Vatsal @vtslkshk Twitter profile

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Vatsal

@vtslkshk

2 months

What took three generations in 1700s is now achievable in a lifetime

Circe

@vocalcry

2 months

STEM majors go to school so they can get a job that pays a lot of money so they can eventually casually study the humanities

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@vtslkshk

4 years

1/ The peak of Everest is infamously termed 'Death Zone'. Each breath contains ~ 30% of the oxygen found at the sea level. Birds, however, can easily fly over the Everest. What gives them such great lungs? They got them from the dinos. But why did the dinosaurs have them? 🧵👇🏽

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@vtslkshk

4 years

17/ The birds later borrowed these respiratory systems from their ancestors, and that's why bar-headed geese can fly over the Himalayas! I learned all this from this amazingly well written article below. Please read if you enjoyed the thread!

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@vtslkshk

5 years

[THREAD OF THREADS] I always wanted a repository of all @jposhaughnessy threads. So I made one. He has a top percentile understanding of human behavior which in turn makes him a must-read on investing. No one should have to go through an eternity of GIFs to get to these gems.

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@vtslkshk

3 years

I made a meme.

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@vtslkshk

3 years

Employment is the real stockholm syndrome.

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@vtslkshk

6 years

In 2000, Fortune magazine came up with a 'Buy-and-Forget' portfolio - stocks that would last the decade. This is what the returns were like in 2012 after accounting for splits. Investing is hard. @iancassel @dmuthuk

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@vtslkshk

4 years

When man gets accustomed to being in a rat-race, he starts treating everything about life the same way. They track their calories, number of books, steps, sleep hours – as if everything's a stupid corporate metric that you've got to achieve to make the neighbour jealous.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Any meeting with eight people sitting around at a conference table, nothing is getting done in that meeting. You are literally just dying one hour at a time. - @naval

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Just as expected, here's a must-listen conversation between @naval and @joerogan . Laying out a few of Naval's nuggets of wisdom from the podcast in this thread but this is not even a fraction of what's out there. Go watch it.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

9/ Eventually, another tree would die and fall on top of the first, and this continued for millions of years. All this lead to a huge heap of undigested lignin deposited under the surface of the Earth. The stuff that humans would later refer to as "coal".

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@vtslkshk

4 years

16/ Their new lungs were so efficient that when O2 levels crept slowly back up to 20% over the next many millions of years, dinosaurs were able to get massive in size. Their super efficient lungs could deliver oxygen to every part of their huge bodies.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

2/ All mammals, including us humans, breathe in and out through the same opening (unlike our digestive tracts). Birds however, have a separate in and out point. They also have air sacs and hollow spaces in their bones that helps them reduce their overall weight.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

4/ So it doesn’t matter whether birds are breathing in or out: Good air is always going in one direction through their lungs, pushing all the bad air out ahead of it. To understand the reason behind this great respiratory system, we need to understand their evolution.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

3/ When they breathe in, half of the oxygen goes into these hollow spaces, and the other half goes into the lungs. When they breathe out, the good air that has been stored in the hollow places now also goes into their lungs, and the bad air (CO2 and water vapor) is pushed out.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

11/ All this unused massive amounts of O2 then started piling up in the atmosphere. Today, oxygen is 21% of the atmosphere. But around 300 million years ago, oxygen was well over 30%. There was so much oxygen that many creatures like dragonflies and frogs were able to get huge.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

7/ So with (lots of) time, evolution gifted these plants with lignin. The stuff that lends rigidity to the plant cell walls, and helps them stack one cell upon another. This allowed the plants to develop the trunks and branches to defy gravity and stand upright.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

5/ And since birds evolved from those giant dinosaurs, we need to understand why the dinosaurs had this super lung system in the first place? And thus begins a great tale of evolution.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

6/ Until about 450 mil yrs ago, plants only existed in the oceans and the Earth's surface was life less. Under water, plants didn't have to worry about gravity, they could just float. But on land, gravity pulled them down to the surface - reducing the area to absorb sunlight.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

@david_perell Reminds of Peter Thiel's "take your 10-year life plan and ask, Why can’t I do this in six months?" Forcing yourself to speed-up often destroys the myth you told yourself about all that time you needed.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

14/ Meanwhile the life on Earth had accustomed itself to the abnormally high oxygen levels. Oxygen depletion was bad news for them. ~95% of all life on Earth died gasping for air. However the remaining 5% got a little help from our old friend, evolution.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

13/ The bacteria could now eat up all the wood that was not fossilized already, using up the atmospheric oxygen in the process. The atmospheric O2 levels began to decline rapidly. It went from a high of above 30% to around 12% at the end of the Permian Period (250 mil years ago).

