us fail to hold ourselves accountable to our past beliefs. Writing helps me avoid that. If nothing else, I’ll get a good laugh at how wrong I was and how wrong I’ll continue to be.
Random thought
If you see nonsense and don’t call it out then you are a nonsense encourager. See nonsense, say nonsense, and say it loud.
That’s it for the 40th edition of Arman’s Antics. Thank you for stopping by while sipping that extra strong hot beverage of choice. Now back to your regularly scheduled nonstop scrolling.
Have a terrific Tuesday!
Cheers,
Arman
Likes and comments below.
Hmmm the nonsense I hate is the glad handling and superfluous use of inauthentic exclamation points typically subsequent to a supportive message by someone who may have only glanced at a post but is trufflehunting for a response subscription....is that one that fits your maxim?
Fortunately, my peace of mind and confidence with investing is too fragile to have followed through on your advice to buy bitcoin. Sorry for your loss. But maybe maket conditions will change at some point and then you can be gladly wrong again.