I had this beautiful post written about the absurdity of waking up at 4am to reserve pool chairs and how people engage in West Side Story like resort warfare with each other just to reserve pool chairs…But….. I didn’t save my work. I’m reflecting on that — because I didn’t save my work you didn’t get my thoughts… the idea I had as I wrote to you are no longer with me… the moment passed. The ideas as they were at that time can never come return. Sure, I could re-imagine it, but it won’t be the same. As I muse about — everything natural ends, therefore enjoy each moment.

Of the things I learn at work, the lesson that sticks with me most is: “Always be MECE.” MECE (pronounced ‘Mee-See’) stands for Mutually Exclusive and Comprehensively Exhaustive. It means that every option is covered without overlap—nothing is missing, and nothing fits in two places at once. Here’s an example: Select the answer that best describes your desire for pizza.Yes, Pizza!No, Pizza!OtherYes and No can’t exist at the same time. And it’s possible that you may be “Sure, but not right now” which would go in “Other.” I recently got a CT Scan. At the hospital I filled out a form asking if I had allergies. The form asked me to select “Yes” or “No”. I believe that’s wrong, and it’s certainly not MECE. I don’t know if I have allergies—so how can I confidently say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’?. I wrote in a checkbox and titled it “Unknown.”The nurse, upon reading my form, sighed and said, “Mr. Brady, please, do you have allergies?” I responded, “I don’t know if I do. And without knowing what I might be allergic to, how could I confidently answer yes or no? And I will not claim that I have or don’t have something when I can’t support that claim with any evidence. That’s how conspiracies start.” I’m not a difficult patient. That said, the more I learn about what knowledge is and how it’s acquired and how we use knowledge as inputs in a system, the more I want to be careful about claiming what I have or don’t have knowledge of. We prefer certainty over ambiguity. And unchecked certainty could give rise to hubris. What’s better: Humility > hubris.

I read an article in the New York Times about how the rate of clergy sexual abuse of children in the Philippines is part of a broader systemic issue that persists. If you are a Catholic, my views may offend you — consider yourself warned.I took an interest in the subject because I am interested in systems and I obsess how people make decisions. I found a study by Julie Hanlon Rubio and Paul J. Schutz called “Beyond ‘Bad Apples’: Understanding Clergy Perpetrated Sexual Abuse as a Structural Problem & Cultivating Strategies for Change.” The researchers claim that clericalism — a structure of power that isolates clergy and gives them excessive authority while reducing agency of the lay, toxic masculinity (among other personal factors), and a culture of silence and repression that inhibits victim or institutional whistleblowers from coming forward. To support their claims, the authors surveyed religious, lay, and clergy. I don’t put a ton of weight on anecdotes (anecdotes aren’t data), but the authors did their best to methodically categorize and tag data for analysis. Their conclusions are that the system is to blame and not the person.I asked myself, how many different systems are at play here? And what enables these systems to persist? I identified two from the research, and there are probably more.Church as a social institution. The norm is the belief that the church is nearly infallible. We tell ourselves stories that reinforce that belief — “listen to the priest”, “respect the priest”, “don’t make us that family that makes noise, keep your head down and your mouth shut.” There are feedback loops that make it possible for clergy to offend with impunity — “I’m a priest, I can leverage God to enforce compliance or silence.” Or at an system-administrator level, “If we expose our offending priests, we may lose credibility with congregants.”Social stratification as a systemNorms that enforce power dynamics such as patriarchy and/or female submissiveness. Norms that enforce power, such as clericalism, reinforce the belief that a priest’s association with the divine inherently positions the lay beneath them.I then thought, how do we change systems? Let’s go to physics — The church as an institution has mass and is in motion. Over time, its mass grows, making it more resistant to change. Newton’s principles tell us that to alter its trajectory, an external force must be greater than the force keeping it in motion.Let’s go to systems — systems dynamics tells us that the most powerful way to intervene in a system is to change the relationship between nodes. To change the relationship between clergy and lay or between the institution and itself is much easier to write than to implement. It would require fundamentally changing how we see ourselves and how we see an institution — an ancient belief reinforced through generations! Let’s go to behavioral economics — oversimplified, humans prefer to make change when they have high degrees of certainty and they believe the gain is greater than the loss. To change the nature of relationship between a person and a deep-set institution and belief system requires the person to believe with high certainty that what they gain from giving up a prior belief is greater than giving up a belief they may have held since childhood. How does that happen easily? My final thought on this paperPhysics, sociology, systems, and economics tells us that to change the system may require us to change the nature of our relationship with the system. And, if you’ve ever tried to change the nature of your relationship with anything you deeply love you know the challenge. Perhaps a solution to system-wide change is to start small — through nudges. System administrators—any person or group accountable for a system’s goals, behaviors, and outputs—can introduce nudges that gradually weaken deep-set beliefs and slowly reveal something new. The tradeoff is that if the negative side effects of the system are allowed to persist, the thing that you’re most trying to protect may erode away sooner than its natural death.For those who engage with the system as participants or end users, find ways to communicate and transparently report push back and feedback to system administrators. Consider a vote with the wallet — stop financially supporting the system. Consider financially supporting or publicly advocating for a competing cause. At the level of the person these changes don’t seem meaningful, but at scale, they can be powerful voice-of-user feedback. Three principles then for thinking about changing your relationship with anything large:If you want to make a big change, change your relationship with the thing you want to change.Make that large change sooner than later. Have systems in place to support you as you make that change. Accept that nothing changes overnight, the only way to eat a gigantic steak is one bite at a time, and you’re only human. Consider applying it to something you could give up — examples include ice cream, pizza, (for singers) the need to back phrase, or BTS.

