Memory & Learning Breakthrough: It Turns Out That The Ancients Were Right

Memory & Learning Breakthrough: It Turns Out That The Ancients Were Right

Teaching (sharing knowledge) is one of the noblest things we can do with our short time on this planet. It's a way to achieve immortality. The noblest attitude will reside in other people's minds, and then it'll be passed on to other people. This article really connects with my life mission. Leaving something for other people and making it accessible.

Without Warren Buffett being a learning machine, the [Berkshire Hathaway investing] record would have been absolutely impossible. The same is true at lower walks of life. I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they’re learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they get up. Collecting the most useful, universal, and timeless mental models in the world to build a base of rare and valuable knowledge that is instantly practical, applies across domains, will never expire, and that will compound — all to become a modern polymath.

Using the 5-Hour Rule to set aside a minimum of 5 hours per week (typically 25 for me) for deliberate learning. The idea is simple: Teach what you learn — as soon as you learn it. Research shows that when we teach what we learn, something magical happens in our minds. We suddenly notice mistakes in our thinking. We have more creative insights. Our ideas become sharper. We remember what we learned for longer. We see patterns more effectively. This phenomenon is known as the Explanation Effect.

Looking at text and expecting to learn is not far off from looking at food and expecting to get its nutrients. We need to digest our life experiences just like we digest our food. Without some form of active processing, almost everything we read is lost within weeks. When we incorporate teaching into our daily lives, we exponentially increase our learning potential, build deeper relationships with those around us, and make a bigger impact on the world.

There is NOTHING more scalable than teaching. Teaching may be the future of the sharing economy. At the end of the day, we are ALL each other’s teachers on some level — whether it be as colleagues, friends, mentors, parents, or spouses. Teaching others what we have learned is one of the noblest things we can do with our short time on this planet. We humans are designed to learn and teach. Knowledge is an innately social organism. It wants to move, to land in other’s minds, to connect to other knowledge.

“No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.” ― Peter Drucker. The famous Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca once proclaimed, “While we teach, we learn.” In 2016, Buffett took things a step further and wrote a 50-year retrospective. Writing about the report, he says, “As you might guess, I ended up being the prime beneficiary of this effort. There’s nothing like actually writing something out to clarify thinking.”

Learning Conversations. Many of the most remarkable insights in history came from pairs of friends who spent years dialoguing, conversing, and debating with each other. “When one teaches, two learn.” — Robert Heinlein. The easiest way to get started with the habit of teaching is by creating a daily “Today I Learned” email. The idea is inspired by the popular Today I Learned subreddit. Research has shown that spending 15 minutes at the end of the day can increase your learning for the day by 23%.

Build deeper relationships. By sharing what you’re learning with others, you stay connected, and you help people grow in their own life. “Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.” ― Dalai Lama.

Status Monkeys

Neither Bitcoin nor Twitter existed fifteen years ago. Both are dominant forces today. They bootstrapped from nothing to something by rewarding early adopters, incentivizing them to do work for the network, and making it increasingly challenging to mine new tokens. The fact that high follower counts are scarce makes them valuable, and the proof of work requirement enables scarcity. Lack of social graph portability is frustrating for users. This one is particularly germane and highlights a main difference between traditional social networks and NFTs.

The power of NFTs is that they make digital assets scarce. Scarcity makes digital assets valuable. NFTs are starting to feel a lot like a new kind of social network that sits above other social networks and communities. People are status-seeking monkeys. People seek out the most efficient path to maximizing social capital. Social capital is, in many ways, a leading indicator of financial capital, and so its nature bears greater scrutiny. Not only is it good investment or business practice, but analyzing social capital dynamics can help to explain all sorts of online behavior that would otherwise seem irrational.

NFTs blur the lines between social and financial capital, and as the media has been quick to point out, buying jpegs for thousands or millions of dollars seems irrational. Each new social network issues a new form of social capital, a token. You must show proof of work to earn the token. Over time it becomes harder and harder to mine new tokens on each social network, creating built-in scarcity. Many people, especially older folks, scoff at both social networks and cryptocurrencies. The most useful idea is the idea of proof of work in status games.

First Utility, Then Social Capital. “Come for the tool, stay for the network.” First Social Capital, Then Utility. Wei highlights Foursquare, Wikipedia, Quora, and Reddit as products that used the promise of social capital to get people to do free work that then becomes a utility for the masses. Wei points out that there are two forms of asymptotes that limit growth or lead to downright collapse. Social Asymptote 1 is Proof of Work itself. Not everyone in the world can do what it takes to gain social capital on any given social network, which creates an upper limit. Social Asymptote 2 is Social Capital Inflation and Deflation. The only scarce resource in an abundant digital world is users’ attention, so it’s necessary to deliver the things they’re most likely to engage with. On the deflation side, social networks can get less cool as more people join. The canonical example here is what happened to Facebook when parents started joining.

Social capital can be used as temporary energy. “You can think of social capital accumulation incentives like these as ways to transform the potential energy of status into whatever form of kinetic energy your venture needs.” New proof of work can lengthen the status game. Social capital turns into financial capital, and vice versa. Over the past thirty days, according to DappRadar, the top ten NFT marketplaces did $1.86 billion in volume. This is the power of valuable NFTs: they are high in social capital and utility, and moving higher in entertainment. They hit the social network trifecta.

NFTs are social capital with skin in the game. It’s “Investment-as-a-Status.” NFTs also have utility as investments, as tickets for access to Discord groups, and even as something that you can hang digitally on your wall. Over time, NFTs will give owners access to events and unique experiences as they evolve and infiltrate a wider audience. NFTs are entertaining as well: it’s fun to watch the sales, and some people are already building personas and online characters starring their Apes or Punks. Bidding on PartyBid is as much a social activity as it is an investment. NFTs more directly tie social and financial capital. NFTs bring status signaling and social capital online at global scale. It’s possible that a direct exchange of social capital for financial capital is enough to get people to duplicate work or move their work to a new platform, but it’s challenging. You need to reward an entirely new behavior.

NFTs may be different enough to work, and they’re not asking people to leave their favorite existing social network. On new and existing platforms, members could bring the exogenous social capital that comes with owning valuable NFTs, and work as a group to build up the social capital of their NFT avatar. NFTs make it possible to come for the tool, bring the network wherever there’s the most social and financial value. NFTs have the ability to add infinite new proofs of work, which Wei said can lengthen the half-life of status games. NFTs have the advantage of being decentralized. While certain platforms may present NFTs in an algorithmic feed, NFTs themselves are portable and can be used and displayed wherever the owner chooses. New NFT projects can harness a potent combination of social and financial capital to get off the ground. Ownership brings social capital, utility, and entertainment. There are ever-evolving proofs of work, from figuring out the next big thing to creating brand extensions. Powerful things happen when you combine money, status, and community. Social networks reward early adopters, and a social network with money baked in gives early believers a double-whammy.

Actionable Advice:

1. Adopt the 5-Hour Rule to set aside dedicated time for deliberate learning. Teach what you learn as soon as you learn it to enhance your understanding and retain knowledge.
2. Create a daily "Today I Learned" email or share your knowledge with others to build deeper relationships and make a bigger impact on the world.
3. Embrace the power of NFTs as a new kind of social network that combines social and financial capital. Explore the opportunities to participate in NFT communities and leverage the potential for status and utility.

In conclusion, teaching and sharing knowledge is a powerful tool for personal growth, learning, and building deeper