More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ozan Varol
Read between
October 2 - November 12, 2022
Over time, my enthusiasm for astrophysics began to wane. I started to feel a strong disconnect between the theory I studied in class and the practicalities of the real world. I’ve always been more interested in pragmatic applications than theoretical constructs. I loved learning about the thought process that went into rocket science, but not the substance of the math and physics classes I had to take.
Over time, my enthusiasm for astrophysics began to wane. I started to feel a strong disconnect between the theory I studied in class and the practicalities of the real world. I’ve always been more interested in pragmatic applications than theoretical constructs. I loved learning about the thought process that went into rocket science, but not the substance of the math and physics classes I had to take.
On average, it takes roughly twelve minutes for a signal from Mars to reach Earth traveling at the speed of light.7 If something is wrong, and a scientist on Earth spots and responds to the problem in a split second, another twelve minutes will pass for that command to reach Mars.
On average, it takes roughly twelve minutes for a signal from Mars to reach Earth traveling at the speed of light.7 If something is wrong, and a scientist on Earth spots and responds to the problem in a split second, another twelve minutes will pass for that command to reach Mars.
In critical moments, these otherwise rational, no-nonsense rocket scientists—who have dedicated their lives to exploring the unknown—look for certainty at the bottom of a Planters peanut bag. As if that’s not enough, many of them wear their worn-out good-luck jeans or bring a talisman from a previous successful landing—doing everything that a dedicated sports fan might do to create the illusion of certainty and control.
In critical moments, these otherwise rational, no-nonsense rocket scientists—who have dedicated their lives to exploring the unknown—look for certainty at the bottom of a Planters peanut bag. As if that’s not enough, many of them wear their worn-out good-luck jeans or bring a talisman from a previous successful landing—doing everything that a dedicated sports fan might do to create the illusion of certainty and control.
“We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world,” Yuval Noah Harari writes, “than on trying to understand it.”11 We look for the step-by-step formula, the shortcut, the hack—the right bag of peanuts. Over time, we lose our ability to interact with the unknown.
“We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world,” Yuval Noah Harari writes, “than on trying to understand it.”11 We look for the step-by-step formula, the shortcut, the hack—the right bag of peanuts. Over time, we lose our ability to interact with the unknown.
If you stick to the familiar, you won’t find the unexpected. Those who get ahead in this century will dance with the great unknown and find danger, rather than comfort, in the status quo.
If you stick to the familiar, you won’t find the unexpected. Those who get ahead in this century will dance with the great unknown and find danger, rather than comfort, in the status quo.
Einstein described his own discovery process in similar terms: “Our final results appear almost self-evident,” he said, “but the years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels, but cannot express; the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving, until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are only known to him who has himself experienced them.”
Einstein described his own discovery process in similar terms: “Our final results appear almost self-evident,” he said, “but the years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels, but cannot express; the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving, until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are only known to him who has himself experienced them.”
When there’s a vacuum of understanding—when we’re operating in the land of unknowns and uncertainty—myths and stories whoosh in to fill the gap. “We can’t live in a state of perpetual doubt,” Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains, “so we make up the best story possible and we live as if this story were true.”
When there’s a vacuum of understanding—when we’re operating in the land of unknowns and uncertainty—myths and stories whoosh in to fill the gap. “We can’t live in a state of perpetual doubt,” Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains, “so we make up the best story possible and we live as if this story were true.”
The problem with the modern world, as Bertrand Russell put it, is that “the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
The problem with the modern world, as Bertrand Russell put it, is that “the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Admitting ignorance doesn’t mean remaining willfully oblivious to facts. Rather, it requires a conscious type of uncertainty where you become fully aware of what you don’t know in order to learn and grow.
Admitting ignorance doesn’t mean remaining willfully oblivious to facts. Rather, it requires a conscious type of uncertainty where you become fully aware of what you don’t know in order to learn and grow.