I have no ability to focus at this moment. Yet, in a sense I can. I’m writing this message to you.I’m feeling a mix of exhaustion, excitement, and energy. Not all at once, but seemingly so.My mind wants sleep, food, and to solve a problem at work. Not all at once, but… I want to write, and read, and contemplate new ideas. Not all…Everything, everywhere, not all at once….…but seemingly so.

The absurdity of life is that in our attempt to make the most of everything, ultimately, everything gets frozen over and we die. Nothing lasts forever. But in spite of knowing that, we work and work and work and work – the grind, grit, and the rigor of it all. Actors often share that the way to play comedy is to not play comedy. To approach a comedic scene “straight” means to approach the scene with the seriousness of a Shakespeare play. The audience sees the obvious in-congruence – seeing something silly done by someone who appears unaware of its silliness – and laughs. If the actor were to break, or join in on the joke, then the scene may cease to be funny. However, perhaps joining in the joke is an appeal for some. Again, we’re met with the absurdity of comedy – attempts to play it straight reveal it for what it truly is – life – and perhaps that’s the real joke.Inspired by Jason Zinoman’s NYT article Losing It on Live TV. Quote:“Breaking is a failure. That’s also its appeal. After all, human weakness is comedy’s greatest subject.”

Here’s a position I hold (perhaps irrationally):Students entering colleges are making decisions about the future, and they are not suited for such decision making on their own.First — in my experience, forecasting is more art than science. Students leaving high school are making forecasts about their next four years, and perhaps about their careers. For example: leaving high school I wanted to be a music teacher; and since high school I have been amazing at doing the exact opposite. If I made forecasts like that in my current job, where I forecast revenue, I would be out of a job. Second — colleges are expensive. And expensive in terms outside of tuition. Consider the time, energy, and stress required to source, apply for, and wait for decisions for colleges. What opportunities are lost because of the search and admission costs? The time spent in college pursuing a degree that may not pan out to a desired career, what opportunities are lost because of that investment? What high school student considers opportunity costs (much less debt) as a function of their decision making?John J Conlon and Dev Patel, researchers at Harvard, came out with a study — What Jobs Comes to Mind? Stereotypes about Fields of Study. Here’s an abbreviated excerpt of their conclusions: “Across multiple survey samples, time periods, and elicitation methods, we find that U.S. undergraduate students greatly oversimplify the college-to-career process. Students appear to stereotype majors (“Art majors become artists,” “Political science majors become lawyers”), exaggerating the share of college graduates who are working in their major’s stereotypical job…. We show that this bias appears important for understanding students’ choice of major and has potentially important welfare consequences as it boosts demand for risky academic paths… our results may help to partly explain several striking and perhaps puzzling facts about students’ human capital decisions. For example, more American undergraduates are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in journalism than there are journalists in the entire country. Psychology majors outnumber accounting majors in the United States, and yet there are eight times as many accountants as psychologists. Students take on considerable debt to fund Master’s programs with appealing but unlikely associated careers (e.g., film studies)… Ex ante, of course, rational mechanisms could have fully explained these patterns: e.g., students with correct beliefs might rationally pursue certain career paths which, though very unlikely to pan out, they feel are worth the risk (e.g., journalism or film), or students may realize that certain majors (e.g., psychology) provide a general education not intended for use in any particular sector. Our findings suggest that mistaken beliefs may also contribute to these patterns: certain fields of study may appear especially appealing because students believe they lead to attractive stereotypical jobs with exaggerated likelihoods. These human capital investments carry substantial monetary and opportunity costs, and therefore it may be beneficial to find ways to help students make better informed decisions or to steer them toward less risky academic paths.“My takeaway: people entering college are bad forecasters and don’t consider enough the opportunity costs. Okay, let’s say a person is real with themselves about their ability to forecast the future and want to maximize their time, what would that person do? I see three steps.Identify your obsession and invest your time into it. Make the costs related to college search about finding teachers (future mentors) who are obsessed about what you’re obsessed about and go to those schools. Say you find and go to one of those schools from step 1: Develop a portfolio of work centered around your obsessions and use that to enter the job market — obsessed candidates have a comparative advantage over candidates not obsessed.Once you’re out of school, find a company that obsesses over what you obsess about and makes a product that leaves ripples upon ripples of social good — apply there! Make a career, and make a life.Perhaps my take is contrarian — but also — perhaps that Harvard study may suggest that we need to find ways to better set up tomorrow’s leaders and innovators. Said more simply: what got us here won’t get us there.

