YouSaid · the spoken record

Sendhil Mullainathan

lines on the record: 96
first: 2021-02-02
most recent: 2021-02-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, me too and converse. I'm going to remember the positioning thing. This is awesome. Thank you, Shane. This was so fun.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh that is a great question. What do I want people to say about me when I'm 90? I think I'm with the optionality to revise it. I think what I would want people to say when I'm 90 is, oh, he changed how I think. And if that's five people say it, I'd be happy if 50 people. But I think changing how people think is the most durable asset that you can create. Because when people change how they think, they then produce in so many areas and so many domains. It's the ultimate force multiplier. So if I could contribute in some small way to changing how some people think, that would really mean a lot to me.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seeing lots of people are touching it from lots of different places, and you have a chance to contribute in both directions.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you say, What are the great fields of physics? Classical mechanics, fine. That went one direction. That's clear. But electricity magnetism, that did not go in this direction. That went in the other way. People playing with electricity find these cool things, blah, blah. That created one of the core physical laws was going this way. Thermodynamics did not go this way. It went this way. So I think academia has this illusion that it's going this way as the only force, but there's a strong feedback loop. And so part of my career has been trying to, in my own life, enable that feedback loop so that I understand what happens over there. And I found that super valuable, like super enjoyable because especially in areas like this, like in behavioral science, it's just practicing researcher would be foolish to think that they're at the frontier. No, like this area is so interesting.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Academics produce the raw ingredients, not in every place, but in many places produce the raw ingredients off of which are converted through creativity and intelligence into product. And I think that that pipeline happens in the very banal, like you see it in pharma. In pharma, biolabs produce molecules that might be useful for certain things or technologies that then pharma can. So you see it in a very tight pipeline, but you see it in like the conversation we're having, like all this great behavioral science work that was done as pure research, it was raw material. By itself, it's just a set of studies. People have to then take that. So I think this conversion process is really one way I think about it. But the other way I think about it is that I think academia needs to also realize that it flows back in the other direction.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just a person's nascent own capacities to notice when the data is surfaced and someone forces you to look, they saw big improvements in teaching scores after. It's quite impressive just, you know, coaching on something like that. Now that teachers can be on tape, but as you say, more and more decisions are on tape. We have memos. We say, hey, should we invest in this thing? Great. Let's write a pro con. Everybody writes their own pro con. Like now we have this database of decisions. And I think that's a very exciting area.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so you can fight the interpretation, and that's an all too human process, but just the fact that we have so much objective data that we're going to share and look at to then interpret, that's going to be huge. And I think you're right. There's no algorithm that's just not feasible to think of that interpretational process for most things. But I think the human interpretation just, I think is how I think about it. It's like we're all going to be quarterbacks or whatever tennis players. Now we're going to have in our professional lives all of this tape. And we've already seen some early versions of this. There was a cool study with teachers where they improved their teaching by quite a bit. And the way they did experiment was they videotaped their actual classes and they had someone sit with them and it was even less than coaching. It was just watching together and just asking them simple questions like did that go well? Did you notice something?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think where we're going to head with this already seen in sports. An athlete has a coach who sits with them and looks at the tape. The tape is the objective.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Odoris just has to have this core belief look, whatever you guys think today, you're not going to think it in 20 years. And he was right. They wouldn't think in 20 years. And I think part of what we forget is that a lot of our resistance to things is just that local one to two to three years of like what, you know, even before, remember when people were like, how could anybody just talk by a text? You know, I missed the temp, you get used to every, like, you know, you adapt to everything. So I actually think that the advantage of the algorithm over the person is what you said, which is that once you get used to it, even your friend, when you told him this fact, partly he must have, however nicely you said it, felt a sting of judgment a little bit. Like, oh shit, like now, whereas a computer doesn't have the sting of judgment. It's like when I look at my Fitbit, it says, whatever, I don't have a Fitbit. It says like 7,000 steps. It's not judging me.