Einstein seized on the glitch to come up with a new theory that accurately predicted Mercury’s orbit. In describing gravity, Newton relied on a rough model that said “things attract each other.”44 Einstein’s model, in contrast, was more complex: “Stuff warps space and time.”45 To understand what Einstein meant, imagine putting a bowling ball and some billiard balls on a trampoline.46 The heavy bowling ball would curve the fabric of the trampoline, causing the lighter billiard balls to move toward it. According to Einstein, gravity worked the same way: It warped the fabric of space and time.
Einstein seized on the glitch to come up with a new theory that accurately predicted Mercury’s orbit. In describing gravity, Newton relied on a rough model that said “things attract each other.”44 Einstein’s model, in contrast, was more complex: “Stuff warps space and time.”45 To understand what Einstein meant, imagine putting a bowling ball and some billiard balls on a trampoline.46 The heavy bowling ball would curve the fabric of the trampoline, causing the lighter billiard balls to move toward it. According to Einstein, gravity worked the same way: It warped the fabric of space and time.
The closer you are to the massive bowling ball that is the Sun—and Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun—the stronger the warping of space and time and the greater the deviation from Newton’s laws.
The closer you are to the massive bowling ball that is the Sun—and Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun—the stronger the warping of space and time and the greater the deviation from Newton’s laws.
Anomalies distort this clean picture of good and bad and right and wrong. Life is taxing enough without uncertainty, so we eliminate the uncertainty by ignoring the anomaly. We convince ourselves the anomaly must be an extreme outlier or a measurement error, so we pretend it doesn’t exist.
Anomalies distort this clean picture of good and bad and right and wrong. Life is taxing enough without uncertainty, so we eliminate the uncertainty by ignoring the anomaly. We convince ourselves the anomaly must be an extreme outlier or a measurement error, so we pretend it doesn’t exist.
Asimov famously disputed that “Eureka!” is the most exciting phrase in science. Rather, he observed, scientific development often begins by someone noticing an anomaly and saying, “That’s funny …”50 The discovery of quantum mechanics, X-rays, DNA, oxygen, penicillin, and others, all occurred when the scientists embraced, rather than disregarded, anomalies.51
Asimov famously disputed that “Eureka!” is the most exciting phrase in science. Rather, he observed, scientific development often begins by someone noticing an anomaly and saying, “That’s funny …”50 The discovery of quantum mechanics, X-rays, DNA, oxygen, penicillin, and others, all occurred when the scientists embraced, rather than disregarded, anomalies.51
Like any other planet. We weren’t special. We weren’t the center of everything. We were ordinary. Copernicus’s discovery, much like Pluto’s demotion, shook people’s sense of certainty and their place in the universe. As a result, Copernicanism was banished for almost a century.
Like any other planet. We weren’t special. We weren’t the center of everything. We were ordinary. Copernicus’s discovery, much like Pluto’s demotion, shook people’s sense of certainty and their place in the universe. As a result, Copernicanism was banished for almost a century.
In Douglas Adams’s hilarious book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer Deep Thought is asked for the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.” After seven and a half million years of deep thought, it spits out a clear, but ultimately meaningless, answer: 42. Although the book’s fans have tried to ascribe some symbolic meaning to this number, I think there is none. Adams was simply mocking how humans crave and cling to certainty.
In Douglas Adams’s hilarious book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer Deep Thought is asked for the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.” After seven and a half million years of deep thought, it spits out a clear, but ultimately meaningless, answer: 42. Although the book’s fans have tried to ascribe some symbolic meaning to this number, I think there is none. Adams was simply mocking how humans crave and cling to certainty.
Astronauts maintain their calm not because they have superhuman nerves. It’s because they have mastered the art of using knowledge to reduce uncertainty. As astronaut Chris Hadfield explains, “In order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge.… Being forced to confront the prospect of failure head-on—to study it, dissect it, tease apart all its components and consequences—really works.”
Astronauts maintain their calm not because they have superhuman nerves. It’s because they have mastered the art of using knowledge to reduce uncertainty. As astronaut Chris Hadfield explains, “In order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge.… Being forced to confront the prospect of failure head-on—to study it, dissect it, tease apart all its components and consequences—really works.”
