Month: December 2020

Redistribution of Luck: Making Sense of Our Circumstances and The Powers We Hold

I grew up in a little house in the neighbourhood of Pinheiros in Sao Paulo. It was a modest house my parents leased from my grandparents up until I was 11. It was a lovely region, full of bars, shops and concert houses – but despite all of that it was also a dangerous part of town.

I have very vivid memories of being afraid of the outside. My parents had been robbed many times in those streets and once they even had the house broken into by two armed thieves while they were home. Brazil is a country of two nations – a Modern Brazil that resembles the life of North Americans and Europeans; and the Real Brazil, one where people don’t have enough to eat and must live by the decisions of Modern Brazil (which most often don’t reflect the realities of 90% of the population).

Growing up I always wondered what did I do to deserve being born in Modern Brazil. Did my ancestors claw out poverty and discrimination by sheer hard work and power of will, or were we simply lucky enough to have been born into a household descendant of Europeans in the west end of town?

I’ll never have the answers to these “what if” questions, but in seeking to understand history, moral philosophy and economics I was able to fill in some gaps.

Serendipity

After turning 16, I embarked in an exchange program to Canada. The whole idea was to sharpen my English and be exposed to different cultures and ways of life. This entire experience was only possible due to the kindness of the host mom I so luckily happened to be paired with. She treated me like a son and assured my parents that, even though I was 10,000 kilometers away from home, they did not have anything to worry about.

As the years went by, I was able to stay in Canada, gain a scholarship to play basketball in college, graduate university, and start a career that enabled me to live in different parts of the country. Things were working out better than I could have ever wished for. And so my childhood question about serendipity burned even stronger.

The more I travelled, read and talked to people from different walks of life, the more I realized that my life was rather unusual. Sure – I worked hard to achieve my goals and stuck to my values of living an honest life, but none of that would have been possible without a basic foundation that was totally outside of my control that most people around the world can only dream of. Not once have I ever had to worry about not having enough to eat, a doctor to take care of my health when sick, or access to education (among many others).

These are things that the developed world often takes for granted. The very fact that I can read and write this sentence in English automatically gives me access to more books, more papers, and more services than 6 billion people around the world could only dream of. And all it takes is a few Google searches to quickly realize how my income puts me in a far more fortunate position than the vast majority of the globe.

So, if hard work and natural talents only pay off in the face of opportunity, and opportunity is only available to a select group of people in the world by sheer luck of the straw, how much of my personal success can I confidently attribute to my own doing versus where and when I was put into this world?

How would have my life played out had I been born in Real Brazil?

Effective Altruism

For a long time I contemplated how I could give back the fruits of my labor and serendipity in the most impactful way. And so this past year I was exposed to Peter Singer’s philosophy of Effective Altruism that completely changed my perspective on the concept of charity.

In Essays in Philosophy Volume 18, Issue 1 (2017) Effective Altruism: Introduction, William MacAskill defines Effective Altruism as:

“…the project of using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis. […] Its aims are welfarist, impartial, and maximizing: effective altruists aim to maximize the wellbeing of all, where (on some interpretation) everyone counts for one, and no-one for more than one. “

ESSAYS PHILOS (2017)18:1 | DOI: 10.7710/1526-0569.1580 

And so a community of Effective Altruists was born around this idea and platforms were set up to facilitate the engagement of regular folk like myself to contribute in any way they can. Websites such as effectivealtruism.org and givewell.org make giving a lot easier by having a team of experts evaluate the most effective charities around the world and allocate funding based on where your dollar will save the most lives. The concept of Effective Altruism “Mutual Funds” were invented and automated deposits made it that much easier for anyone to get involved.

So, what if you could live a life in which you saved someone from a burning building every year on top of your day job? Effective Altruists have figured out how to do just that.

The Against Malaria Foundation estimates that a mere $3,000 will save someone from dying of Malaria. A bed-net costs as little as $5, and that will effectively protect a child from dying of a disease responsible for killing over 400,000 people every year.

But you see, giving money for Malaria bed-nets isn’t as rewarding a partaking in toy drives, food banks and personal volunteer hours in your local community. The “immediate feedback” of doing good (familiar faces smiling and thanking the donors) is a lot harder to recreate when solving the biggest causes of suffering in the world – specially when they’re happening thousands of miles away from your doorstep.

And to make matters even harder, publicly talking about your altruistic efforts to others has become taboo – your true intentions behind the good deed will come into question. But as Sam Harris, in his conversation with William MacAskill, put it – speaking about your efforts to give back can inspire others to do the same. 

2020 has opened our eyes to many things; one of them being how fragile the human existence truly is and how together we can change the course of history for the better. For so many years we’ve grown protective of our achievements and ways of living. All of that is badly estimated. Much of who we are, what we do and how we live is largely circumstantial. The fortunate ones have the duty to help elevate the tide for all boats. 

And with that I am challenging you, the reader, to embrace your serendipity and join me in this endeavour. 

