Rad Reads, Volume 53

This Week: “My last day as a surgeon, Tsai Ing-weng, Assimov on Creativity, Fear, Lake Wobegone”

Each week, we curate five unique articles, the Rad Reads. The topics are expansive and groovy, ranging from leadership, technology, pop culture, science, policy, self-improvement, philanthropy and finance.

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“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.” Charlie Munger

Dear Rad Readers -

East Coasters, get that coffee mug out, download these Rad Reads and get cozy. I hope that we can all rediscover that childlike wonder that comes with the season’s first snow. Thanks for all the Fan Luv on our one year anniversary and welcome to all the new subscribers. Please retweet us here and invite friends to subscribe. We’ll be rolling out some fancy new improvements over the next few months. And in this week’s Rad Follow Ups, we ensure you don’t get laughed at by the youngins with a DJ Khaled Guide as well as one of my own pieces on Privilege. Special Cloth Alert!

My Last Day as Surgeon, New Yorker — 36 year old neurosurgical resident Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer and in his two remaining years he continued his medical training, became the father to a baby girl, and wrote beautifully about his experience facing mortality as a doctor and a patient. This moving read is about his last day practicing medicine and is an excerpt from his posthumously published memoir. You have to read it — there is serenity without resignation, (dare I say) joy in his professional tasks, and purpose and determination that every day matters. I am in tears as I write this summary. (Consider pairing with Paul Graham essay in Follow Ups.) (Link, 5 mins h/t @Lanie)

Collection of Tsai Ing-wen Stories — I feel like this election did not garner media coverage commensurate with the scope of the implications of this landslide victory — the role of young voters and the implications for China-Taiwan (and US, by extension) relations. The Economist had the best coverage of her victory, platform and policies. (Link, 6 mins) and the FT an in-depth profile (Link pay-walled, 6 mins). This Medium post describes what the victory means more broadly for women across all electoral levels in Asia (Link, 4 mins) and the BBC describes the strange week leading up to the election: K-Pop, military exercises,Facebook Trolling, and the first family of cats (Link, 4 mins). Meow. (h/t @Jason)

Isaac Assimov, MIT Technology Review — Assimov wrote this easy on the nature of creativity and shared it with a small group of scientists at DARPA in 1959. The ideas are still highly relevant today and guide both idea-creator and the ideal environment. Isolation is required since creation is embarrassing as “new ideas are unreasonable and fly in the face of reason.” It requires good expertise but someone who is unconventional in their habits. A good group “cerebation session” requires awareness around personality types, the permission to appear foolish, and an optimal group size of 5 people. Joviality and joking are the essence and meeting “over a meal is more useful than a conference room.” And finally, they must be guided by a “psychonalyst” asking the shrewd question, which will not be an easy job. (Link, 9 mins h/t @Drew)

Fearless, Invisibilia — “Fear comes from the stories we tell ourselves.” The first part of this podcast (beginning at 10:45) is incredible (the rest, very good too). Meet SM — she has a biological immunity to fear (due to calcium deposits on her amygdaloid). Her identity is anonymized because obviously, being without fear is a dangerous way to live. Listen to how she reacts to being held at knifepoint by a thief. (She’s also been held at gunpoint twice… and lives to tell.) She’s a happy person enduring life’s mundane trials and tribulations — so how has she survived 40 years of life without the “guardrails” called fear? Extreme logic!!! Gasp. Go figure. And these fear-inducing events — well if you can’t feel fear, the trauma of each event never registers. (Podcast Link, 45 mins )

The Inverse “Lake Wobegone Effect”, CACM — Lake Wobegon is a mythical village where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” That last part, by definition cannot be true, yet 80% of drivers think they are above average. It’s in Rad Readers nature to introspectively think about our cognitive biases, so let’s explore the “Inverse Lake Wobegone Effect” — a for of sampling bias. The author uses the example of MOOCs (i.e. online courses) — those who sign up to MOOCs tend to be well educated, wealthy, and employed. Recognizing this sampling bias we should be careful in thinking that MOOCs can solve all developing world educational challenges. This article also introduced the term WEIRD — Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. Keep it weird ;-) (Link, 3 mins)

Rad Follow-Ups

Identity, Privilege, and Subconscious Bias (and Bros), Medium (Link, 4 mins)
Old Peoples Guide to DJ Khaled, Medium (Link, 3 mins h/t Alexander Taub)
Life is Short, Paul Graham (Link, 7 mins)

And finally Baby Carrots are not Baby Carrots and You’ll Spend 3.5 days of your life untangling headphones.

Bless Up,

Khe

@khemaridh
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