Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. Munger on “Fake Knowledge”

Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner of many decades, died at 99 – only a week before Stripe Press is set to release a compendium of his quips and investment observations. Over the years, Farnam Street blog collected snippets of Munger wisdom, including this gem:

We’re so used to outsourcing our thinking to others that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to really understand something from all perspectives. We’ve forgotten just how much work that takes. The path of least resistance, however, is just a click away. Fake knowledge, which comes from reading headlines and skimming the news, seems harmless, but it’s not. It makes us overconfident. It’s better to remember a simple trick: anything you’re getting easily through Google or Twitter is likely to be widely known and should not be given undue weight.

Bill Gates called him “the broadest thinker I have ever encountered.” James Grant, respected market watcher, claimed, “He said what he had to say, then stopped saying it. Think of the stereotypical college English professor. Munger was the polar opposite.”

2. The “No Pepsi” Generation

An article published in Project Syndicate reports that two pillars of the US economy – cars and cola – are in a tailspin:

Kids these days don’t care much about cars. In the 1980s, 80% of US high schoolers earned their drivers’ license; that figure has since dropped by 40%. Like audiences for symphony orchestras, the average age of an American driver has climbed, so that a 70-year-old is now more likely to drive than a 20-year-old.

But don’t blame Gen Z for skipping the refills. The decline in soft drinks is being fed by changing habits of overweight people, many of them on appetite suppressing drugs: “Morgan Stanley reports that 65% of obesity-drug patients drank fewer sugary carbonated drinks.”

3. The Coming Copper Rush

The race to net-zero emissions will have an unintended consequence: a surge in copper mining. Pulitzer-prize winning historian of the energy industry, Dan Yergin, explains:

Government net-zero policies are incentivizing the production of electric vehicles that require 2.5-3 times more copper than a traditional car, on average. Battery storage, offshore and onshore wind systems, and solar panels also require large amounts of copper. To estimate how much additional copper will be needed to meet this new demand, S&P Global started with the US and the EU’s 2050 climate goals and then assessed the technologies that would be required to meet them. The conclusion was stark: copper supply will have to double by the second half of the 2030s…This outcome is extremely unlikely, considering that it can take 16-20 years (or more) to develop a new mine.

4. The Kids Are All Right

The rise is social media has not created a decline in mental health, according to a new report from Oxford University’s Internet Institute. Their new study of more than two million people reaches a clear conclusion:  

There’s no “smoking gun” for widespread harm to mental health from online activities such as browsing social media and gaming, despite widely claimed concerns that mobile apps can cause depression and anxiety...Our results do not provide evidence supporting the view that the Internet and technologies enabled by it, such as smartphones with Internet access, are actively promoting or harming either wellbeing or mental health globally.

“If you really want an answer to this question, you have to hit pause on implementing your random idea you think is going to save young people,” says Andrew Pryzbylski, a professor at the Institute.   

5. Ain’t That a Shame?

Brevity Blog lobbies for the word “ain’t,” calling it “one of the most versatile and vibrant words in the English language.” Multiple examples from music and culture support the case. It isn’t hard to agree:

One of the most famous lines in sports history would be dead and gone without it: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” That plaintive question was a boy’s plea to Shoeless Joe Jackson, asking Joe to reassure him that he, Joe, didn’t cheat, that he didn’t have anything to do with fixing the 1919 World Series. This question, that so strongly and clearly stands for all innocence and faith betrayed, would never have lasted, would never have taken its place in our hearts and souls without “ain’t.” “Say it isn’t so, Joe?” No, no, no.

6. Vroom

Dan Neil, the greatest stylist among auto reviewers, goes into overdrive to describe the new Corvette E-Ray. Pull over, Tesla, here comes “a velvet bullwhip”:

On the outside, the E-Ray shares the wider, more soul-devouring bodywork of the Corvette Z06. This hard-as-nails track toy generates its own weather with a naturally aspirated, flat-plane crank, 5.5-liter V8, soaring to an emotional 8,600 rpm. Grown men weep. Me, for instance. Anyway, compared to the Sturm und Drang of the Z06, the E-Ray sounds like Tibetan throat singing. 

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