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think my take on that with all these technologies, I always go back to the elevator. So, when the elevator was first built, no one wanted to get in it. If you think about it, it is frightening. This thing, this piece of metal is barreling through the sky. I mean, it's insane to get in an elevator if you objectively think about it. And if we were talking about elevators and how will people feel about elevators in the future and you were Otis.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like the illusion of explanatory depth with respect to other people's opinions. It's like you say, right? It's like you say, hey, what is a think? You say, okay, tell me more. Like, oh, I got nothing else. Why do I have nothing else? Whereas we have tons of depth on our own opinions. Tell me more about what you think. Oh, I can go on for hours.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Articulate what you believe, but to articulate what other market participants believe with such high fidelity that they would agree with you, that's when you know that you found an arbitrage opportunity. Does that make any sense?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why is the market not being made? Why is supply not meeting demand? So then it's partly about saying, what is it in a research psychologist that makes them allergic to doing this? And then if you can understand the inner logic, then you can ask the question, but will any pieces of that logic, are they amenable to change or will they naturally change over the next 10 years? Then I think you start to fray. And I think that that type of understanding It's almost like having metacognition about other market participants. That is, I always say this, like if you can describe someone else's perspective on a problem so well that they themselves say, oh yeah, that is what I'm thinking, then you know you have an arbitrage opportunity because you've said it as well as they have and yet you see something they don't see. So it's like a really useful challenge to set to oneself not”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comes down to thinking about not just your own thinking, but other people's thinking. So if I look at self-help, A big desire. So now you have to ask yourself wait, there's a research discipline called psychology over here.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. That's right. So I think that angle, I think, is very clear. I think we're going to see a revolution both in behavioral science as a research discipline. So for example, here's a telltale sign. Psychologists don't work on self-help. That doesn't make any sense. There's a whole ocean of people who in good faith want to improve themselves. How does the research discipline of psychology largely ignore this? And if you look at it, most people buy behavioral economics, behavioral science books They're sort of very highbrow self-help. You wouldn't call it self-help lest you be chastised, but it's the deepest of human desires to improve oneself, understand oneself. So I think you see it at every level. That angle that that area is about to bubble and we have the technology to implement it, I think is really is one happening, like clear area. But your question was more meta. How does one try to make such calls? I guess it.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like themselves, not just in the general, but their live as it's instantiated. Like your story about your friend, it's awesome because your friend has an asset in you who managed to say to him, hey, look, this is not about them, this is about you, that is highly personalized, highly contextualized. I don't think we're at that level. It's like, oh, you know, we're going to do that tomorrow. But the combination of these things, and it's not a digital solution alone. It's digital solutions that work with you. So for example, one of the things your story made me think is that like, how do we get people to realize there's a simple question they can ask their friends and create the right moment to ask them that would be life-changing, you know, which is, hey, what do you know about me? I don't know about myself.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. The peak app. But here's what I think I'm deeply sure about the puck is going. There's something happening at the nexus of technology. So let's call it specifically. The fact that I now have the capacity to wrap a layer around your mind that's attention, which is one of the core cognitive capacities, and memory. The fact that I can wrap a digital layer around your mind for attention and memory and we're getting better at that. That's like so obvious. The second thing that's so obvious is that we have this literature that's bubbling up in psychology that is unearthing insights about ourselves and people are, I mean, your career is a testament to this. People are eager to learn those insights. So, I think when you combine these two things, it naturally implies, okay, how do I create the thing that lets people get greater access?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the way, I've taken a lot out of this conversation. The positioning thing is something that right now I'm in an in-between period right now where I am struggling. So personally, this has helped me a lot because I am struggling with the patience needed. Be positioning because I think there's a few clearly big things that I'm just very confident about. So this work I mentioned with Beck Weeks and Mike Norton, I think whether it's that the app I'm excited about, but the idea embodied.