Hidden Calculations, Flow States, Just Asking Questions
Links and recommendations
You can now catch my conversation with Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller on the Just Asking Questions podcast.
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
NYC Event:
You are invited to attend my live event with author and professional boxer Ed Latimore in New York City. September 18 at 6pm. Details and registration here.
From the archives:
This One is For My Fellow Latinxs
The Only Reading App I Use:
I’ve been using Readwise since April of 2021.
If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter/X, you’ll know I regularly share screenshots like this from books or articles I’ve read:
These screenshots come from my Readwise app.
Readwise aggregates your reading highlights from various sources like Kindle, Apple Books, Substack, Twitter, and so on. It stores your highlights in one place, making it easier to stay on top of your reading.
Each morning, it emails me 8 random excerpts from different books I’ve read. Since 2021, that daily message has been a quiet ritual for me: fragments from books I half‑forgot are resurfaced, like my own past self giving me a tap on the shoulder.
Moreover, when I’m thinking about a particular topic, a quick search pulls up not just my notes but every highlighted Kindle passage I’ve ever saved on the topic.
Exclusive Offer for My Readers
Use this link → https://readwise.io/robkhenderson/ to try Readwise free for 60 days (double the length of the standard free trial).
I suspect, like me, you’ll wonder how you ever read without it.
Links and recommendations:
The hidden calculations that determine whether you will cry by Daniel Sznycer and Debra Lieberman
Philosophers Shouldn’t Duck the Gender Debate by Daniel Kodsi and John Maier
Dares, Costly Signals, and Psychopaths by Sarah Perry
Socialism isn't Making a Comeback. It Never Went Away. by Coleman Hughes
How to Cheat the Thief of Joy Daniel Greco
Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
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Three interesting findings:
1. The largest predictor of “flow states” is the Big Five trait of conscientiousness. Flow seems to emerge out of hard work and discipline, and could be thought of as an internal reward for intense effort and focus on a single activity. (source).
2. In 1965, the Johnson administration ended automatic draft deferments for college students, required them to take the Selective Service test, and made colleges rank students; only those above a cutoff were exempt. The rest entered a draft pool. These changes ignited the nationwide student protest movement. College students turned “radical” precisely when deferments could no longer shield them from the Vietnam war. (source: We Have Never Been Woke by Musa al-Gharbi).
3. Mental health interventions in schools don’t work at all: no improvement in mental health symptoms for students, either immediately after the course of lessons or later down the line. In fact, some studies have found that universal mental-health lessons actually make things worse. (source).
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Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
Regarding the end of student draft determent triggering the antiwar movement - I recently read "Days of Rage" about the domestic terrorism of the late '60s/early '70s, and one of the things I found interesting was that the radical organizations like the Weather Underground really weren't closely affiliated with the flower child/hippie movement. The radicals thought the hippies were too apolitical; and while they were willing to use them as allies in the antiwar movement, they found the whole peace and love thing insufficiently revolutionary - not to mention not nearly violent enough.
The radicals were antiwar because they were pro-communist; while the hippies were anti-war because they didn't want to be drafted.
The Weather Underground also was a good example of luxury beliefs and the strange fascination that elites have with communism. Most of their leaders came from upper-middle-class, well-educated, well-connected families (which is why the majority of them got off with slaps on the wrists and then went on to cushy careers in academia).
Their ideology involved overthrowing the U.S. government, fighting imperialism, destroying bourgeois individualism, smashing monogamy, dismantling white supremacy, etc.. Awfully similar to the woke agenda of the 2020s. It is *interesting* that Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers went on to become a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois - Chicago, and became the VP of Cufrriculum Studies at the American Educational Research Association.
Interestingly, when the Weather Underground attempted to recruit members from vocational/technical students, the working-class students were not very receptive, and in fact chased them out and tried to beat them up on a few occasions. It seemed that actual proletariats were not nearly as interested in communism as the well-off college kids were.