Staying One Step Ahead at Pixar

12 mins | Link: mckinsey.com | H/T: Anil Podduturi

Ed Catmull is the president of Pixar and wrote one of my favorite books of 2014, Creativity Inc. In this follow-up interview, he discusses embracing the messiness that often accompanies great creative output, sending subtle signals, taking smart risks (i.e. juxtaposing commercial risk with creative bankruptcy), experimenting to stay ahead of uncertainty (“spectacular success doesn’t lead to deep introspection, which in turn leads to wrong conclusions”), and counteracting fear.

I liked the question on experimentation and the asymmetry of failure (“in hindsight, it’s a teachable moment, but on a forward-looking basis we are hard-wired to avoid failing”) and how to counteract the “corrosive nature of fear” (our physiological response to threats, both real and imagined).

Love in the Age of Big Data

33 mins (but skippable) | Link: highline.huffingtonpost | H/T: Maxwell Anderson

“I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines.” Charlie Munger
 
This is, a Rad Read (w/some skippable parts). What happens when you combine a therapist, psychologist, data afficienado with a willing sample of 3,000 married couples? An actionable set of rules/indicators on love (with the heavy, heavy caveat that in matters of the heart, averages can be misleading). I was particularly keen to see what their study revealed. The couples that stayed happy used “we” a lot (vs. “I/me”), when they argued maintained a positive/negative comment ratio of 5:1, and the ability to “calm, soothe, and reduce arousal” for one another, and the building a shared purpose together (such as traveling the world or volunteering). The last section goes into specific exercises, not too dissimilar to ones used in building Values or thinking about your dream job — an “admiration practice,” identifying “enduring vulnerabilities,” praise-worthy adjectives for your spouse, and a kit of lines to use during arguments. And I reread the “dreams with conflicts” exercise multiple times, initially with confusion but then with great awe.

(To abbreviate, I would skip the sections beginning with “Some traditional arab cultures” [a sort of history of the study of love] and “I could relate” [the author’s own love experience and ensuing skepticism])

Towards a Greater Synthesis: Steven Pinker on How to Apply Science to the Humanities

6 mins | Link: farnamstreet.com

“We should seek the ideas that give us the deepest, richest, best-informed understanding of the human condition, regardless of which people or what discipline originates them.”

This article follows up on last week’s most read piece on Mental Models, the use of First Principles and specifically how to synthesize information across disciplines to come up with novel solutions. For example, deprival super-reaction tendency (i.e. “Loss Aversion”) with respect to the enterprise of gambling.

Pinker believes that Systematic application of the “harder” sciences to the humanities is a huge untapped source of knowledge” and in particular, he points to “psychology and cognitive science.” Another great example: “Going beyond the arts, the social sciences, such as political science could benefit from a greater understanding of human moral and social instincts, such as the psychology of dominance, the psychology of revenge and forgiveness, and the psychology of gratitude and social competition.”

The last paragraph (“Learning to ask Why”) is great; he gives a specific example on how to apply the above framework to Warren Buffett’s dictum that markets are irrational.

Krista Tippett’s Journey to Becoming Wise

7 minutes | Link: primemind.com

Tippett is the host of NPR’s “On Being” and this interview coincides with the launch of her book, “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.” Becoming wise, is different than being wise, as there is a certain process to letting our wisdom emerge. She discusses how our fears and protective instincts “shut down our imaginations and make the world seem more hostile” and the challenge in creating categories in our minds to approach the complexities in the world. Given the breadth of talents she’s interviewed, the question of who she views as a contemporary “spiritual genius” is interesting: Betsy Hodge, the Mayor of Minneapolis.

Molly: Pure but Not So Simple

4 mins | Link: NYTimes.com | H/T: Scott Smith

I’m pretty sure this is a Rad Reads first, an article on a party drug. But “Molly,” the name so deceptively innocent (short for “molecule”), has made a comeback from my era, when it was known under its scientific name MDMA or “Ecstasy” (so I’m told…) Its rebranding has led it to a glamorization within pop culture and a more conscious (and older) audience, a group of professionals more likely to shop at Whole Foods than to be found at a rave. I was most intrigued by the yearnings of Molly users, feelings of “euphoria, closeness and diminished anxiety” and “how it (…) makes you feel unplanned, [in a city] where everyone knows where they’re going all the time and they’re going very, very fast.” And while it is not-addictive, nor does it produce long-term cognitive damage, it’s still a hard-core drug, with just a revitalized image.