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The optionality that we've created. So, I wonder if to a degree this would all become much easier just through tracking, like literally say, here are some options I've bought myself and here's how I bought it for myself. And then you're like, ooh, you know, how do I compare to that other baboon? Yeah, they're earning returns right now, but look at the options I'm sitting on. And so I think there's a sports team I followed like this where in the short run they look really bad, but they were acquiring picks. And so the balance sheet looked not bad at all. So I wondered to what extent this is a hidden balance sheet problem. I wonder if we just started writing down optionality. You would also then be better at doing that thing you shouldn't do, which is realizing, shit, if I say yes to this, I am actually extinguishing these options. Like it's coming at a cost that you don't realize. And so I wonder if we can track these. That would make life much easier for me if I could somehow even start to articulate with these optionalities are that I'm creating.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing I like about this is great, and the buffet analogy is great. One thing I bet that it would help to apply this in personal life is that I think the other challenge of optionality or positioning is that the assets you're building, the options you're building are hidden. Like in finance, if I were to go and acquire a set of options, they'd be on my books. I could see the options I'd acquired. Like if there's a sports team and the optionality we'd acquired were draft picks, the draft picks would be on the balance sheet. I think what's so tough about doing this in our own professional lives is that we don't record”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love that. I love that. I think for me as I was reflecting on your position, I love your positioning thing. As I'm reflecting on the positioning, it seems to me that make that work for me. I'd want to also understand how am I making the mostly indecision? So we called it mostly and not all in. I like that. It's the mostly in. It's almost like what allows you to have the patience to position is to have the confidence that no, when the time comes in to put a lot more of my chips, I trust myself to do that too. So it's almost like it's the pairing of the position, positioning requires some form of patience and trust. And so it's almost like if I had thought about my mostly in process, I think I'd also have more patience in the position part.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's great. That's great. And the funny part of that is that person may even have just been someone who positioned themselves well earlier, but you don't see the positioning. You only see the outcome of the positioning. So you don't see the work actually happen earlier. They kind of put themselves. That's really nice. How do you, I like that positioning versus predicting, how do you, at some point, does there come a time when you have to make your go all? How do you, you know, you position yourself to get.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's nice. You've described two things, though, that already feel like you do have an implicit outcome, Montre, which is like, one is this positioning that one outcome you want. And you said this earlier too, when you were talking about opportunity cost, that you want to want your opportunity costs to keep increasing. But that's like an interesting, I've never thought about this. It's a good outcome to say the outcome I'm aiming for is greater and greater optionality. Like that's a very reasonable outcome. And it seems like it's giving you at least implicitly a north to sort of like follow a little.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. You were saying this is so good. I like the outcome over ego. Do you have for yourself an articulated like outcome mantra that you go back to? Like, okay, this is the bigger outcome I'm aiming for. Does that make sense? Like a true north outcome? Do you have that?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is great. Yeah, I think that's well, first of all, kudos to you for telling your friend that. There's a couple of parts of that story I want to unpack. One is You look at something you said I want to just really pick up on, you know, your friend could have said, oh yeah, and then it's okay for your friend, as you said, to choose and say, I like being the center of it. I mean, that's what I like. Then it removes all this tension. And I think of it a little bit like sports. Like on a sports team, like I watch basketball, you can be the person who's like, I want to make the big shots. I want to take the big shots. But then you can't complain when the ball is past you all the time. You can't be like, why is everyone expect me to, yeah, you said you wanted to be the person to take the bait? Like, I don't know. What do you want? And so I think there's neither a right nor wrong here, as you say. It's just the realization that it's one or the other and you're picking it. And if you just pick the one you like, I think that I really like now the second one I want to say is how did your friend respond when you told him this?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That feels great. It feels like I have value. I think the control one is just a sort of a come to Jesus. I'm not Christian. I know I use. I like that phrase. The control one is a come to Jesus moment where you have to ask yourself, what am I trying to accomplish? And you say, look, I ced control, but it gets to what I'm truly trying to accomplish. Or on this issue, I'm not willing to cede control because this is what I'm truly trying to accomplish. It's like that's a very good pivot moment. I think the harder one is the feeling of specialness. I think that's the one where you need to just, because it erodes at your deeper sense of like, wait, if others can do this, like.