Weekend Reading #170

Photo by Sandy Ravaloniaina on Unsplash

This is the hundred-and-seventieth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 28th May 2022.

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What we're thinking.

This week was The World Economic Summit at Davos, an event that many years ago would have seen the crème-de-la-crème of world business and politics talking about really important stuff. Maybe it's just that we are getting older and more cynical but this year’s gathering just seems like another gathering of virtue signallers getting together to pat each other on the back for keeping their charade going for so long. We used to joke back in South Africa that if the government ever wanted to do something they would appoint a steering committee, which is a committee to talk about how to do something. The South African government is notorious for appointing steering committees into perpetuity. It does feel like Davos is just one great big steering committee. A great pity and a waste. 

On a similar note, the UK government seems to be blundering into another bad decision. They have used a trick we have seen in the emerging world many times. A supernormal profit tax! With oil prices going through the roof the UK announced a “25% extraordinary profit” tax for oil and gas companies aimed at helping to plug the hole created by the simultaneous announcement of £15 billion of payments to households to help with soaring energy bills. The problem with this type of thinking is that is discourages companies from spending to increase production – something the UK and the world desperately needs to incentivise. And if all countries think like this we are in for a world of pain. Problem is they probably will. 

Elsewhere, as the price of everything real continues to head up, we’re starting to see signs of softness in economies all around: from UK PMIs to US housing to anecdotes of demand destruction for fertilisers because it’s just too expensive. Theoretically and traditionally, it has always been the case that the solution to higher prices is higher prices, because those higher prices draw in new supply and incentivise marginal producers which were unprofitable at lower price levels to come into the market. But the paradigm we’re seeing now – of all sorts of efforts to prevent the “pain” of higher prices from happening – actually leads to an imbalance in near-term demand. Kicking the can down the road was a fantastic strategy when the issues were monetary, but it might turn out to be a tragedy in the making if applied to a world where the shortages are of physical commodities that, as many have argued before, can’t simply be printed. 

What we're watching.

The Lincoln Lawyer is a top film, adapted from a book by Michael Connelly and starring Matthew McConaughey. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. McConaughey is great (as always) and it’s a tight legal thriller that contains some superb twists and turns. What’s better, in my view, is the TV adaptation, which uses the same premise and characters, and has been created for television by the world-class talent of David E. Kelley of Nine Perfect Strangers and Big Little Lies. This series is based on the 2008 novel The Brass Verdict by Connelly and it stars Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Mickey Haller, a defence attorney in Los Angeles who works out of a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car rather than an office. That’s the premise, which is a good one, and the writing and acting make this a first-rate show, and one of the few series I’ve worked my way through in recent months in what has felt like a period of relatively low-quality television. This Netflix production seems to be back on form. EJP 

Liam Neeson’s latest performance in “Memory” is everything I love about him and more... An assassin-for-hire finds that he has become a target after he refuses to complete a job for a dangerous criminal organisation. A remake of the 2003 Belgian film 'The Memory of a Killer'.  

One for the family to get the competitive juices flowing... Get involved with a fairly new TV game show called “The 1% club”! Comedy legend Lee Mack hosts the quiz show `The 1% Club', where the questions have nothing to do with remembering little-known facts, endless reams of dates or obscure quiz trivia, as instead they are all about applying logic, reasoning skills and common sense. The show begins with 100 contestants, who are then whittled down as they compete to make it to the end and answer a question only 1% of the country can get right, in hopes of winning up to 100,000 pounds. A quiz that the whole family can play and enjoy together. DK 

What we're listening to.

I recently took out a subscription for Sam Harris’ meditation and learning app, Waking Up, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to slow down, think a little more and maybe do a little more meditation and spiritual exploration. It is an absolute treasure trove of learning, on both the subject of meditation but also on a host of wider issues, including learnings from philosophers and thinkers through the ages. A particular favourite of mine that I've landed upon is the teachings of Alan Watts, a British philosopher whose work I’ve been aware of for many years but never found a catalogue of his lectures in one place. I highly recommend his lecture on the World As Play, an investigation into how if you treat all of life as a game, even its most serious aspects, you will life so much of the anxieties and stresses that constantly weigh us down and hold us back. Sounds hard to do – but Watts’ guided teachings and positive affirmations make this lofty ambition seemingly possible and it’s his voice that is worth referring to throughout our day to day lives. EJP 

Tim Ferris chatted to Professor Donald Hoffman, Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Sciences at the Universtity of California, Irvine. His view is that space-time is just another data structure. Our bodies are just icons on our desktop or portals to consciousness. Space-time is just one “user interface”. One tantalising idea was that our view of the universe in 3D and all the limitations that stem from that as limited by the speed of light is because we are not experiencing even a small fragment of what is out there. Its something that also came up when reading The Three Body Problem all those years ago and the idea of other dimensions was woven so brilliantly into the story. This was something of science fiction, but then again maybe it isn’t and its simply that we are not thinking big enough.  

“Physics is not fundamental. Spacetime is not fundamental. Consciousness is. What we call physical objects are merely the ways that we play with our interface to open new portals into the realm of conscious agents.” 

It also features a discussion as to whether hallucinogenic drugs are gateways to consciousness as well as talking about religion and how studies have shown that plants are not only alive but even aware. It really is all quite mind blowing. For a byte sized summary of his thinking he also has a Ted Talk called “Do We See Reality as it is”?.  

During the pod above, Hoffman spoke about someone who he believes is doing some of the most important work in physics – a professor named Nima Ankari-Hamed. According to Hoffman, Ankari-Hamed is pushing the boundaries of how space-time is actually emergent and what lies beyond. What this means is that contrary to everything we have learnt up till recently, the foundational blocks of physics are not quantum mechanics nor space-time but rather something else which we don’t know which gives rise to them both. After fiddling around a bit, I decided against watching Ankari-Hamed's multi-lecture series as it would take a long time but found this lecture, entitled “The Doom of Spacetime” given to the PSW (Philosophical Society of Washington) in 2017 in which he speaks about his theories. What if Prof Hoffman is right in that consciousness is the base layer for it all and everything else is just a mere construct. It would be so cool if we could figure all this out in my lifetime. DC 

As far as legends in the world of classical piano go, it’s hard to argue that there’s a bigger name than Sergei Babayan. So, when the opportunity came up to see him live at Wigmore Hall, there was zero justification for saying no. The evening started off with the Busoni transcription for solo piano of the Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2 - a 15-minute work of musical art that will immediately dispel any notions of Bach’s work being “boring” and “simple”. It’s not. It was then followed by another piano transcription, this time of a Lied by Schubert entitled “Der Müller und der Bach”, or “The miller and the brook), transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt and served as a reminder of how much of a genius he was. A series of Rachmaninoff Etudes followed, and in the segment after the interval, Babayan made it abundantly clear that the piano was by far the most versatile solo instrument (in the right hands) with another Liszt Ballade and Schumann’s Kreisleriana, a collection of 8 Fantasies that is a treat for all ears. Unfortunately (or fortunately), recordings of these exact pieces by Babayan aren’t easily found on Spotify – other recordings are around and they’re very good, but nothing beats the live sound of a Steinway concert grand in Wigmore Hall. EL 

I recently took a flight to my hometown and managed to listen/watch a podcast or two. One that got my attention was, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***” by Mark Manson. According to Manson, the key to living a good life is “not giving a f**k about more; it’s giving a f**k about less, giving a f**k about only what is true and immediate and important”. In this interview, we learn about this unique art form, and all of the counterintuitive ways that giving less f**ks in your life frees you up to get more of what you truly value. DK