Another kind of knowledge 💎 Issue #56
Plus: Charlie Munger and Richard Feynman strike back.
Happy Friday👋
What’s up? 👶
I guess this is as good as any other time: we have a baby on the way!
We are expecting him for the beginning of this fall and everything seems to be going smoothly if we exclude picking up a name or even shortlisting a few candidates. You know pandemics. This is the kind of stuff you can leave marinating in a background process of your brain, without consuming too much energy that we need for the 2-and-a-half-year-old agent of chaos that we already have around.
If we were picking names for a second daughter it would be way easier, but when it comes to dudes my requirements are kind of high and that leaves little overlap with the names the mom prefers.
Anyway, I’m sure we’ll get there until he gets here.
And now on to what were the best things I found on the Internet this week.
New to me 💡
Why Tacit Knowledge is More Important Than Deliberate Practice | 18 min read
🧠 If this newsletter has some themes, becoming a better version of ourselves is, for sure, one of them. I already shared some notes and articles about deliberate practice, and here is the best starting point that I know of into a different kind of skill that we might have/lack without noticing it: tacit knowledge, aka everything you’re good at while not being able to explain how you do it.
🍿 “In pedagogy, this is known as ‘transmissionism’, and it is regarded amongst serious educators with the same sort of derision you and I might have about flat-earth theories today. It goes something like this: some people believe that it is possible to teach technique by explaining things to others. They think that if you can find just the right combinations of words with the right sorts of analogies; if you can really break things down into the right level of atomic details, things will magically click in their students’s heads and they will succeed. Such people have likely never attempted to do so in a serious manner. And if you are one such person, then I hope that you pick up coaching at some point, in a sport that I am interested in, so that my kids can go up against your kids, and then I get to watch as they absolutely crush yours.”
A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Charlie Munger about Mental Models and Worldly Wisdom | 13 min read
🤓 Here we go again into the Charlie Munger rabbit hole. If you were here for one of the best speeches of the last 30 years (maybe more) you know what to expect. Here’s some actionable advice: “It is important that you read outside of your domain if you want to avoid failing based on man with a hammer syndrome. If all you know is medieval poetry or auto mechanics you are not going to acquire usable wisdom in life. Without worldly wisdom, you end up like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest says Charlie Munger. Read widely and be curious. Think for yourself and be open to new ideas. Use many models from many disciplines when thinking about a problem.”
Please help me grow this newsletter! I’d love if you shared it with your more curious friends.
A most educating tweet 🧩
This week in a gif 👃
High note ⚡
This issue cover picture comes from here.
Last issue most clicked link was THREAD: The top 0.1% of ideas I’ve stumbled upon on the internet.
I hope you enjoyed these last minutes as much as me putting this together.
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Until next week,
Filipe