Writing down your concerns and uncertainties—what you know and what you don’t know—undresses them. Once you lift up the curtain and turn the unknown unknowns into known unknowns, you defang them. After you see your fears with their masks off, you’ll find that the feeling of uncertainty is often far worse than what you fear. You’ll also realize that in all likelihood, the things that matter most to you will still be there, no matter what happens.
Writing down your concerns and uncertainties—what you know and what you don’t know—undresses them. Once you lift up the curtain and turn the unknown unknowns into known unknowns, you defang them. After you see your fears with their masks off, you’ll find that the feeling of uncertainty is often far worse than what you fear. You’ll also realize that in all likelihood, the things that matter most to you will still be there, no matter what happens.
The path, as the mystic poet Rumi writes, won’t appear until you start walking.
Space is the rare tech-related industry that violates Moore’s law, the principle named after the Intel cofounder Gordon Moore. According to the principle, computer power develops exponentially, doubling every two years. A computer that would have filled an entire room in the 1970s now fits in your pocket and packs far more computing punch. But rocket technology bucks Moore’s law. “We sleep easy knowing that next year’s software will be better than this year’s,” Musk explains, but “rockets’ [cost] actually gets progressively worse every year.”2
Unwittingly, knowledge can make us a slave to convention. And conventional thoughts lead to conventional results.
The default carries immense power, even in advanced industries like rocket science. This idea is called path dependence: What we’ve done before shapes what we do next.
Knowledge is good. But knowledge should inform, not constrain. Knowledge should enlighten, not obscure. Only through the evolution of our existing knowledge will the future come into focus.
A neurological study showed that nonconformity activates the amygdala and produces what the authors describe as “a pain of independence.”10 To avoid this pain, we pay lip service to being original, but we become the by-products of other people’s behaviors. It’s like that Chinese proverb: One dog barks at something, and a hundred others bark at that sound.
Businesses plant their lightning rod where lightning struck last and wait for it to strike again. This worked once, so let’s do it again. And again. And again. Let’s launch the same marketing campaign, use the same formula in that mega-successful mass-market romance book, and make the seventeenth sequel to Fast and Furious.
Also Assasin’s Creed
You can’t copy and paste someone else’s path to success. You can’t drop out of Reed College, sit in on a calligraphy class, take some LSD, dabble in Zen Buddhism, set up shop in your parents’ garage, and expect to start the next Apple. As Warren Buffett put it, “The five most dangerous words in business are ‘Everybody else is doing it.’”
When you apply first-principles thinking, you switch from being a cover band that plays someone else’s songs to an artist that does the painstaking work of creating something new. You go from what author James Carse calls a finite player, someone playing within boundaries, to an infinite player, someone playing with boundaries.
“I tend to approach things from a physics framework,” Musk explained in a later interview. “Physics teaches you to reason from first principles,” he added, “rather than by analogy”—in other words, copying or analogizing from others with little deviation.
Roughly 80 percent of all SpaceX rocket components are manufactured in-house. This gives the company greater control over cost, quality, and pace. With few outside vendors, SpaceX can move from idea to execution at record speed.
First-principles thinking prompted SpaceX to question another deeply held assumption in rocket science.17 For decades, most rockets that launched spacecraft into outer space couldn’t be reused.
In December 2015, the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket successfully completed an upright landing on solid ground after putting its cargo in orbit. Blue Origin—which is Bezos’s private spaceflight company—also landed the reusable booster stage of its New Shepard rocket back on Earth after sending it to space. Since then, both companies have refurbished and reused numerous recovered rocket stages, sending them back out to space like certified pre-owned cars. What was once a wild experiment is on its way to becoming routine.
SpaceX and Blue Origin had one thing going for them: They were new to the industry. They had the benefit of writing on a blank slate. There were no fixed internal ideas, no long-established practices, and no legacy components. Without the tug of their own past, they could let first principles drive rocket design.
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world,” said Alan Alda, in a quote often misattributed to Asimov. “Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”
To mop the mist collected on your mental windshield in those areas and expose the invisible rules governing your life, spend a day questioning your assumptions.