Begin your journey by committing 1% of your income to making the world a better place for all here: 

effectivealtruism.org or givewell.org

PPA

My Book Picks from 2020

When the sun rose on January 1st, I was thrilled to take on 2020. Sarah and I were in a beautiful beach in Brazil cheering champagne alongside my family just before hopping in a plane back to Canada to start a new chapter in our lives.

We were officially moving to Toronto.

It was an exciting first 3 months, exploring a new city and building new relationships in what was shaping up to be an epic year… until March 11th came. That’s when I left the office for the last time unsure of what lied ahead, and the 2020 that we came to know officially began.

Oftentimes the books I’m reading follow my present state of mind. I try to line up about 20 books that I intend to read each year ahead of time, but then unexpected things happen that scratch my curiosity about different topics I had never thought about. Below is a snapshot of where my head was at throughout 2020:

And so, I’d like to share with you my Top 5 books from above that helped shape my thinking going into 2021.

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

This was an extraordinary piece of writing by one of the biography industry’s very best – Walter Isaacson. I did not have this book on my reading list before the end of the year, but while I was in Brazil in 2019 I visited a Leonardo da Vinci exposition (which I talked about on this post) that completely blew my mind.

Aside from having been one of history’s most brilliant painters, Leonardo embodied the definition of a true renaissance man. He invented military weapons, water systems and flying machines, he was a sculptor, he was an exceptional writer, he studied the human body and drew the most detailed anatomy pictures of his time, and the list goes on.

This book was an inspiration to me as I’ve always identified myself as a “generalist”. After seeing how the mind of one of history’s greatest generalists functioned I was finally ready to proudly wear my polymath hat.

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil

This was recommended by Bill Gates in his 2019 yearly book roundup, but it does come with a word of caution: it’s an extremely technical book, heavy in academic language and mathematical detail.

But Vaclav, known for his deep knowledge in policy and energy systems in his work at the University of Winnipeg, does such an incredible job in explaining how things grow and the patterns in which they do that somehow this 600 page unit, which contains an additional 100 pages purely devoted to sources, becomes a page-turner.

If you’re curious to understand how the laws of thermodynamics explain the economic activity we see today and how to predict the future of growth trajectories (of any type: cells, crops, cities, societies, and more), then this book is for you. I can say that this was one of the most intellectually challenging books I’ve ever read, and because of that it was also the most rewarding one to dive into.

The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Parliamentary Government in Canada (6th Edition) by Patrick Malcolmson & Richard Myers

I began reading this book in the week leading up to Canada Day. There was a lot of talk about “cancelling” Canada Day due to its complicated history with Native Americans and policies passed over the years, and I realized how little I knew about how my government worked.

Patrick and Richard do a fantastic job in explaining the foundational theory of our parliamentary democracy and how it differs from other systems (such as federal republics, autocracies, communist states, etc.), and they also figured out how to explain our political conventions in a way that will finally make it “click”.

This book is updated after each election to reflect the latest political realities in the government, and is a must read for anyone looking to be a more active member of Canadian society or for someone just trying to navigate our presently charged political reality.

Principles by Ray Dalio

In 2019 I worked as an analyst and took on projects in which I manipulated big data to make more educated forecasts/decisions in business. I quickly learned that when seeking to propose change that impacts large swaths of people, aligning on a set of principles will make it a lot easier to roll out future plans you may have in mind. As long as the ideas ladder up to the core principles of the project, it will oftentimes be safe to try.

So, what better person to talk about drafting principles than hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio. He talks through every single one of this personal principles in detail and how they helped him in business and in life.

Many of the culture building tactics Dalio used at Bridgewater Associates have been implemented across every industry in the globe due to their success in the world’s largest hedge fund firm. On top of his many business successes, Ray also provides a great framework of thinking for anyone navigating complexity at work or at home.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff

I began reading this book after a friend of mine recommended me to watch “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix. It was an eye opening docudrama that shone light into a number of philosophical and pragmatic issues with social media that sadly most people aren’t even aware of. After questioning my own relationship with Facebook and Google, this was the perfect book to help me determine where I stood in this so called dilemma.

Understanding privacy in the 21st century has become a far more complex exercise due to how our minds have been wired to interpret it over the previous century. The iPhone was only launched 13 years ago (2007) and so most people still aren’t well versed in the bits & pixels emanating from their personal pocket computers.

The idea that someone wouldn’t care about their privacy because “they don’t have anything to hide” no longer holds up – with the emergence of social media interweaving itself in every aspect of our lives we have become vulnerable to manipulation; so much so that we have recently seen a wave of populist movements threaten democracies across the world.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to confidently take control of their data, which effectively has become our social currency in the 21st century world.

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I hope I was able to be of help in picking a couple books for your 2021 reading list. Please drop me a line with what you’re planning to read in the new year in the comment section!

To see what I’m reading year-round, follow me on Goodreads here.

PPA

You can find my 2019 Book Picks here.