Breakfast Notes #59 (Beliefs)

Good morning friends.

Here is the 59th serving of the Breakfast Notes.

3 Reads To Bulk Your Brain

• Why is Everything So Ugly.  Follow the editors as they navigate their neighborhoods. This essay explores cardboard modernism  that plagues many American cities- where everything feels generic, and everyone feels shallow.  You must pardon the hyperbole, but their writing makes ugly feel visceral. Therefore, begging the question- how do we re-introduce and preserve beauty in our cityscape?
• The Re-opening of China. China is now opening up. This report from Chinese state-owned media shows how the state plans to adjust its ‘dynamic-zero’ COVID policy. The big takeaway is that prolonged isolation is impossible, even for an economy as big as China.
• Political News Apps and The Power of B2B Media. ‘Every industry deserves to have a publisher, not to act as an evangelist, but to hold the industry accountable.’ The power of niche, industry-specific media is that they actually serve as the fourth estate. The media operators are often industry insiders who know the game well. The bad ones report only the good to keep their profits.  The best ones report the good, bad and ugly to keep their reputation.

2 Visualizations To Wow You

Morocco's shocking of Spain in the 2022 World Cup is one of those things any diehard soccer fan would have laughed off in 2010. This is another reminder that a decade can change many things.

For the first time in God knows how long, renting is better than owning in the UK. Will Singapore experience the same fate in the coming years?

1 Big Idea: Writing Your Beliefs

Morgan Housel is one of my favourite writers because he made personal finance personal again.

This article is a compilation of nugget-sized insights you can sprint through or slowly digest.

A belief can be defined as an acceptance that something exists or is true, often without substantial empirical evidence. These are concepts he thinks to be self-evident.

These are the top 5 beliefs we share.

• With the right incentives, people can be led to believe and defend almost anything.
• The cure to overconfidence is constantly reminding yourself that you’ve experienced maybe 0.00001% of the world
• Daniel Kahneman says a key to investing is having “a well-calibrated sense of your future regret,” which might actually be the key to understanding all forms of risk.
• Read fewer forecasts and more history.
• Having your views confirmed is a powerful and addictive drug.

I am writing my list of personal beliefs as well.

But, here is the $1,000,000 question: What’s the point?

I think the value of such an exercise is that it creates a forcing function for intellectual and philosophical clarity.

Most importantly, you are forced to confront the mental scripts you run. This will certainly draw disagreements and challenges from others. Thereby subjecting your beliefs to Darwinian pressure.

Your beliefs will either survive, evolve or die.

It will be an extremely uncomfortable experience, but you will grow greatly!

May the Sun Shine Upon Your Face,

Keith