Infinite Loops Jim O'Shaughnessy and Jamie Catherwood

David Perell is prolific writer and online educator, who runs a writing school called “Write of Passage”. David also hosts the “The North Star Podcast” featuring interviews with writers, athletes, and entrepreneurs.

Important Links:

Website: https://perell.com/
Writing School: https://writeofpassage.school/
Friday Finds Links: https://perell.com/friday-finds-links/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/david_perell
Show Notes:

Origins of “Write of Passage”
Writing leads to thinking
David’s ever expanding portfolio
Live the life that you teach
Applying lessons from Disneyland to a writing course
Four Seasons of writing education
Ana’s success with David’s course
Writing as a career transition
Average course cohort age
Building a personal monopoly
Advice for an aspiring creator
Dive into the work of the people you admire
Managing fear of creating in public
The network age
Building a product for high-schoolers
Finding your tribe on the internet
Going against the trend with long-form essays
Checklists and prescriptions
The cover band strategy for investing
Building an internet native education system
Schools stifling creativity
The Never-Ending Now
Books Mentioned:

Zero to One; by Peter Thiel
One Summer: America, 1927; by Bill Bryson
The Status Game; by Will Storr
Invest Like the Best; by Jim O'Shaughnessy

Shreyas Doshi is a startup advisor who has formerly worked in the product teams of tech firms like Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo. He regularly writes about product, strategy, org psychology, leadership, and life!

Important Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/shreyas
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyasdoshi
Show Notes:

Shreyas’s childhood
Operating with the owner mindset
The LNO framework
Getting good at leveraging time
The antithesis principle
Having a great manager
Individual vs. group decision making
“Apple Pie” positions
Beware of certainty theater
Social media: A global intelligence network
Minimizing your opportunity costs
The issue with following the rubric
Lessons from school at the workplace
Learning to unlearn
Tao Te Ching on leadership
Being an invisible leader
Tight vs. weak grip
And MUCH more!
Books Mentioned:

The Science of Storytelling; by Will Storr
The Status Game; by Will Storr
Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu

Our recurring guest (who rarely recurs these days), Alex Danco, comes back for his sixth appearance on Infinite Loops!

Important Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alex_Danco
Website: https://alexdanco.com/
Newsletter: https://danco.substack.com/
Show Notes:

Our planned, but unplanned conversations
Pink Floyd were philosophers
From Heraclitus, to Lao Tzu, to Gita, to Deutsch
Where does decision making come from?
Projection 101
Can you versus can’t you read people’s mind
Jim throwing big fancy words like “Phylogenetic inertia”
Corn: The apex predator
Self-serving nature of memetic theory
The Mirror Philosophy
What is a “creator”?
Communication theory by Gregory Bateson
The Founding Murderer
Consequences of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge
"The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.”
Hot media vs. Cool media
The Wire, and dumb Stringer
The state of accreditation
Balancing mystery with transparency
Knowing pop culture as a status symbol
And MUCH more!
Books Mentioned:

The Science of Storytelling; by Will Storr
The Status Game; by Will Storr
Happy; by Derren Brown
The Selfish Gene; by Richard Dawkins
Steps to an Ecology of Mind; by Gregory Bateson
War and Peace; by Leo Tolstoy

Johnathan Bi started out getting trained in Mathematics, and then eventually went on to study Philosophy and Computer Science at Columbia. He hosts a lecture series on René Girard’s Mimetic Theory and is also a founding member of Lonsdale Investment Technology.

Important Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnathanBi
Lecture series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qu6vBebwwg
Website: https://johnathanbi.com/
Lonsdale Investment Technology: https://www.longterm.com/
Show Notes:

Becoming pessimistic with age
Humiliation always comes back to bite you
How Jonathan got introduced to Buddhism and Girard
Why Jonathan left academia
The driving human emotion
Has modernity ignored the “spirit”?
Girard’s apocalyptic predictions
Wild, wild west of capitalism
The mystery with the discovery of the skull
What does eugenics say about science?
Science becoming dictatorial
Buddhism figuring out the inner telescope
Physical vs. metaphysical desires
Mimesis in asset valuation
Price to magic ratio
Nietzsche's will of power
Is delusion bad?
Can internet lead to greater violence?
“The Buddhist Solution”
Girard—A rescuer of spirit
And MUCH more!
Books Mentioned:

The Status Game; by Will Storr
The Struggle for Recognition; by Axel Honneth
Sapiens; by Yuval Noah Harari
The Science of Storytelling; by Will Storr
The Origin of Species; Charles Darwin
Untimely Meditations; by Friedrich Nietzsche

Dan McMurtrie is the Portfolio Manager at Tyro Partners, an asset management firm for institutions and HNWIs; and the General Partner at Anchorless Bangladesh, an early stage venture fund focused on Bangladeshi startups.

Links:

Dan’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperMugatu
Tyro Partners: https://www.tyropartners.com/
Anchorless Bangladesh: https://www.anchorless.vc/
Coolworks: Jobs in Great Places: https://www.coolworks.com/
Show Notes:

Are we in the schadenfreude part of the market cycle?
Going back to the fundamentals
Solving the agency problem
Taking concentrated beta risk
Having clarity around your goals
The behavioral risk in investing
Do not get married to your investment thesis
It’s always you vs. you
Investing is about understanding other people's mistakes
Societal costs of stablecoins being unstable
Compatibility of social media and representative democracy
Issues with the current US Govt. administration
Number one existential risk for US currently
Risks of information overload
Improving education about commerce
Dopamine manipulators
Leadership vs. Stakeholder management
America vs China for policy changes
US legal immigration system
And MUCH more!

Description:
George Mack is a creator who writes about the intersection of mental models, marketing, and technological tools and tactics. His marketing agency “Multiply” has helped grow some of the fasted growing businesses in the world backed by VCs like Stripe, YC, Sequoia, and LVMH.

George’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/george__mack
George’s newsletter: https://emailoctopus.com/lists/6d23df04-dff2-11ea-a3d0-06b4694bee2a/forms/subscribe
Multiply Marketing: https://www.multiply.marketing/
Show Notes:

Specific knowledge and technology
Rise of TikTok
Bringing people closer to tech
Regulation slowing down tech innovation
High agency filters
A self-made teenage billionaire?
New forms of education
Word of mouth 2.0
The best marketer doesn’t look like a marketer
Elon’s 21 second pause
Optimizing for luck
The smart friend razor
Superpower in being weird
How to build a porn site
Assess others to assess yourself
The issue with personality tests
Advice to the young
Books Mentioned:

Zero to One; by Peter Thiel
Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu
The Bhagavad Gita