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@vtslkshk

4 years

8/ But as we know, it is very difficult to predict the second-order effects of anything. As these plants died, the bacteria and fungi started decomposing/eating them - but they couldn't digest the hard part – lignin. So they just ate the meat and left the bones (lignin).

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@vtslkshk

4 years

This is the best dialogue ever: "Your boos mean nothing, I’ve seen what makes you cheer" ~ Rick Sanchez

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Vatsal

@vtslkshk

8 months

@paulg Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. — Thomas Szasz Lots of intellect at google, not enough courage

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@vtslkshk

4 years

@mckaywrigley articulate narrators and story weavers hold enormous advantage over those who are equally smart (if not more) but do not possess that skill.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

10/ Now we remember from our chemistry lessons that oxygen helps in the combustion of anything. But here we had this huge heap of lignin that was not getting decomposed. So for every hydrocarbon atom that went in, an oxygen atom remained unused.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

"Today's youth is rotten, evil, godless, and lazy. It will never be what youth used to be and it will never be able to preserve our culture." sound familiar? it's from a Sumerian tablet dated back to ~ 1000 BC.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

@naval “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Once read something like: 'A healthy man has many worries, but a sick man has only one - to get out of bed.' I'm sick right now and I don't think truer words exist.

Sahil Lavingia

@shl

5 years

Falling sick reminds you that the largest competitive advantage you can have is being healthy.

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@vtslkshk

21 days

Purchase of the year

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@vtslkshk

6 years

Warren Buffett's grandfather once wrote a letter to his children emphasising the importance of liquidity and an 'emergency fund'. Must read for everyone. Also, seems like prudent financial behavior has got a lot to do with one's genes.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

With every passing year in a conventional job, I feel I end up more unemployable. Anyone else feel the same?

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@vtslkshk

4 years

Colleges are in the business of making you believe that you can't figure it out yourself.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

@hidematsune @KapilGuptaMD @naval Sorry for that. This will work:

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Warren Buffett on the Ideal Business: "Something that costs a penny, sells for a dollar, and is habit forming."

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@vtslkshk

5 months

@visakanv Pick a domain at the start of the year and just read that for the whole year. Do this for 10 years and in a decade you'll be the polymath you revere today. I wanna do this

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@vtslkshk

5 years

@kunalb11 "It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses, or fine furniture." ~ Benjamin Franklin

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@vtslkshk

1 month

Frederik Gieschen

@FrederikNeckar

1 month

Matthew McConaughey. Don't jeopardize your soul.

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@vtslkshk

6 years

This survey done by Nobel Laureate @RobertJShiller across two decades shows how we humans have always been, and probably will continue to be biased by the short term market price movements when it comes to investing. #behavioraleconomics @jposhaughnessy

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@vtslkshk

4 years

adding 'Antifragile' by @nntaleb to my list of books I'll be re-reading forever. It's a book on common sense that's extremely uncommon in the modern world.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

I've never been so aware of life's fragility. Every single phone call feels like a messenger of bad news. Hold your loved ones close, and count your stars for all of you reading this are immensely lucky.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

“Science” has to be one of the most misunderstood words out there.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

I transcribed this must-listen podcast by @KapilGuptaMD and @naval on hard work. In the 24 minutes, the two wise men speak about what truth means to each of them and how hard work is just a bi-product of something more innate. Desire. Transcript:

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@vtslkshk

4 years

Leonardo da Vinci took pride in his lack of formal schooling as he believed that self-learning led him to be a disciple of experience and experiment.

