The Chomp #028

Hey Everyone,

Welcome back to The Chomp—your weekly dose of the best content from the internet and beyond, designed to expand your mind and get you thinking. Let’s dive into it.

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Quick Bite

• Lack of Credibility and Failure of Accountability: “For a long time, cracks have continued to form in the glass of our collective leadership in America. It's now shattered due to a lack of credibility and a failure of accountability. This starts at the top, with our President, but it trickles down across all levels of leadership—on both sides of the political aisle. From an objective view, it’s clear that the failure of leadership in America has bipartisan support. It's also painfully clear that change is needed. And based on the national reaction to recent events, it appears our time of reckoning has come. Yet to see true, positive change affected, our leaders need to become both credible and accountable.” (3 Min)

  I wrote this essay earlier this week in reaction to the current state of affairs in America. A core tenant of this newsletter is learning, and I learned a lot over the past seven days. I learned that now is not the time to be silent. Being silent right now is akin to being complicit in the deep-rooted racism of America. There is a lot more learning to do and a lot more work to be done on this front, and I look forward to doing my part in creating change.

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Deeper Dive

• Power Laws: How Nonlinear Relationships Amplify Results: “When we set out to understand a complex system, our intuition tells us to break it down into its component pieces. But that’s linear thinking, and it explains why so much of our thinking about complexity falls short. Small changes in a complex system can cause sudden and large changes. Small changes cause cascades among the connected parts, like knocking over the first domino in a long row.” (20 Min)

  Simply put, power laws are a relationship between two things in which a change in one thing can lead to a large change in the other—regardless of the initial quantities. An example would be someone who starts weightlifting for the first time. At the outset, they can lift very little weight. However, with each session, they start steadily making progress. For a while, they continue to make great progress, but eventually, they start to plateau. Diminishing returns start to set in and doing more starts to yield less.

  Power laws are present in many facets of life. Whether its work, learning, investing, or fitness, they are versatile and ever-present. Understanding how they work and how you can leverage them is an important mental model to have in your toolbox. Realizing the difference between linear and non-linear results can be a complete game-changer. For instance, applying the power law of compound interest to investing can lead to an exponential growth in wealth. In the article, the below example is referenced showing the impact of compounding.

  In A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Burton Malkiel gives the example of two brothers, William and James. Beginning at age 20 and stopping at age 40, William invests $4,000 per year. Meanwhile, James invests the same amount per year between the ages of 40 and 65. By the time William is 65, he has invested less money than his brother but has allowed it to compound for 25 years. As a result, when both brothers retire, William has 600% more money than James — a gap of $2 million.

  Compounding isn't just something that can be used in investing—it can be implemented across a wide range of areas including health, relationships, and personal development. Along with compounding, this article explores several other applications of power laws. Give it a read to better understand how they work and how you can be more aware of them in your life.

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Tweet of the Week

Shane Parrish @ShaneAParrish

It's better to start something and risk looking like an idiot than sit there and accomplish nothing.

Song of the Week

Apple Music Link

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Books

Currently Reading

Recently Read

• After committing to going deeper into the work of Rene Girard, I spent some time researching the best place to start. Many of the comments I came across recommended starting with his interviews rather than his original works. Girard is a complex thinker and diving straight into his work can be quite a challenge. This is especially true for those not familiar with his theories. Having already spent a bit of time acquiring a baseline knowledge of his work, I settled on this book as my jumping-off point. This ended up being a great decision. Reading the Bible with Rene Girard is an annotated transcript of conversations Girard had with the author, Steven Berry. These conversations peel back the curtain on both the formation and application of Girard's Theory of Mimetic Desire. I highly recommend this as a starting point for anyone else looking to learn more about Girard. (4/5)

• René Redzepi is one of the world's best chefs as well as one of its most interesting people. His restaurant Noma has been rated #1 in the world four times on the 50 Best Restaurants in the World list. I've long been fascinated with Redzepi and his uncompromising attention to detail. In Hungry, Jeff Gordinier gives us his fascinating account of traveling with Redzepi and getting to know him over the past decade. This one is well worth a read for anyone interested in the food world as well as those more generally interested in understanding the inner workings of someone at the top of their craft. (4/5)

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Parting Thoughts

This Week in History

• On May 31st and June 1st, 1921, the Tulsa Race Massacre took place. Mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history." Despite this, I never learned about it in school. I first heard about it while watching Watchmen on HBO. My guess is many of you may have never heard of it either, which is why it’s so important to shine a light on. (Source)

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

If you found something that piqued your interest this week, please help me out in expanding the reach of The Chomp by forwarding it along to a friend or sharing it with others in your network. Until next week.

-Cody