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Welcome to The Surface Tension Newsletter!
Where Ideas Meet and Mate.
Surface Tension is a monthly exploration of ideas and insights from the books and articles I read, along with thought-provoking quotes.
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Four Books I Read This Month → Four Lessons
- One line takeaway: Can we be who we ‘want’ to be, or only who we’re ‘capable’ of being?
- How did the book change the way I think: Being open-minded to ideas that your gut tells you not to can be one of the best ways to fill the gaps in our knowledge of how the world works.
- One line takeaway: This book introduces an attitude toward approaching life, even though, on the surface, it seems like just a writing guide.
- How did the book change the way I think: In any kind of presentation, the optimum outcome is simply the truth. The presenter’s duty is to point to that hard-won truth without talking about how he got there — not to waste the audience’s time or disrupt their attention. The best way for the presenter to achieve this is to ask two questions: (1) Can the audience visualize it? and (2) Can they falsify it on their own?
- One line takeaway: Would we be comfortable living in a world where there are no conflicts, no inequality, no divorce, no unemployment, no injustice, and no personal choices?
- How did the book change the way I think: To avoid conflicts, it’s absolutely necessary to agree on definitions before debating anything.
- One line takeaway: Individuality gets completely crushed when society prioritizes collective stability above all else.
- How did the book change the way I think: Truth and individual freedom are recognized necessities—they are not guaranteed—they must be actively protected.
Four Articles I Wrote This Month → Four Insights
- Key insight: Five habits to create a system that helps you read anything you want are 1. Make time to read. 2. Read what you like. 3. Use multiple formats. 4. Read more than one book at a time. 5. Make yourself accountable (set a target, join Goodreads, etc.).
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Most frequent question: I don’t have free time. How can I fit in reading?
- Answer: There are two ways to make room for reading: make time and take time.
Make time: If you usually wake up at 7, try getting up at 6:30 and using that extra half hour to read. Or, if you go to bed at 10, start reading in bed before you fall asleep. Small adjustments like these can add up quickly.
Take time: This means borrowing time from other activities. For example, if you have the habit of scrolling through social media right after getting home from work, try replacing that with reading. Or if you usually spend a couple of hours watching TV, take 30 minutes from it for your book.
- Key insight: Loss aversion describes how much people dislike losing something they already have. Risk aversion, on the other hand, describes how much people prefer certainty over uncertainty.
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Most frequent question: Are risk aversion and loss aversion essentially the same concept?
- Answer: No, they are not the same concept. But they are closely related to each other. Risk-averse individuals avoid uncertain outcomes whereas loss-averse individuals avoid losses, even if such decisions often involve risk.
- Key insight: Learning isn’t just about absorbing knowledge, but also about how to use that knowledge in real life. Novels help you become someone who sees differently, feels more deeply, and acts more wisely. When you invite fiction into your reading habits, you tap into growth that nonfiction alone cannot ever reach.
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Most frequent question: Does reading nonfiction give more “real world” value than fiction? Or is fiction equally valuable?
- Answer: Reading only non-fiction doesn’t necessarily give you real-world value.
Non-fiction is like reading an instruction manual—you learn facts, insights, and theories. But that alone doesn’t guarantee success when you actually put your foot forward and try them out in the real world.
What’s missing are perspective, intuition, and creativity—and that’s exactly what fiction provides.
Bottom line: real-world value comes from blending both fiction and non-fiction, not relying on just one genre alone.
- Key insight: Understanding risk-seeking is not about becoming reckless; it’s about becoming strategic. It gives you a framework to describe your instincts, tools to shape them, and a way to make uncertainty work in your favor instead of against you.
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Most frequent question: Is being risk-seeking good or bad?
- Answer: It depends on the situation. For example, taking a risk might give you a big reward, but it also comes with a lower chance of survival on average. So it comes down to this: how well you can take risks while keeping the downside in check.
Quote of the Month
Our answer is that writing is an intellectual activity, not a bundle of skills. Writing proceeds from thinking. To achieve good prose styles, writers must work through intellectual issues, not merely acquire mechanical techniques.
Clear and Simple as the Truth by Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner
One Big Idea I’m Thinking About
I started this month by reading Thomas Sowell’s book, A Conflict of Visions. This book completely changed the way I think about modern politics. It gives a framework to explain why people are divided, most frequently into two camps.
All the fiction books I chose to read were chosen because I want to explore this idea even further. Some of these fiction books are The Giver by Lois Lowry, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and right now I’m reading Lord of the Flies. All these books are directly connected to the two visions discussed in Thomas Sowell’s book—the constrained and unconstrained visions.
Reader Question
If you had unlimited money, what would you spend the rest of your life working on?
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