Assertion Supported
Study of 30,000 careers shows youth success negatively correlates with adult success
“There was just a paper in science, you know, one of the probably two most prestigious scientific journals in the world. It aggregated about 30,000 careers of musicians, scientists, athletes, And what it found was basically the thesis of range that the indicato…”
Assertion Supported
Elite athletes spend less early time in deliberate practice than lower-level peers
“The data that actually track, yes, elite athletes spend more time in deliberate practice than lower level athletes, but the studies that track them over the course of their development show that early on they spent less time In deliberate practice in that acti…”
Insight
Optimizing for early performance often undermines long-term skill and career development
“You can optimize for the short term if you want to make kind of the best kid. But that often undermines long-term development, whether it comes to learning an individual skill, picking a career, and so forth.”
Assertion Supported
Epstein: Founders trained in the scientific method pivot more and succeed more
“And some of them were randomized to get trained in, in a scientific method version of this, where they make a hypothesis about what do they think is their value add. And then they have to commit to a way to go test it. And some decision rule, you know, ah, the…”
Assertion Supported
The US is the only nation where most say others lack morals
“I just saw there was a Pew survey out that showed America is now the only country where a majority of adults, it was a small majority, but a majority, said that other people have bad morals.”
Assertion Supported
Epstein: General Magic Was Silicon Valley's First Concept IPO
“They had real-time footage of this company that was the first so-called concept IPO in Silicon Valley history, where Goldman Sachs took them public with an idea, not a product, and they were basically making the iPhone, you know, 20 years too early, and resour…”
Insight
The creative cliff illusion tricks people into thinking first ideas are best
“There's actually science behind this. It's called the creative cliff illusion. We think that our best idea comes first or not at all, but actually that's not the case. It's usually the convenient idea that comes first.”
Insight
Degrading trust between strangers jeopardizes shared economic prosperity regardless of political policy
“Like it or not, and whatever their political beliefs are, if that trust between strangers degrades, I don't care what your policies are, you're jeopardizing shared prosperity.”
Assertion Supported
Epstein: NASA's LCROSS probe used Army tank and NASCAR parts
“And they couldn't build from scratch, so they had to borrow technology, so they took imaging equipment from army tanks and engine temperature sensors from NASCAR and built a probe that confirmed water on the moon.”
Insight
Writing down predictions beforehand prevents hindsight bias and improves forecasting ability
“And one of the most important habits of people who improved at forecasting was just recording their predictions in the first place. Because otherwise we have this bias where we say like, well, I basically got that right. Or we sort of tweaked the story. So wri…”
Assertion Supported
National surveys show trusting strangers is tightly correlated with per capita GDP
“The proportion of people that answer in surveys, they trust strangers, tightly related to per capita GDP on a national basis.”
Disclosure
Tony Fadell inspired David Epstein's strict one-page outline method for his book
“I had been so bad with my previous books at putting useful boundaries in place. That I wrote a 150% the length of a book and then had to cut back to get a book. This time around, partly at the suggestion of Tony Fidel, who's a character in the book and was the…”
David Epstein