opinion – Latitude Post

In The Future, Everyone Will Want To Be Anonymous For 15 Minutes

Posted on June 22, 2021 by Nicholas Peart

Fame can be a dangerous thing. Some people seek it because in their minds it fills a void. If you are talented and have a lot to offer it presents the opportunity to be valued and respected by many people. Fame has always had it’s drawbacks yet I feel there are two different periods of time that one must be aware of. These are Before The Adoption Of The Internet (BTAOTI) and After The Adoption Of The Internet (ATAOTI). In The last 25 years, the growth and development of the internet has been staggering. We currently live in a world of instant hyper connectivity.

If I had to pick a time to be famous I would pick BTAOTI in a heartbeat. News travelled slower back then. The digital world was less developed. I have no nostalgia or desire to live in the past, but when I look at the growth and development of social media today I flinch at the concept of fame. I would even go as far as saying that eventually it may even lose it’s appeal. It would take real guts to go down that path so much so that anonymity would become increasingly attractive. Andy Warhol said that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. The internet has provided a platform for everybody to publicly project themselves if they want to. There is so much content on the internet today. There is no way one would be able to absorb all the digital content out there in one lifetime. According to Statista, as of May 2019, more than 500 hours of video content was uploaded to YouTube alone every minute.

It is increasingly a rarity nowadays to not have any personal platform or content online. To be purely anonymous will be rarer and more cherished than fame itself.

By Nicholas Peart

22th June 2021

Image source: https://wellsbaum.blog

Real Talent Is Rare And Not So Cheap

Posted on June 21, 2021June 23, 2021 by Nicholas Peart

A few years ago I wrote a post entitled ‘Talent Is Cheaper Than Table Salt’. In this post I outline how talent is actually not so rare and rather it is hard work that matters when it comes to finding success.

I’ve often thought about this post, especially as it is one of my most viewed posts. Yet since I first wrote it, I’ve increasingly began to question it, even though, at least at a logical and basic level, it may be correct. But what if, just what if, I may have got it completely wrong regarding talent? Maybe genuine talent is actually rather scarce. To be clear, when I say this, I mean a kind of talent that is just so special and very hard to replicate.

The quote in my original article by the writer Stephen King goes like this; “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

King is correct, especially if one also takes into account the second sentence of his quote. It is all true. Yet talent and hard work are two different things. Anyone can develop a hard work ethic, but not everyone has real god given supernatural talent. I think we need to really reassess how we define talent. I also dispute this notion that if you work hard you will automatically be rewarded. We fall victim to something called ‘Survivorship Bias’ – only looking at success stories and overlooking all the failures.

There are countless stories of those who worked extremely hard and didn’t ‘make it’. Yet those stories seem to be lost on us. But that doesn’t mean that one should not work hard. Absolutely not. Hard work, unexpected challenges and multiple failures are an important part of one’s character building. Saying that hard work is a waste of time sets a bad example.

As a whole, we often neglect to take into account just how random the world can be. Please see my other post Fooled By Randomness. Life is not as linear as we think it is. There are some things that are simply beyond our control.

But getting back to the subject of talent. When I look at the people I admire throughout history one thing they all have in common was that they were special. They were not like everybody else. They had talent in spades and often there was hardly any chasm between their life and their art. Now THAT is rare.

By Nicholas Peart

June 21st 2021

Image: storypic.com

Labels Are Meaningless

Posted on December 9, 2019 by Nicholas Peart

labeling-people photo

Alt right, hard left, SJW, influencer, gender neutral, trans gender, queer, vegan, hipster, bi-polar, activist, eco-fundamentalist, post-modernist, hippy, rocker, mod, socialist, capitalist, liberal, radical, anarchist, feminist

Please.

Give me a break.

I don’t know what any of these labels mean.

They mean nothing to me.

Would you like to know what does interest me?

I am interested in who you are as a person.

I am interested in what you have to say.

I am not interested in your identity.

I am interested in the true and authentic substance of you.

I am interested in your heart.

I am interested in your mind.

And I am interested in your soul.

By Nicholas Peart

Photo source: harikalymnios.com

Solutions Solutions Solutions

Posted on October 25, 2018 by Nicholas Peart

light-bulb-2010022_1920

There are many problems and challenges facing the world and no shortage of writers and journalists in the media who are only too willing to heighten our awareness of all these issues. What there is a shortage of though, are individuals finding solutions to all these issues.

