Category: Reading

“What Do You Care What Other People Think?” by Richard P Feynman

• All humans have the same problems, they just wear different costumes
• Ignore who said it and pay attention to what they said
• A lack of definition does not mean it does not have form
• Understand your weaknesses
• Talking details can put people at ease
• “It’s not the paint… It’s the paperwork.”
• Astronauts manually deploy landing gear so they can feel like they contribute to the operation
• Risk fatigue can cause us to ignore continued risk
• Previous success has no affect on current success

“Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman” by Richard P Feynman

• If it is good for you, what else matters?
• It is the things that everyone knows nothing about that everyone can talk about

Note: This was a fascinating read about the history of student loans and a prime example of how misaligned incentive can drive us so far astray.

• Student debt hits black household hardest
• Universities have the third largest lobbyist group
• The cold war led to needing more education
• Hard work used to be the ticket to the American Dream
• The GI Bill was meant to slow the return to work of veterans
• Johnson leaned on banks so the debt would stay off the Federal books
• Walker wanted a system backed by the Fed but with no oversight
• Inflation ran out of control, causing a raise in interest and loans
• Sallie Mae (SLM) was created to take federal money to forward to banks and was authorized to cover at nearly the same level as the Federal Reserve
  • This created “moral hazard” in which banks too bigger risks because they were fully insured
• Mid-1980’s students started defaulting more frequently
• Fox, CEO of SLM, convinced congress to guarantee profit, exploding the student loan market even more
• Then SLM severed ties with the government… going public
• Everyone made a lot of money… Private banks, SLM, and states
• Then came Student Loan Consolidation which let students combine loans then pay over 30 years
• US News college rankings started the arms race for prestige
• Higher tuition started raising prices to indicate quality
• 1989 WSJ reported 23 universities meeting to compare notes on students to maximize profits
• Accreditors were self-regulated and poorly funded so tons of random, bad schools popped up everywhere
• 1990 saw large reforms including better accounting and fewer student discharge rights
  • Tuition went up 120%-150% in a decade
• 1991 introduced Direct Loans for the first time (Fed paying schools directly, cutting SLM out of the picture) but also solidified debt vs grants by raising the cap but broadening availability
• Clinton launched direct loans that included income based repayment and eventual forgiveness
• Congress never required review of student’s ability to repay
• 1996 Al Lord got congress to disavow ownership of SLM so they could change their charter to lend directly to student, letting them profit from origination fees
• SLM started offering discounts to shut out the Clinton’s direct funding program
• For-profit schools could not earn more than 90% of their profit from federal loans
  • Schools accomplished this by keeping tuition low enough that 90% could be covered by federal loans
  • Growth came from the for-profit sector putting pressure to make more loans
• 1996 American Bar Association was sued, and lost, for cartel-like behavior; professors on the accreditation boards would require universities to pay higher wages to stay accredited, they would comply then raise tuition to cover the costs
• 1998 Federal government uncapped Grad loans
• 2006 SLM tried to go private but congress scraped the interest subsidies, cratering the value of SLM
• 2008 SLM was the first bail-out of the housing crash
• Obama pushed for the American Dream to be college instead of home ownership
• We encouraged people on the dole to get educated
• 2010 Federal government ended student loan guarantees and made them all Fed issued
  • Part of the savings paid for Obamacare
  • Debt raised fastest among black families
• 2011 Fed realized banks failed to correctly enforce loan criteria, the sudden enforcement meant a lot of students and parents could not get loans
  • Student aid became a form of welfare
• 2012 loosened the qualifications criteria
• 2014 lowered the income based repayment
• The housing bust enabled for-profit school to soar, capitalizing heavy-hit areas
• 2010 we start seeing “Disney-brand State U”
  • University of Alabama started aggressively marketing to out of state students who paid more
  • SLM pioneered “enrollment management”; how much to charge each student
• Student loans passed debt to future generations
• Many students were worse off from having gone to school, they made more but owed more
• Preventing discharge through bankruptcy meant Congress could show more profit from the Student Loan programs
• DeVoss engaged JP Morgan CEO to help investigate the Student Loan program and found the continuous interest charging was not sustainable

• Grit is determination and direction
• Grit is more important than talent, but we tend to prefer the naturals
  • Tests of talent are poor at best
• When we watch things become, we discount the awe of it
• Exemplars are craftsmen who acquired skills
• Talent is how fast we improve our skill
• Effort builds skill and makes skill productive
• Grit changes overtime
• Keep asking ‘why’ you are doing something until you get to ‘because’, that is the peak
• “Grit” is holding the same top-level goal for a long time
• Foster a passion
  • Passion comes from exposure to new experiences and time
• Boredom is always self-recognizable but interest is not
• Start slow with beginners
• Novelty for a beginner (newness) is different than novelty for an expert (nuance)
• Be okay with changing your mind
• Continuous improvement is crucial
• Goals are important in addition to repetition
• Deliberate practice
• Immediate feedback and reflection are crucial for improvement
• “Flow” is when your situation matches your skill
• Practicing good habits make it really easy to get started
• People learn to get (or be) helpless
• Permanent and pervasive explanations are signs of pessimism
• Seeing challenges as something to overcome promotes a growth mindset
• Trauma without control is bad but with control is good
• Ask for help getting back up
• Respectful, supportive, and demanding is the ideal parenting and teacher
• Grit can be transferred through culture

• Kids are growing up slower
  • Teens take longer to try alcohol, sex, and driving
  • Teens have less disposal cash, in part because they do not have jobs
  • Learning to binge drink, the later the more damage
• In general, iGen drinks less though
• Gen X took longer to start adolescence but started adulthood earlier
  • iGen is delaying everything
• Prefrontal cortex development needs experience, so delaying work and other experience may be detrimental to development
• Disadvantaged kids spend about the same amount of time as privileged kids and electric devices
• iGen parties less than Gen Me
• Teen homicides are going down but suicide is going up
• Social rejection can trigger the same pain centers as physical harm
• FOBLO (Fear of Being Left Out) is replacing FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
• Boys are aggressive physically, girls are aggressive socially
• Sleep deprivation kills mood
• iGen is leaving religion because of the hypocritic messaging
• Safety is a big deal
  • “Emotional safety” is the new thing
  • “Keep safe” and “stay safe” started being said a lot more in the mid-nineties
  • Marijuana is viewed as safe
• Escalating to arbitration is particularly among high class, loosely connected individuals
• iGen is more focused on money than prior generations, wanting to “close the gap”
• iGen values helping others more but does less
• We are returning to thinking of traditional gender roles
• iGen is less tolerant of unfavorable speech
  • They believe in equality so much, talking about racial differences is forbidden
• They align best with libertarianism
• What to do
  • Delay a smart phone as long as possible
  • Prefer apps that are focused on individual communication
  • Get exercise
  • Only frame things as “safety” unless it is really about safety
  • Job security
  • Tell them, “I want you to succeed”

• Definitions
  • Teacups are fragile: breaks easily and does not self-heal
  • Plastic is resilient: is not easy to break
  • People are anti-fragile: the may break easily the first time but can self-heal
• Avoidance tends to make us more sensitive rather than protecting us
• Things do not frighten or dismay us but our perception does
• Feelings are compelling and are often unreasonable
• The rider’s job is to justify the elephant’s actions
• The propagation of “micro-aggressions” shifted focus from intent to impact
  • Focusing on impact while ignoring intent makes one responsible for the feelings of others
• CARE
  • Conscious empathy
  • Active listening
  • Responsible reaction
  • Environmental awareness
• Education is meant to make people think
• Humans are wired for tribes and their morality
  • “Morality binds and blinds”
  • Identifying a common enemy is an easy way to expand your tribe, at least temporarily
• Policies of pure tolerance generally only empowers the already powerful
• Intersectionality requires looking at all classes, not just one
• Anonymity allows one to lose their identity to the group, leveraging
  • Dogmatism
  • Crusaders
  • Groupthink
  • Anti-intellectuals
• Concept creep is being used to normalize radical behaviors
• Words do not cause stress directly, rather only to those who interpret them as stressful
• Witch hunts
  • Come on suddenly
  • Crimes against the community
  • Infractions are trivial or fabricated
  • People are fearful to defend the accused
• We have shifted from acting out of a love of our current tribe to a hatred of any other tribe
• The less time a child has to be on their own, without a screen, the less capable of dealing with the world they are
  • While crime has decline dramatically since the 1970’s, our fears have not
• Genes prime is but interaction finishes the learning process
• We need rough and tumble play to become fully capable adults
• “Perseverance without passion is drudgery.”
• Free-play is critical for “the art of association” or, detecting how others are feeling and adjusting play to compensate
  • (Free-play for children is so important so they can learn how to keep the game going through their social interactions)
• Thousands of small little hindrances can be worse than tyranny
• Administrative interventions are required to support a culture of victimhood
• “Fair” distributions in response to merit is the default for toddlers and most people
• How the decision was made is important for justice, as is how people are treated
• Intuitive Justice is an overlap of equity theory and process Justice
• It is important for a Democratic society to open new inquiries about Justice debate them and act on them
  • (Active discussions is a consistent theme here; without discussion, we have little way to know see and hear new viewpoints)
• Being wrong feels just like being right… The difference is the feeling when you realize you were wrong
• Pay as much attention to what apps youth are using as how much they are using them
• Your company should have a high tolerance for disagreement but no tolerance for violence or retribution