#47 True is what works
Saturday, January 15, 2022
Do you know raising livestocks is one of the reasons behind climate change? How?
There is a big difference in the digestion process of humans and cows. A cow has 4 chambers in the stomach as compared to one in humans, which allow them to digest grass. In this process of digestion, the bacteria in the stomach of the cow which breaks down the cellulose and releases methane (which btw is 28 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide per molecule) that the cow belches away. Burping and farting natural gas is a problem unique to cows and they have the same warming effect as 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, accounting for about 4% of global emissions.
There’s more to the problem: poop 💩
When poop decomposes, it releases a mixture of powerful greenhouse gases, mainly nitrous oxide and there’s so much poop that it is actually the second biggest cause of warming in the agricultural sector.
What can we do one might ask? Obviously we cannot stop raising livestocks.
Cross breeding to produce healthy offsprings is one solution. A cow in South America, an old breed, produces 5 times more emission than a cow in North America, which is a new breed. Researches have tried several drugs too which can be given to cows as a part of their diet but this method turns to be very costly.
True is what works.
There’s too much information in this world for our brain to consume, hence the brain uses filters and in that filtering process we develop shortcuts to ease the cognitive load of making decisions.
These shortcuts are called as heuristics. In simpler terms, heuristic is something that we learn from past experiences with a similar problem. The best example of heuristic is trial and error. But trial and error is not the best strategy. If you apply trial and error in choosing you career, you would probably die before achieving your goal. Another heuristic is familiarity. It says that good results that came from past experiences does not always mean they will result good in future as well. Familiarity is the reason we tend to choose place and things we know over novelty. But familiarity is not always good. In order to make a breakthrough you need something different.
Making decisions based on heuristics may make the cognitive load easier but they are far from being practical. Instead of relying on heuristics to filter information, use the more pragmatic approach - True is what works. But don’t take it too seriously, an alcoholic might say drinking works for him, doest it mean alcohol is right for him?
“Good things come to those who wait.”
Does this mean you sit in the house and do nothing? No. Ofcourse not.
There’s nothing in life you can take literally, everything works in a context.
“True is what works” is a filter that you can use to process all the information that goes into your brain. When faced with a decision, ask yourself - “if the outcome of this decision will improve the way I live?”
If you ask this question repeatedly, you’ll notice that you will automatically filter out the useless information and only make high ROI decisions that have an actual impact on your life. There are a lot of things that work for me and may not work for you. I hate crowded places and they have a negative impact on my thinking process, hence, I prefer to stay in less crowded, quieter places. However, for you, this way of living may turn out to be boring and not exciting at all. So? True is what works.
See you on next Saturday, until then have a great weekend :)
Cheers!
Some things that you may find interesting-
Article: The Friendship Report
Video clip: This will make you laugh
Podcast: The Joe Rogan Experience - Naval Ravikant
Song I am listening to: Can't Help Falling in Love by Haley Reinhart
Thought of the week: “You can solve a lot of problems by being less impulsive and by not reacting.”
Here are the last three posts if you were too occupied to read them: