Morgan Housel is back with this gem – a collection of his thoughts on a few unconnected topics. We share one while we list the others, for every Housel post deserves to be read in its entirety.
“I broke my back skiing when I was a teenager. It’s still screwed up and I occasionally tweak it, leaving me in agony for a few days. When I’m in pain I’ve noticed: I’m irritable, short-tempered, and impatient. I try hard to not be, but pain can override the best intentions.
One lesson I’ve tried to learn is that whenever I see someone being a jerk, my knee-jerk reaction is to think, “What an asshole.” My second reaction is: maybe his back hurts.
It’s not an excuse, but a reminder that all behavior makes sense with enough information. You can always see people’s actions, but rarely (if ever) what’s happening in their head.
…Most harm done to others is unintentional. I think the vast majority of people are good and well-meaning, but in a competitive and stressful world it’s easy to ignore how your actions affect others.”
Few other he details but we list them here:
- “An iron rule of math is that 50% of the population has to be below average.
- I think the majority of society problems are all downstream of housing affordability.
- I heard someone say recently that the reason so many people are skeptical AI will improve society – or are terrified it will do the opposite – is because it’s not clear the internet (and phones) made their life better.
- This is more hope than prediction, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in 20 years we look back at this era of political nastiness as a generational bottom we grew out of.”
He ends with his take on nostalgia: “It happens because the best survival strategy in an uncertain world is to overworry. When you look back, you forget about all the things you worried about that never came true. So, life appears better in the past because in hindsight there wasn’t as much to worry about as you were actually worrying about at the time.”
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