MONTHLY MULLING 💡
One Danger of ChatGPT, One Framework by Jeff Bezos, and Smart Decisions
Hi👋 Tapan here.
Monthly Mulling is a bi-monthly newsletter curating the best ideas from the web to your inbox for free. High signal. Low noise. Join now👇🏽
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Happy Sunday y’all! Also, Happy New Year! 🍻
I just got back from a hectic but super fun trip to Mumbai.
Life is back to normal and so is this newsletter 🥳
💡Today, we will talk about: Don’t Be Stupid (Farnam Street), The Real Danger of ChatGPT (Nerdwriter1), and “What Will Stay The Same? Long-Term Strategy (Jeff Bezos)
Currently,
📖 I am reading: Strategy: A History by Sir Lawrence Freedman
The book covers military, political, business, and the rationality of the idea of strategies. It’s rather a long read so I will be jumping in and out of this one for the next few months 🫠
📺 I am watching: Introduction of Indian Philosophy from Vedas to Osho by Vikas Divyakriti (Hinglish)
It’s an online course discussing philosophical ideas. It’s in lecture format so might be boring if you don’t enjoy the subject. The above video discusses the history of Indian philosophy at a very high level.
🤦🏽♂️ Don’t Be Stupid
Here’s your annual reminder of “not trying to be smart but avoiding stupidity”. It’s Charlie Munger’s favourite quote (and also, Dwight's) and ties in with the idea of decision-making.
Decision-making is not taught in school. It is something you learn from your own experiences but also from others. The latter being more important.
You can only learn little from your own life experiences but so much more by studying other people, especially those who lived before you.
As Shane Parrish in his Farnam Street article makes it clear - smart people make terrible decisions.
Think about decisions like these:
Napoleon decided to invade Russia (and Hitler did it again 130 years later)
An editor deciding to publish O.J Simpson’s If I Did It
Chris Webber choosing the timeout he didn’t have in the 1993 Final Four
President Kennedy’s famous blunder to continue the Bay of Pigs operation inherited from the previous administration (a mistake he quickly learned from)
Margaret Thatcher deciding to get behind a “poll tax” that led to her ouster by her own party
Jim Cramer looking at Bear Stearns in 2007 and calling it a “BUY” 😂
These were catastrophic decisions made by people who were, in some sense, professional decision-makers. They had impeccable credentials and judgment, and yet they made poor decisions due to poor judgment, a too-limited mental representations of the world, or just plain stupidity.
💡 So, what can you do? Here are the 5 common reasons that can be seen as the source of our stupidity. AVOID THEM👏🏽
🤦🏽♂️ We’re unintentionally stupid: There are biases built into our thinking because of evolution or we’re tired, overly focused on a goal, rushing, distracted, operating in a group, or under the influence of a group. Humans can unintentionally be stupid.
🤔 We have the wrong information: We are making decisions based on incomplete or wrong information and applying wrong assumptions. One common observation of when I am stupid - overly focused on the end goal and not patient enough to collect enough information 🤡
🫠 Failing to learn: We don’t learn from our mistakes or observe mistakes others make. If you have 5 years of experience but keep making the same mistakes, it counts for nothing.
🫡 Seeking validation over doing the right thing: We unconsciously make choices based on optics, politics, and dependability to avoid criticism or seek the validation of our peers and superiors.
❌ Using the wrong mental model: We might apply the long model while making a decision. For example, using Occam’s Razor to select the simplest assumption and sacrificing accuracy.
⚠️ The Real Danger of ChatGPT
When I was in school, we were made to memorise multiplication and division tables. As part of our “oral” exam (sounds really dirty now 😂), we had to recall these tables to get a good grade. This way of teaching sounds so redundant today.
You can easily search for anything online, especially mathematical calculations. That is if you have to use math in your job. Year 16 and still haven’t used (a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab+ b2 🙄
So, a common question by students in the last 2 decades has been - Is memorizing things that are searchable even useful? Why should I remember these formulas?
With the release of ChatGPT, the question will change for the next 2 decades. Do I even have to write if a way smarter AI chat function can generate the text for me?
As someone who has used ChatGPT, I can tell you it's absolutely amazing. In fact, I've used it for the past 3 newsletters (including this one).
But here's the thing, I believe ChatGPT should be used for editing, not writing.
Writing equals thinking. Outsourcing my thinking to AI pollutes the idea.
And that’s a danger! 🏴☠️
A lot of people, especially students, will look at ChatGPT to think. ChatGPT is definitely a good place to search for a topic or edit something that you have already thought about.
It’s very much similar to the difference between reading and writing. When you read, you are only but reading someone else’s thoughts.
It’s not your thinking.
Language is how human beings understand themselves and the world.
Writing is how we understand uniquely.
- Nerdwriter01
🤔 Will It Remain The Same?
This is one of the models used by Jeff Bezos. You can use this when you are creating your own long-term strategy in life or business.
It’s simple - look for things that will remain the same 👌🏽
Here’s an excerpt from a Bezos interview explaining the framework,
I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one.
I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two—because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time...
😇 Read this issue of my newsletter on the idea of Inversion made famous by Charlie Munger.
In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection.
It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' or 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible.
And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now.
When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.
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