Vishal Khandelwal

📚 Bookworm: A Technique for Producing Ideas

March 20, 2020

Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. Which means every single person on this Earth is connected to every other person. It’s just a matter of finding that chain of connection.

What’s true in the context of human connections is also true for creativity and ideas.

A familiar saying recommends, “There’s nothing new under the Sun.”

Every novel body of knowledge is the result of some permutation and combination of prior discoveries.
[Read more…] about 📚 Bookworm: A Technique for Producing Ideas

Spotlight: 20 Ideas to Make 2020 a Life Changing Year – Part 3

March 9, 2020

In this series, we’re discussing twenty great ideas to make 2020 a transformational year. In the previous two issues of Spotlight, I wrote about 11 powerful ideas.

What is an idea? It’s a catalyst for new thought.

So, through these ideas, I am offering you a different way of looking at the world. I can’t tell you what to do or how to do. But once you have a fresh perspective, the right action will follow from the new understanding. And that action will be very specific and unique to your situation.

Here are five more pieces for your reflection.
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📚 Bookworm: You Are Now Less Dumb

February 29, 2020

We all take pride in claiming that humans are the most intelligent creatures on planet earth. That’s ironic because the definition of intelligence is also created by us. In other words, we’re giving ourselves high ranking on a scale created by us.

But the irony doesn’t end there.

Inspite of wearing our intelligence as badge of honour, we all make errors which our “so-called intelligence” classify as dumb mistakes. That’s because no matter how hard we try, we can’t fight mother nature — the traits deeply ingrained in our behaviour by millions of years of evolution.

In the popular rationality blog Less Wrong, while explaining the thoughts behind the blog’s odd name, Ruby writes —

A humble recognition that no human is ever going to attain perfectly true beliefs and be right about everything. We should always believe that some of our beliefs are mistaken, we just don’t know which ones.
A bold recognition that notwithstanding the impossibility of being perfectly right, there is still the possibility of being less wrong. Everyone believes false things, but some believe a lot fewer wrong things than others. [Read more…] about 📚 Bookworm: You Are Now Less Dumb

Behaviouronomics: Selection Bias

February 26, 2020

In 1987, an investment banker named Steven Rothstein bought a special pass called AAirpass which gave him lifetime privilege of booking first-class American Airlines tickets from anywhere to anywhere in the world for free. The pass wasn’t cheap. It cost him a quarter of a million dollars. But Rothstein was so happy with the deal that in 1989 he paid an additional $1,50,000 to buy a companion pass which allowed another person to accompany Steven in first-class.

One interesting fact about Steven’s companion pass was a clause that he added in his contract about his wife. The agreement stated: “If spouse is the companion, the spouse will be allowed to travel separately from Holder, provided that the spouse travels on the flight immediately prior to or just after the flight taken by Holder.” Steven reasoned that in the unlikely event of a crash, at least one of them would be alive for their three children. It looks like Steven took the idea of risk mitigation too far.
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Spotlight: 20 Ideas to Make 2020 a Life Changing Year – Part 2

February 18, 2020

In this series, we’re discussing twenty great ideas to make 2020 a truly life-changing year.

We covered some ground with six ideas in the previous post — the importance of deep work, the power of keeping a journal, the equation of risk and luck, the key to following your passion, poking the box, and developing a contrarian mindset.

Allow me to kindle a firework in your head with a few more mental constructs. My hope is that, if learned and re-learned, these ideas will make 2020 a transformational milestone in your life.