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess there are two parts that I'd put around it that might be helpful. There's control. Like, and that was in your vision comment: like, they want to go in that direction. You want to go in this direction. So there's control, which is just very basic. But then there's the feeling of specialness. Do you know what I mean? Like if people come to you and you're the one who knows how to do something.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Work on the hard problem of articulating and communicating and teaching the things that you think you're great at in that process, articulated knowledge is always better than unarticulated. Second, sure, you think you have good taste. But once you try to articulate those rules and communicate it, guess what other people can improve on that? And they can be like, yeah, that maybe is a good starting point. And so it's this, it actually turns out to be a very, it's painful because no one wants to not be wanted, but I found it incredibly valuable. Like I think you can do this in any endeavor. I think you can, any productive endeavor, not social endeavor, but any productive endeavor. You can ask yourself, okay, what is the thing I can do? Like you could do this in your entrepreneur. You could say, what is the thing that I am so central at in this activity?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you think about this phrase program cell death, if you just ask yourself, what can I do with this idea, this research, or with this organization that would let it do what it wants to do, but that makes me obsolete? Actually, a much better heuristic because it forces you to ask wait, what parts of you are essential? Wait, okay, if that's essential, why can't you distill that, communicate that so that now others can do it? Like, what is so magical about you? Is it what? You have good taste? Okay, distill that. Understand why you think your taste is good. And it actually is an amazing personal growth because what it does is by preventing yourself from hiding behind your ego and your sense that no, no, there's something magical inside of me. It actually lets you grow because it lets you get.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can tell you the philosophy and then the personal part. The philosophy part is if you've ever seen trees, it's almost obvious, but not much grows underneath the tree, a little bit of grass because grass can grow anywhere. And trees cast shadows that inhibit growth. And I think the toughest thing in founding things, whether it's an organization like Ideas 42 or whether it's in doing new research. The toughest thing is that you don't want to cast a shadow, but yet you have ego. And so I noticed early on in a lot of things I was doing, I was Building more to make myself central inadvertently. I was asking my question how do I make myself obsolete?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We all agree with now when the law is stopped being made through that process as we're starting to see in a certain country then people do suddenly disagree. So I think it's the process is what lends credence to the moral weight of a rule.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love it. I think that's such a nice way of putting it. And I think the mistakes I've made, A, not having enough rules, but also I think it's why you need this legislative process that allows this period of time where you have many parts of yourselves to register their dislike. Like if they're like, no, look, I don't agree with. And the multiplicity of cells necessarily means I think some people are like this. I don't know how they like this where they're just like wake up one day and say, this is what I'm doing, then they do it. That's not me. There's a lot of chaos inside me. I think there's a lot of chaos inside most people. So I think the legislative process is also what gives rules the weight to say you can't agree with this. We've all talked about it. Like that's it. If you agree, you're in the vast minority. And so you're right. And then you don't disagree. It's like in a constitutional democracy. One reason we don't fight the laws is because the laws were made through a process.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's not the rule that you've decided. That's the rule that's been proposed. Now we're going to have a vote over the next week. Let's see how every self that shows up over the next week feels about the rule of no dessert. If at the end we've got a supermajority, then we know who's imposing that rule. The Confederacy of selves that have appeared at different times wanting different things have all agreed this is a good rule. And so now we're implementing it. And so I think that that gives rules, I think well thought out rules have the property that they are ones that many parts of ourselves subscribe to poorly thought out rules, I think, don't have that property and are doomed if not to failure to misery at some level.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An uneasy relationship with yourself. You like yourself, you trust yourself sometimes. You don't trust yourself a lot. And so rules are this like, I think of as this weighty, you know, in this democracy of self, this constitutional process that you say, okay guys, we've all agreed, like this rule seems good. So you have to be careful in picking them. I think a lot of people I see, they pick, and I've done this myself, they pick rules willy-nilly. That's just handing over power to the person in that moment who thought that was a good idea. So it's like you want to protracted process for picking a rule. Like to your friend, I would say, fine, write down, no dessert.