In Ancient Mesopotamia, people might have drank beer daily. I wonder if the Ancient Mesopotamians also dealt with gout too. Fascinating article. Links to a page with a how-to video and taste test.I’ve quit drinking beer — gout — and for the most part I believe abstaining from alcohol is an overall net benefit for me. But you don’t need to consume alcohol to wish good health to a fellow time traveler…. so in that spirit: Prost, Sláinte, Salud, Kampai, Tagay, geonbae, l’chaim, egészségedre, Cheers!

I experienced a procedure the other day that, by all accounts, is not comfortable and unpleasant. The professionals who supported me through the procedure did their best to treat me with dignity, and I love them for it. This is not about them…I approach, and often embrace, the weird daily. I enjoy weird ideas, points of views, and exploring weird world views. I find taboo fascinating, and I love a contrarian take. I am not accustomed to weird invasive medical procedures though… that’s a first for me… and I noticed something that helped, prostrating myself before the weird, embracing it, and welcoming it into my life with a cheerful heart.So much of life’s weirdnesses and ackwardnesses can be assuaged and cooled with a cheerful and fun loving heart. I reminded myself that eventually I will die, and to allow this weird thing to bother me is absurd. And when you embrace the absurdity of life you quickly begin to laugh and find the funny in it. Life affords so many opportunity for humor and cheer. I am thankful I find more and more opportunities daily to embrace those moments. Not only does it enhance my enjoyment of the weird, it helps others step through life a little bit less stressfully too. Life’s short.Don’t take yourself too seriously.At one point we all shit our beds, gurgled our food, got caught with our pants down, and walked over to our neighbor’s house with a proton pack on and offered to clean their homes of ghosts… what you never did that?

“Every forest is a hyperobject, an enormously complex environment that’s shaped not just by its location, landscape, and climate but also by the history of humans in that place… what you see in the woods depends on the eyes that you are see it through.” — Deb Chachra, “How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World”When I look at the hospital system, from yesterday’s post, I see the hospital system through the lens of someone that helps business optimize their customer experiences for maximum success and revenue potential. I don’t see the system as a system administrator. When I see the forest system, I see it through the eyes of someone fascinated by how things interact with other things. When I think of humans, I think of humans through the eye of someone that’s still figuring out what it means to be his own human…. I suppose everything is a matter of perspective.

Consider that the world changes gradually.Culture and social norms don’t change overnight. It’s thought our brains process information at 10 bits per second (a fraction of your Internet speed).On net, everything usually works out. Traffic will always suck.You could always eat one less doughnut.There will always be predators, and there will always be prey.V will more often always precede I, unless you intend to deceive and go to a German Sixth chord, which is really a reverse tritone substitution (for the musicians). Seeing reality as it is and not as we hoped it would be makes reality a bit more tolerable.Most things are tolerable.Except BTS.