Andrew Stepner

A significant reason MLB is passing the NBA in relevance is the fact that MLB is embracing its own existential weirdness and the NBA is trying to create a cheap imitation of Euro soccer traditions.

im yo-yo'ing back between 5.5 hours of sleep for 3 days, 7.5 hours of sleep for 1 day, and then repeat i have discussed this at length with claude and am doing basically all its supplement + most of its lifestyle recommendations. what else do i do? do i buy an 8sleep?

Watch Richard Feynman while he speaks. No one transmits this better than him. And it's a weird feeling or sense. Cicero and Darwin wrote about it. Jefferson preached it. Ben Graham lived it and so does Buffett. "I get a kick out of thinking about these things. I can't stop" We tend to believe that joy comes from physical activity or the senses (music, art, food), but those are not the only sources. Theoretical physicists are obsessed with what they do because they have true fun while doing it. Same thing with any kind of theorists, including investors. Greenblatt does it because of the pleasure of figuring something out. So did Feynman. When asked about his Nobel Prize, he said he didn't do it for the prize. It's 'the pleasure of finding the thing out' that does it for him. In one of his last interviews, Munger spoke about how he and Buffett had 'actual fun' while doing what they did. And what they did was a lot of thinking, with occasional decisions. That's why many of these guys were top of their fields. They enjoy(ed) thinking and selected endeavors that rewarded that.

A Caltech colleague once asked Feynman to explain why spin-½ particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics in a way a freshman could understand. Feynman agreed enthusiastically and promised to prepare a freshman-level lecture. A few days later, he returned sheepishly and admitted defeat: “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to a freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.” He used this as a teaching principle, if you can’t explain something simply, you probably don’t understand it yourself. This story circulated quietly among faculty and students as a humbling reminder that even Nobel laureates should test their own knowledge against the ability to communicate clearly. It reflected his broader disdain for “cargo cult” teaching and his commitment to stripping away pretense in the classroom.

My long-term goal is to construct a portfolio that I have extreme confidence will have a 3+% real return without significant drawdowns. Doesn't sound very ambitious, but the standard suggestions don't seem to meet that requirement IMO.

Classic Twitter moment here. Big claim that sounds concrete and well researched. Then THREE people who actually worked in these companies totally tear apart the point in the comments within hours 🤣

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