👋 Hey there! My name is Abhishek. Welcome to a new edition of The Sunday Wisdom! This is the best way to learn new things with the least amount of effort.
It’s a collection of weekly explorations and inquiries into many curiosities, such as business, human nature, society, and life’s big questions. My primary goal is to give you some new perspective to think about things.
Honesty and truthfulness are not the same thing. Being honest means not telling lies. Being truthful means actively making the full matter known.
Practically speaking, you cannot be completely truthful, because there’s always some aspect or the other that you might miss unintentionally. On top of that, being absolutely truthful doesn’t make you persuasive at all. The good thing is that it’s absolutely possible to be honest and still be persuasive enough to win arguments.
For example, a lawyer is expected to be honest in their dealings, but not necessarily be truthful all the time. A criminal defence lawyer has no obligation to actively present the truth in defending a client. They may not deliberately mislead the court (which counts as dishonesty), but they have no obligation to tell the complete story of the defendant. The same applies in business deals as well.
What most people don’t understand is that you don’t have to put forward the best case in order to win arguments. You just have to be slightly better than your opponent.
You see, winning arguments is an important criteria in order to gain power, but it’s absolutely useless in terms of our personal growth. Therefore, our goal is to win arguments as fast as possible (with full honesty), and move on without wasting time.
A strong argument requires logic, yes, but there’s no requirement for any sort of pure reasoning that promises an absolute conclusion.
A strong argument is one that aims to establish one claim as more probable or more reasonable than the other. You goal isn’t to find the truth via your arguments (that’s what discourse are for), you simply claim and make it obvious that your version (of the truth) is more probable than your opponent’s.
There are two types of reasoning or logic: deductive and inductive.
Deductive Reasoning: Using broadly accepted truths toward demonstrating a truth in a specific situation. For example, when Apple suffered from bad PR due to Antennagate, Steve Jobs used a deductive logic to make his point. “We’re not perfect. Phones are not perfect. We all know that. But we want to make our users happy.” Nobody could disagree with that.
Inductive Reasoning: Using specific examples of truth to demonstrate a larger truth. For example, two founders I know got VC funding very easily since they went to IIT. Thus, I think most (if not all) founders who are from IIT get funded very easily. It’s not as powerful as deductive reasoning since you need a large and non-random sample size to persuade others.
But logic and reasoning can only take you so far, unless we introduce some empathy into our arguments. You see, reasoning provides logical justification whereas empathy provides a human connection, without which it’s almost impossible to make an impactful case.
An argument may be extraordinarily rational, but its correctness alone is unlikely to compel others to care enough. Similarly, an extremely passionate argument may initially attract sympathy, but too much display of emotion at the expense of rationality will prompt others to tune out what you are trying to say.
Both logic and empathy are needed to advance an argument, but an abundance of one will not compensate for a lack of the other.
Logic and reasoning makes an argument worthy. Empathy and passion makes it worthwhile.
Interesting Finds
I.
Governments and environmentalists generally believe that fuel efficiency gains will lower overall resource consumption, and thereby reduce pollution. But that doesn’t happen.
When we talk about increasing fuel efficiency, what we’re really talking about is increasing the productivity of fuel. And, by increasing productivity, you reduce its implicit price—because you get more return for the same fuel—which means the demand naturally goes up.
Therefore measures to reduce pollution by increasing the efficiency of fuel isn’t really a solution since this increases the demand of cars, thereby nullifying the effect. This is known as the Jevons Paradox.
II.
We tend to think of artists as lone creators, holed in a room, waiting for inspiration to strike. But as evident in his notebooks and in the process that led to his drawing of Vitruvian Man, much of Leonardo da Vinci’s thinking was collaborative.
Da Vinci knew the joys and advantages of having a team. He worked with established painters, and trained his apprentices to produce pieces of art to sell in order to make money.
They didn’t merely copy his style. Many variations of his masterpieces are produced at the same time. He and his colleagues explored various alternative approaches to a planned painting, while Leonardo worked on the master version.
III.
Creating is comparatively easier than finding customers.
One way to get early customers is this. You find something you either know very well, or are genuinely curious to learn more, and start sharing the knowledge for free.
You do it on social networks and forums (YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Discord/Slack communities, etc.) If people like what you know, you’ll naturally start getting some attention, and they’ll inevitably start asking questions.
These questions are indications of what’s not out there, but is in demand (i.e. what people need.) You start to answer the best way you can, but whenever something doesn’t fit a short response, it becomes an opportunity to create some content, a product, or a course, and generate revenue.
If it has value, if there’s demand, and if you are the right person with the appropriate know-how, people would be ready to pay. You just have to listen to them.
This way, you’ll have an audience to promote it to—an audience who knows you and who has already told you what it wants.
IV.
How hard you’re working isn’t a good indicator of the value you are creating, or progress you’re making. It’s a bad proxy for success.
Just as how many Twitter followers you have is a poor measure for the vitality of your business, how hard you’ve been working isn’t a good measure of how much you’re learning and progressing.
Timeless Wisdom
The best way to learn faster is to have a stake in the outcome. Risk awakens our learning muscles. If you want to learn to cook invite friends over for dinner; if you want to learn about stocks, invest in the stock market; and if you want to learn about an idea, publish an article about it.
People who write a lot also listen a lot. They also change their mind a lot. Not necessarily with new data, but sometimes by reanalysing the same data. They also work hard to disconfirm fundamental biases.
— Jeff Bezos
Before You Go…
Thanks so much for reading! Send me ideas, questions, your favourite Netflix series. You can write to abhishek@coffeeandjunk.com, reply to this email, or use the comments.
Until next Sunday,
Abhishek 👋