Marcellus Insights
Short read: Why so many AI researchers think the machines could kill everyone
When we heard from experts that ‘AI will change the world’, no one expected it would mean by them killing all humans! Most industries have their share of critics, but there is something worrying about one whose own builders keep resigning from their jobs because they are frightened of what they are building. But that […]
Short read: Asia’s lonely economy of one
Although India is one of the poorest forty countries in the world (as measured by per capita income), the demographic trends in its big metros and in the prosperous south are already similar to that developed Western countries. Specifically, the proportion of young people not marrying is rising fast, the age at which educated women […]
Long read: Just bury your trash
We have been fed pictures of massive mounds of garbage in landfills to encourage segregating our trash for recycling. However, this article argues that neither is recycling a necessarily viable solution nor are landfills all that bad. “The case against landfill has two parts. The first part is that there are efficient, cheap, or environmentally […]
Long read: Should you buy Alien Abduction Insurance?
In our world of personal finance advisory, it is often believed that managing investor behaviour adds far greater value than picking the right investments. This is a result of the development of a new field of economics called Behavioral Economics. It is indeed new in the grand scheme of things as this article reminds us […]
Long read: Will we ever achieve immortality?
Venki Ramakrishnan shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for working out the structure of the ribosome, and is the author of the blockbuster bestseller, “Why we Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality”. This long piece from him in the Scientific American comes at a time when immortality is turning […]
“Our People Are Our Greatest Asset” – and How to Tell Who Means It
“People first” is the most overused phrase in business, and the least believed. In our new book, The Art of Enduring, we found that the companies that truly live it share two habits: they empower people (and protect them when bets fail), and they expose people to enough roles to grow them into leaders. Bajaj […]
Build a Dravid-Style Global Wealth Building Machine
Most investors chase alpha but good investing is more Test cricket, not T20. Long term wealth creators therefore focus on risk adjusted returns, not alpha. In cricketing parlance, they seek to be more like Dravid rather than Sehwag. Diversifying across the world & across uncorrelated asset classes is a very effective way to generate Dravid-style […]
Short read: Why get an MBA when you can watch a sports documentary?
Recently released documentary about the tennis legend Novak Djokovic – Wolf in Winter is made by Jason Hehir, who shot to fame with his documentary of the Chicago Bulls team of the 90s – The Last Dance. That documentary is considered a lesson in management in many ways. This article argues there is plenty to […]
Short read: India’s textile parks are half empty. Do we need more?
There is a familiar ritual to Indian industrial policy. A minister announces a bold new scheme, a ribbon is cut somewhere, and a few years later the same announcement is quietly made again as though for the first time. When Nirmala Sitharaman used the 2026-27 budget to propose mega textile parks “in challenge mode”, she […]
Short read: How to future-proof your wrists
One of the great joys of cricket is watching VVS Laxman or Mohammad Azharuddin execute their signature flick shot. A ball is coming in at the stumps, and with a late roll of the wrists, they flick it off the pads through midwicket to the boundary with almost no visible effort. It is not power […]
Long read: The mind virus: Why you should care whether you read AI-generated content
Marcellus’ Three Longs and Three Shorts newsletter was born out of an informal habit of sharing amongst ourselves what we found as good reads on the internet. In recent years, the likelihood of finding a good one has paradoxically reduced significantly despite or rather because the volume of articles online at the likes of Substack […]
Long read: Slime moulds and the bitter debate over the nature of intelligence
AI bulls believe Artificial General Intelligence or AGI is around the corner. AGI refers to the form of AI which beats human cognitive capabilities across any domain. Whilst AI is already beating humans at certain tasks, the comparison of machine intelligence with human intelligence has sparked a debate on what defines intelligence or cognition in […]
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