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@vtslkshk

3 years

Not having the urge to convince people of anything is a superpower.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

@kunalb11 @nntaleb Taleb also destroys the common conception that stoicism = passivity

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@vtslkshk

4 years

@david_perell "There is nothing wrong and undignified with emotions – we are cut to have them. What is wrong is not following the heroic or, at least, the dignified path. That is what stoicism truly means." ~ @nntaleb That doesn't sound unambitious to me. Quite the opposite.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

The purpose of wealth is freedom. Its not to buy fur coats, or drive Ferraris, or sail yachts, or jet around the world in your Gulfstream. That stuff gets really boring and really stupid, really fast. - @naval

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@vtslkshk

4 years

Probably the best interpretation of "wealth" out there:

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@vtslkshk

6 years

People think that reading 'Thinking Fast and Slow' will make them better at decision making and avoiding biases, I have written the book and am not able to do it - Daniel Kahneman

Jim O'Shaughnessy

@jposhaughnessy

6 years

6/applying it to the stock market and ideas like why are there libraries full of books on behavioral biases and yet all of these books and papers haven't been able to *touch* people's continual falling victim to them. I'm really just at the start of trying to tie these phenomena

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@vtslkshk

4 years

i'm learning that a huge chunk of human behavior can be derived from this one simple sentence: "your odds of survival decreases drastically the moment you're kicked out of a group/tribe."

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@vtslkshk

4 years

Just like with everything Science, there's nuance and a lot to be discovered with this as well. Some theories do suggest that higher O2 levels might not be the cause of gigantic animals after all. h/t @Elsie_youlater

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@vtslkshk

4 years

@SlowwCo "Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right." - Haruki Murakami

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@vtslkshk

4 years

almost any job can be summarised as "selling stories".

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@vtslkshk

5 years

"Specific knowledge comes on the job, not in a classroom." - @naval

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@vtslkshk

5 years

If you are allowed to read just one article before starting your investment journey, make it this one: Timeless lessons from @jposhaughnessy

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@vtslkshk

2 years

Peter Drucker on a teacher vs. a pedagogue

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2 years

In school they expect you to learn, but they don't teach you how to learn.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

@Austen you've got to check out youtube's 'watch later' feature in that case.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

The leaves look green because they absorb every other color from the white light and reject the green. That reflected green is what our eyes catch. Intrinsically, the leaves are every color but green. Isn't reality twisted? The color that we see is the color that it is NOT.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

@JamesClear Benjamin Franklin. A couple of reasons (from many) would be to: 1. learn how to manage time efficiently 2. learn how to learn.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

@patrick_oshag How the memory works:

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@vtslkshk

4 years

"I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses." ~ Johannes Kepler

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@vtslkshk

3 years

"Resist much, obey little; Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved; Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty." ~ Walt Whitman's Caution

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@vtslkshk

4 years

Today I earned my first ₹ as an entrepreneur.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

[THREAD] How our identity becomes a road-block in becoming a better learner. Inspired from @AnnieDuke 's conversation with @ShaneAParrish on @farnamstreet Podcast and @paulg 's article 'Keep Your Identity Small'

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@vtslkshk

4 years

Prisoners who love their cells never try to break free.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Hermann Hesse's 'Siddhartha' on the power of patience, focus, and persistence. "Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, wait, and fast."

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@vtslkshk

4 years

How did "career" go from being a part of our life to the entire point of our life? Be it subjects in school, sports, hobbies, volunteering, and even random conversation — seemingly everything today needs to be optimized for "career".

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@vtslkshk

5 years

When studying human behavior, one thing becomes evident quite early: "It doesn't matter if the story is true, as long as it is good."

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@vtslkshk

5 years

@JamesClear 1. Siddhartha 2. Poor Charlie's Almanack 3. Meditations (Marcus Aurelius) 4. Sapiens (this was by accident, as I read Homo Deus which was Sapiens all over again).

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@vtslkshk

5 years

🚨 THE ANTI-LIBRARY IS HERE! Built a basic website with book recommendations from my favorite people here on Twitter! Check out Starting with recommendations from @david_perell @jposhaughnessy @morganhousel @shl @tylercowen . More coming soon!

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@vtslkshk

5 years

One of my biggest learning from master communicators like Benjamin Franklin, Buffett/Munger, Sagan, Taleb et al. is to use metaphors and analogies. The ability to distil complex thoughts into everyday examples is no less than a superpower.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

What we do not understand, we intellectualize.

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@vtslkshk

9 months

@rorysutherland Same book different cover, but the US / ME emphasis on this one is pretty ingenious too

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@vtslkshk

4 years

"Data clearly shows us..." is corporate speak for: "We have carefully cherry-picked data from questionable sources that align with our incentives, and now we're gonna drown you in it."

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@vtslkshk

6 years

Investing is hard because we underestimate the odds of our future pains and overestimate the value of our present pleasures. The more I learn about investing, the more I realize it is human nature that I need to understand better, not finance. The fight is against evolution.