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love it. The social part of what you're saying is great too because once you tell people your rule, then when your friend is at dinner with somebody, say, wait, didn't you tell me you're a person who doesn't eat dessert? Like, you know, so they also have become kind of an enforcer because I like the rule versus decision has another element, which I really like, which is there's a person in my life. I just do not trust. Like even though I spent a lot of time with this person, I just do not trust them. It's embarrassing to say, but I don't trust their motives. I don't trust them to follow through on anything. And that person is me. Like, you should not trust yourself. Like, every, and so decisions, it's like handing over bubble wrap to like a five-year-old. It's like, you know what's going to happen. So it's like, so rules versus decisions are in part, I think, also the recognition that we can't, you know.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The only thing I have to do is show up today. The only thing I have to do is to write 50 words or 100 words, which for people who don't write is like a quarter of a page. It doesn't seem like a lot. And that's the only thing I have to do. And if I don't want to do anymore, I can leave. It's hard to keep that rhythm. It's hard to keep that discipline. But once you get yourself with the low expectation and the low bar, it works because then some days, many days after the hundred words, you're like, ooh, I can keep going. And it really makes such a big difference.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you have to be honest with yourself. I have literally gone like this happened two days ago. I showed up at the gym and you're always a little sheepish because people because I'm like, I hope the front desk person who I know doesn't think I'm an idiot. But like I went, I was like super tired. I got on the treadmill. I'm like, I'm not doing anything. I tried to lift some weights. I'm like, great. I showed up. Done. Check. And I go home. And the thing you have to remind yourself is that's the victory. That is, I'm so proud of that day as opposed to the day where you had a great workout. Whatever I had a great workout because it was whatever some physic. But I showed up that day. That's the victory. So that, I think that element of low bar, but consistent has worked so well in other aspects of life. Like I like to write, but I struggle with writing. And again, low bar, like when I've been in a good writing group, it's like I'm just going to sit there.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First thing, and I think I learned a lot from establishing that habit. So, for example, one thing I learned was every day is much easier than four days a week. Might think four days a week is easier because it's less often, but every day removes the most difficult thing about life is choosing and every day removes choice. When I wake up, I don't ask myself, should I brush my teeth? I don't ask myself, should I go to the gym? I don't ask myself, should I have coffee? There's nothing to be done. I'm on a conveyor belt. I'm sitting on this conveyor belt. You know, I'm on the plane. It's going here. It's going where it's going. And so that's one lesson, the everyday really made a difference. The other thing that made a huge difference is in installing that everyday habit is to say, the goal, as I said, is I go to the gym every day. I didn't say I have a good workout every day or I even have an okay workout. So literally the only thing I need to do is to get to the gym, get on the treadmill, or whatever, lift some weights. I can leave two minutes later.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I don't view that as discipline. I view that as an entirely undisciplined man who likes sweet green. My one discipline is I go to the gym every day. Like every, it's how the day starts, like every day.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're right. I think that's very astute observation. I think one of the reasons we have this feeling about the brain is that we attribute too much meaning to it. So when you remember this nice nostalgic trip with your wife somewhere. You not only enjoy the nostalgia, but you attribute to it as, oh, that's something that's important to me because I remembered it spontaneously. And if it were forced upon me, or not forced, but for triggered externally, I wouldn't have that same attribution of like, I must think that's important. I think this is this crazy view we have of the brain is that we know that we belch and fart and we don't attribute deep meaning to belches or farts. But the same belches and farts produced by the firing of our neurons are like, oh, I thought.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great point. You're right. Facebook tries to create these kind of nostalgia. That's right. What I find amazing when we've had people do these moments in peak is you can have a week ago nostalgia. Like pull out your calendar and look at what you were doing a week ago. You're like, oh, that was a fun dinner. Like it's crazy since most of our, since many of our memories sit external nowadays, this is such an easier exercise to do. I think that's the deeper lesson. I think the deeper lesson for how we should think about psychology or mental models or anything in the next 20 years versus the last 20 years, which is that in the previous 20 years, we were forced to do everything in our heads. In the next 20 years, I think we'll be able to improve what's happening in our heads using digital tools because so much of what happened in our heads is now digitized. So we can look at that digital footprints and use that to improve.