Talk is cheap. Withering, junk-food grade criticism is even cheaper. I am forever bored of writing that amplifies the problems of the world without shedding at least a mere pinhole of light and solutions to these problems. This is one of the reasons why I am turned on by hearing and learning about new and emerging technologies, because more often than not they provide solutions to most of these problems. They also enable me to foresee a future that is not as dire as what is often projected in much of the media.

For example, a very real and pressing social issue in the UK is the underfunding of the National Health Service and the uncertain future it currently faces. This is a huge concern as private healthcare can be very expensive and not everyone can afford it. This is especially true across the pond in the USA, where healthcare is notoriously costly. The biggest solution I see to making healthcare cheaper, more abundant and available is the further development of new and emerging technologies. Many fear the rise of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. But the development of both these two technologies will bring unprecedented benefits in the race to making healthcare not only more affordable (or even almost free) but more advanced too. Imagine robotic surgeons much more advanced than human surgeons – they don’t get nervous or stressed, they can analyze the entire human body at the molecular level and perform surgeries with nano precision. Already robotic surgery devices exist yet the scope for further development is limitless. Nanotechnology will play a very important role in understanding the entire body at the celular level and will be revolutionary in enabling everyone to maintain optimum health at all times without any viruses and damaged cells occurring. And all this can be managed via a digital application or chip without intervention from a finite supply of human doctors. I could go on but it is solutions like these to a current and real crisis that give hope and enable one to re-evaluate their hard wired negative perceptions of a situation.

Worried about the rising costs of education? Virtual Reality will be a huge game changer. This will be an enormous boon in parts of the world where there is a limited supply of teachers. With VR you won’t even need to physically step into a bricks and mortar learning institution.

There are many parts of the world, which lack enough of the right type of land to grow crops. Vertical farming is one of the potential solutions especially at the aeroponic level where crops can be grown simply via the nutrients in the air. It is still a technology that is very much in its infancy yet would reduce global hunger levels dramatically once it gets to a stage where it is much more advanced.

These are just a few solutions. I am no engineer, scientist or inventor, but knowing that these are very real solutions with the capacity to eradicate many of the most pressing global problems fills me with hope and optimism for the future. It sure beats being constantly fed the broken-record narrative in much of the news about how awful things are and that they are only going to get worse.

By Nicholas Peart

Who’s It By?

Posted on July 31, 2018 by Nicholas Peart

Often when looking at a work of art, the first question to pop into the viewer’s head isn’t, ‘What’s it called?’ or ‘What’s it about?’. Rather it is, ‘Who’s it by?’. The more discerning viewer may ask the first two questions, but most will ask the third. Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are some of the biggest names in modern and contemporary art. It is hard to find someone who has never heard of Picasso before. Yet how many could name the title of one of his many paintings?

Picasso is a brand in the same way that fashion giants Prada, Armani, Chanel and Louis Vuitton are brands. When one looks at a suit, most will invariably try to find out what brand or label it is over any investigations regarding it’s intrinsic qualities. It’s the same with other ubiquitous consumer products like Coca Cola. You can buy a cheaper supermarket cola, which may even contain the exact same ingredients, yet it will never have the same cachet as a ‘Coke’.

The following story encapsulates perfectly the power of ‘Who’s it By’. The artist Bansky recently tested this by submitting an original work of art for the 2018 Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in London under the fictitious name ‘Bryan S Gakmann’ (an anagram of ‘Banksy anagram’). It got rejected during the selection process. Nobody had heard of this Bryan S Gakmann chap. Yet when Banksy himself was asked to feature a work at the show by the organizers, he submitted the work rejected under his fake alias. After all, it was a ‘Banksy’ in the end.

By Nicholas Peart

Talent Is Cheaper Than Table Salt

Posted on July 30, 2018June 21, 2021 by Nicholas Peart

Table Salt

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

These are the words of the writer Stephen King. When I first read this quote several years ago, a part of me was outraged. My thoughts at the time were something along the lines of, ‘Talent is cheaper than table salt!?! Who does this man think he is!?! Talent is an asset goddammit!

After cooling down I re-read that quote in its entirety, beyond the first sentence…. ‘What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.’ After pondering over the last sentence of King’s quote I slowly developed one hell of a reality check. The quote demythologises the notion of how talent by itself is enough to succeed. For many years I thought talent was all that one needed. All my heroes were outrageously talented and unique human beings. Besides I couldn’t care less for lesser mediocre beings regardless of how hard they worked. I despised mediocrity.