Jim O'Shaughnessy

@jposhaughnessy

6 years

1/ Markets change minute-by-minute. Human nature barely changes millennium-by-millennium. There's your edge. How To Arbitrage Human Nature: A thread

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Broad based judgement and thinking is what is required to be a good investor and investment books are the worst place to acquire that skill set - @naval

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@vtslkshk

5 years

@kunalb11 'A healthy man has many worries, but a sick man has only one - to get out of bed.' ~ Unknown Perspective, is everything.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Ending this thread with a Quote by Confucius mentioned by @naval in the densely packed podcast "We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one."

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@vtslkshk

5 years

If you love reading, you are probably incapable of treating it objectively. Just like any other thing close to your heart. It becomes "sacred". This approach is definitely worth a try: - by @Johnny_Uzan and @naval

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Ingenious. @morganhousel

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@vtslkshk

4 years

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.” ~ Steve Jobs

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@vtslkshk

5 years

What according to you will remain unchanged in the post Covid era? My take: Human behaviour. People will gradually lose interest in prepping for future virus outbreaks due to the uncertainty. We'll go back to paying attention to whatever's trending at that moment.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

1/ Heard this really interesting take from @morganhousel on how the modern culture's obsession with sports is actually a non-violent replacement of wars. 👇 for most of human history, your position in the status hierarchy was determined by the clan you belonged to,

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@vtslkshk

3 years

Have you experienced setting up an alarm for some unusual hour, to catch a train maybe, and you wake up right before it’s about to go off? Amazes me every single time!

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@vtslkshk

4 years

What's the first book you remember reading that changed your understanding of the world?

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@vtslkshk

5 years

You assign meaning to things based on your unique history of experiences. You don't perceive the world as it is, but as you are.

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@vtslkshk

4 years

Here's why I switched from Substack to Hey World: It's old and boring. In other words — it removes distractions, doesn't pose an ethical dilemma, and I don't get to call my writing a "newsletter". So many wins! thank you! @heyhey @jasonfried @dhh

HEY World

Now blogging is as easy as emailing. Personal publishing gets the HEY treatment. Write something wonderful to the World Wide Web today at [email protected].

www.hey.com

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@vtslkshk

5 months

@DylanoA4 Not sure if greatest ever, but here’s one i read recently and loved: “Outliving beauty’s outward, with a mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays.” — Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World

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@vtslkshk

1 year

"I think today we do not know how to go about building a water fountain. What we know is how to build one thousand water fountains. But not how to build one." — @simonsarris

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@vtslkshk

4 years

@balajis @VitalikButerin I bought my first ever ETH only a few hours back, and it has already been used to help solve a real life problem. Thanks Balaji.

Ethereum Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Etherscan

Ethereum (ETH) detailed transaction info for txhash 0x0ecae8e3b84c02856dfdba4a220a44da6c45393019a638078567f7d7f6029e7b. The transaction status, block confirmation, gas fee, Ether (ETH), and token...

etherscan.io

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@vtslkshk

4 years

I just read this and is probably one of the best quotes i've ever read. "The more intellectual you grow, the more you lose the great intuitive skills that really touch and move people" — Bill Bernbach

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@vtslkshk

4 years

Clothes, music, food or books — the desire to be part of a tribe is what sells everything.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

@JamesClear "It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent." - Charlie Munger

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@vtslkshk

3 years

Appreciate people who stay in the background and get shit done.

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@vtslkshk

3 months

Grateful to @jposhaughnessy for letting me choose the dedication on the Two Thoughts book

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@vtslkshk

5 years

Everyone around me wants to travel the world. Nothing wrong with it. But more the people with similar wants, higher the odds that it's not an innate desire but one implanted by social pressure, masquerading as your own.

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@vtslkshk

5 years

"To live is to risk it all. Otherwise you're just an inert chunk of randomly assembled molecules drifting wherever the universe blows you." - Rick Sanchez C-137 (The casual throwaway wisdom of Rick and Morty).

Naval

@naval

5 years

“I think you have to think ahead AND live in the moment.” - Rick Sanchez C-137 (The casual throwaway wisdom of Rick and Morty).

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5 years

Reading a lot can sometimes be deceiving. You end up thinking you know more than you really do. How to know if you're deceiving yourself? Write about it. Writing is a myth-buster.

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@vtslkshk

2 years

— @DavidDeutschOxf

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