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In turn, create nostalgic moments at the right time, et cetera. And I think that that, I think that's the other reason we don't kind of, it's like we just assume, well, if I was going to enjoy thinking about five years ago, this would have happened or something.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The map is not the territory. So this is like a form of naive realism, I think. So let me explain what I mean, which is naive realism is like, you know, our thoughts are real. But there's a form of it. I've almost like been trying to figure out what else to call this, which is that the brain operates as it operates. So when we say, how do we get pleasure? Well, it's a function of the brain. In economics, like that's your utility function. That's not it. It's just some dumb thing. So I think we imagine something feels unnatural to us about sitting there and saying, now I'm going to engage in nostalgia. Whereas if we had just had this nostalgic moment that filled us with endorphins, we'd be like, oh, that's really nice. It's like, what the hell? It's just a stupid little, I mean, it's just a piece of wetware. It's not that. And so I think no one's really thinks about the fact that we are responsible for the creation of the mental habits that”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, write anything you want your three month from self. Like, I have opened a wormhole to you three months from now. I mean, it's like a sci-fi movie. You get to like talk to this. It's unfortunately one way, but you can't expect everything. And so anything you write, it'll feel a little stupid. You're like, okay, you get people to write this, but whatever. It feels a little stupid, but in three months, you're like, holy cow, that's what I was thinking. And so I think the relativity thing is, I think part of it. I think the other part of it is that we have this like naive realism. I think in your book, do you call this like the map is not the...”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I like the relativity thing. Part of what you can do for yourself, so we tried this in one of these moments and it started when I was like a while ago. There's this site, I forgot what it's called. We can look it up afterwards. But it lets you send, I guess now you don't need to cite. Google has a send later. It lets you send emails to yourself in the future, like future me. This is awesome. You should write a few emails to yourself five years from now, like, or even one year from now. The shock value even at three months will blow you away.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me think what that person would have said if I could, you know, you had Danny on for a podcast, I think. If somebody had said to you, yeah, I'm going to have like Danny on for a podcast. Even knowing that's a thing that you're, I mean, and just cherishing it. It sounds so trivial, but we just don't do it. We don't actually engage in mental consumption. It's bizarre. We're in acquisition mode, not in consumption mode.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's like you're not consuming the shit you're acquiring. Like it's perverse. And it seems almost wrong to just sit there looking at, but it's not. You're actually, that is the consumption you bought yourself. And it's what the value of all this hard work is an example from the professional sphere. It doesn't have to be love. It's like you've worked really hard. You become successful. Like you have this awesome brand and you have like, you know, this is great. How often do you spend time enjoying aspects of that brand where you just sit back and say, let me think what I was striving for five years ago or 10 years ago?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's a simple way you can cherish that asset. You can sit there and go, let me think about one thing I really like about my spouse. I mean, that's the consumption of an asset you've hoarded. But like hoarders, what we actually do is acquire this shit, put it away somewhere, and never actually consume it. So like you have love that you've invested in, you've had experience. So one of the things we have people do is something very trivial. It's just an exercise Take out your camera, zoom to a random period in that thing, look at one of the photos. You know you can do that anytime. That's how you keep taking these photos. But how many photos have you taken? How many photos have you looked at?”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a good question. Let me do something lateral, and we'll come back to the exact question. At one of the other moments we have in peak is to help people see that they don't, we're all hoarders. Here's what I mean. You invest a lot of time acquiring a partner or a spouse who cares about you and loves you. Like you put a lot of energy into that activity. You spend time, I'd say dollars, but that sounds creepy, but it is. It's also dollars. It is like a lot of. Okay, so now you've acquired in very crude terms this quote asset. How much do you actually enjoy that asset? You'd say, no, I value it. You know, my spouse and I do things together. Okay, great. But say you're on a train ride somewhere on your board.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's something peculiar about our hedonic experience. We all wish we had more time on our mortal coil would last longer. Yet when we have these moments where time is sort of stretched, it doesn't feel good. And so it's interesting to think about. We almost want more time, but we also want it to go faster because those periods of flow are the most enjoyable.”
2021-02-02 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT