What Makes A Hero? Why Heroism Will Not Win Wars. You Live In A Simulation. Game Your Kids To Be Warren Buffett – Plus More! #198

Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck – welcome!

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1️⃣ What Makes A Hero?

Not being murdered by thugs.

Alexei Navalny was probably no braver than many you.

What made Navalny a hero were his choices.

Faced with exile or the prospect of handing himself over to murderers, he chose imprisonment, ill-treatment, death.

He sacrificed himself for an idea.

What was that idea? His impressive wife Yulia spelled it out:

• “The idea that Russia can be a normal European country. Just like yours.
• “A peaceful democratic country.
• “A country where political conflicts are resolved through fair elections – not prisons, not poisons, not bullets.”

That everydayness. That greyness. That numb normality we dully take for granted.

It doesn’t seem worth dying for.

Of course, it’s all that’s worth dying for.

⏭ You can watch the Oscar-winning documentary ‘Navalny’ here.

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2️⃣ Heroism Doesn’t Win Wars

Ammunition, weapons and manpower do.

Dara Massicot has a depressing twitter thread on what Russia’s bloody victory at Avdiivka means for Ukraine. Little good. Russia is planning out-bleed and out-exhaust Ukraine whilst the US Congress sits on nearly US $100 billion of aid.

Meanwhile, Russia’s nervous NATO neighbours, the Baltic states, want faster and more robust responses from allies – pushing for troops to defend their territories from day one of a potential Russian invasion.

Previous NATO plans allowed them to be overrun before being “liberated” later. You can see what that looks like in Ukraine.

“Russia has chosen a path which is a long-term confrontation ... and the Kremlin is probably anticipating a possible conflict with NATO within the next decade or so,” according to Estonia’s intelligence service.

NATO remains a defensive alliance. Berlin had to fall to beat the Nazis. Where, you might ask, is the offensive capability that would remove the Putin regime?

Mark Hertling, former US commander in Europe, notes:

• “Nervous NATO allies are becoming more concerned with their own safety above the collective NATO alliance... Putin has become emboldened. I believe he thinks the tide is turning.”

⏭ Ukrainian defeat in Avdiivka cost it dear.

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3️⃣ You Live In A Simulation

The twist? You red-pilled yourself.

Cognitive scientist Andy Clark has a fascinating look at how we experience the world in his book “The Experience Machine.”

TL;DR?

Our minds aren’t information processors - they’re anticipation engines.

What does that mean?

• 💾 Instead of “experiencing” reality, your mind is generating experience simulations based on past expectation data.
• 💊 You’re like Neo seeing the Matrix code under the surface.
• 🧠 📱 This predictive cognition isn’t just happening inside your head. Through the technology you use, you’ve got extended intelligence.
• 🤖 In Clark’s view, your Apple Watch isn’t just some wearable device – it’s an active extension of your cyborg mind.

Now you may be wondering...if I’m living in my mind’s predictions, how does that change my consciousness? 🤔 Does my iPhone make me more “present”?

Well, Clark’s theory is a work in progress! But it does speak to the power of placebos and positive thinking.

⏭ Clark’s latest paper is on the limits of passive learning for #AI.

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4️⃣ How To Game Your Kids Into Finance

Runescape could help you raise the next Warren Buffett.

The FT has a story on RuneScape, an online game when you can buy and sell everything from feathers to ... snail meat.

• “More than 300 million RuneScape accounts have been made over the game’s lifetime, and many a youngish person in Europe and the US will have spent at least some time playing the game at school.
• “Thanks to a reasonably sophisticated in-game economy, it has offered players a rudimentary education in bid-ask spreads, arbitrage, price gouging, scarcity value and more.”

⏭ The company behind RuneScape just got traded for US$1.1 billion.

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5️⃣ Want To Beat Woke Culture on Campus?

Try starting a new university. That should work, right?

The University of Austin (UATX) (UATX) is a new “anti-woke” university, which aims to champion academic freedom.

Noah Rawlings enrolled on its ‘Forbidden Courses’ programme and wrote an excoriating essay for The New Inquiry.

Here he is on the school’s true target audience ...

• “young neoconservatives who seemed to think trans athletes and immigrants were the greatest threat to the Union,
• “whose high school tuition had cost 4x a degree from a public university,
• “who nodded at UATX speakers with graduate degrees from Berkeley or UChicago as they railed against ‘elites’ and ‘elite culture’ on the office complex of a billionaire.”

Higher education does indeed have its challenges. But hammering out ideas on the anvil of a reactionary echo chamber doesn’t seem like one of the solutions.

⏭ One professor has already resigned, accusing UATX of ‘stifling free speech.’

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6️⃣ Don’t Hurry a Deep Ocean Sponge

It takes them over 10,000 years to reproduce.

⏭ These and more fascinating underwater facts from Diva Amon.

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7️⃣ Advice From Beyond The Grave

Read a book!

Before he died Alexei Navalny left this advice: “read books.”

“Don’t roll your eyes. Don’t switch off. I know the phrase ‘recommended reading’ evokes boredom and dread, but these are terrific, interesting, readable books. I guarantee you a great time with them, and then you’ll tell me: ‘Thanks for your advice Alexei!’”

These are his recommendations:

1. Anatoly Marchenko’s My Testimony, a slim, grim memoir of Soviet labour camps in the 1960s. Marchenko died on hunger strike in 1986. This was the USSR.
2. David E Hoffman’s The Oligarchs: Wealth & Power In The New Russia. How plutocracy preceded Putinism. Written in 2001, it tells the story of a handful of Yeltsin-era oligarchs. One was murdered, the survivors are now exiles.
3. Mikhail Zygar’s Everyone Is Free: The Story Of How Elections Ended In Russia In 1996. Democracy was over before it started.
4. Mikhail Fishman‘s The Successor: The Story of Boris Nemtsov and the Country Where He Didn’t Become President. Nemtsov was murdered in 2015.

Navalny’s turn came a week ago.

⏭  More reading on Bea’s book club podcast.

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If you enjoy this newsletter – please recommend it!

Best,

Adrian