Some complain that we live in a society where mediocrity is rewarded. And maybe they are right to complain? After all some of the biggest names in the world today are quite ordinary people and one could even come to the conclusion that they have very limited talents with nothing enlightening to say. That may be. But they are successful, because they work incredibly hard and know what makes the average individual on the street tick. They work tirelessly whilst also mirroring Joe and Joanna Blogs, giving them what they want.

UPDATE: On 21st June 2021, I wrote a follow-up article, ‘Real Talent Is Rare And Not So Cheap’, where I challenge some of the points made in this article.

By Nicholas Peart

Just Gimme Some Secrets

Posted on April 2, 2018November 1, 2018 by Nicholas Peart

light-trees-wood

In his book Zero To One, the visionary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel asks the following question whenever he interviews someone for a job; ‘What important truth do very few people agree with you on?’

I find this question interesting. On the surface it may seem simple, but it’s a difficult question to answer. Here are some statements I hear a lot;

‘Protect yourself from the sun using sun cream’

‘Brexit will cause long lasting damage to the UK economy’

‘The art world is rigged and corrupt’

‘Bitcoin is a bubble’

‘Donald Trump voters are racist and uneducated’

‘Artificial Intelligence will destroy the whole human race’

‘Sugar is bad for you’

‘Eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetable a day’

‘Astrology is pseudoscience’

Whether or not these statements may be true or false, a lot of people already agree with them. With such common consensus views, it is important to challenge them. Regarding the fourth statement in response to Thiel’s question, one could argue, ‘Most people believe Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to be a bubble and it is most certainly demonstrating all the classic attributes of one. Yet the truth is that it is a revolutionary and game-changing technology, which has the power to disrupt the entire global banking sector.’ Now I am not suggesting you got out and buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin could still become obsolete, but nevertheless this view is a contrarian one.

John Lennon once sung, ‘Just gimme some truth’. But sometimes truth alone is not enough. Especially if it is the same truth that almost everybody agrees on. John should have really sung, ‘Just gimme some secrets’. Give me some enlightening golden wisdom that isn’t common knowledge.

Consensus views can change. For a long time most people believed that tobacco was a medicine (and it was advertised as such) beneficial to one’s health. Now its seen as harmful to one’s health. Before the 2017 snap election in the UK, the consensus view on the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was that he was ‘unelectable’. But when the results of the election were announced, the party did nowhere near as badly as most people had originally forecasted and in fact prevented the Conservative Party from winning with a majority of votes. The consensus view on Corbyn subsequently shifted from someone who was ‘unelectable’ to someone who had a decent chance of becoming the next prime minister should he still be leading the Labour Party when the next elections take place.

Challenging consensus views enables one to stay ahead of the curve. When Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1bn many people thought Google overpaid. Likewise, when Facebook acquired Instagram for the same amount of money in 2012, many wondered what Zuckerberg and co had been smoking. With hindsight it is easy to say that they were incredibly shrewd and deft investments. Yet at the time, even though the leaders of both companies had the unique foresight to see the game changing potential in both those companies, most didn’t share their visions and ridiculed them for the amount of money they spent on acquiring them.

Many investors believe that Amazon stock is overvalued. If we were to value the company by its PE (Price to Earnings) ratio alone you could not unreasonably come to the conclusion that it is extremely overvalued. However, if one were to look at Amazon as a unique and powerful monopoly business in the e-commerce space, constantly disrupting traditional industries like no other company one could develop a different point of view and maybe deduce that its trading at a high premium for a reason.

The legendary US investor Warren Buffet’s often quoted mantra is to buy stocks when investors are fearful and panicky and sell when they are greedy and irrationally euphoric. Easier said than done of course. But if you can separate facts, reason and logic from emotion it could set you in good stead. One day in 1929 a wealthy US investor called Joe Kennedy was given some stock tips by a shoeshine boy. Kennedy immediately sold all his holdings and just a short time later the beginnings of the Great Depression unfolded. The stock tips from the shoeshine boy were God’s way of saying the financial markets were dangerously overheating.

Contrarian behaviour may not always work of course, especially in the case of making investment decisions. However, challenging deeply ingrained consensus beliefs is an important way of breaking out of unconscious stagnation, questioning your own conditioned beliefs and habits, developing vision and foresight, and thinking in a more balanced and broad-minded way.

By Nicholas Peart

Image: jplenio