A Simple Two-Word Description That Accurately Describes How Everything in the World Works
At the end of every issue, Discover Magazine includes an interview with an expert from some field of science—chemistry, biology, astronomy, geology, genetics, neuroscience, et cetera. The aim is for these specialists to unpack the biggest ideas in their field and distill them into plain English, accessible to the magazine’s broad readership. The longtime corporate executive Peter Kaufman once printed out 12 years of these interviews—144 total, filling three 3-ring binders—and spent six months reading and rereading them. Noticing patterns and overlap among the different disciplines, he separated things into three fundamental buckets: 1) the biological universe (everything in the world that’s living), 2) the inorganic universe (everything in the world that’s not living), and 3) recorded human history (the accumulated knowledge and lessons from human experience). Across these three buckets, Kaufman identified “a simple two-word description that accurately describes how everything in the world works.” Before revealing the simple two-word description, Kaufman shared an example from each bucket. From the biological universe, there’s Mark Twain’s famous example of what happens when you pick up and swing a cat around by its tail: it tries to attack you back. From the inorganic universe, there’s Newton’s Third Law of Motion: for every action, there will always be an equal and opposite reaction. And from human experience, there’s what we find when we interact with people: by and large, they treat us the same way we treat them. “Now is there a good word, a catchall word to describe what we’re talking about here?” Kaufman asks, then answers: “Yeah, it’s reciprocation,” he answers, “but it’s not mere reciprocation. It’s perfectly mirrored reciprocation…That’s how the world works…mirrored reciprocation.”
Mirrored reciprocation—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
If You Only Applied Yourself…
Growing up, the great film and theater director Mike Nichols said, “I was one of the millions of people to whom teachers always said, ‘You could do so well if you only applied yourself.’” The turning point was during Nichols’ first year at the University of Chicago. He skipped most of his classes that first year. One of the few for which he occasionally showed up for was a humanities course with a professor named Edward Rosenheim. One day, Rosenheim pulled him aside. “You know, Nichols,” Rosenheim said, “you’re very charming and all that, but I really owe my time to people who do the work.” “It really threw me,” Nichols said of being kicked out of the only class he semi-enjoyed. “I thought I would sort of skate through and not work and do perfectly all right.” It was then that he realized that our level of effort and engagement is mirroredly reciprocated by those who, throughout our lives, contribute to whether or not we do perfectly all right.
Put In The Effort You Hope To Receive
In every interview I’ve listened to with the former CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi, it’s brought up that Nooyi’s rise from a middle-class family in the South of India to the helm of a global Fortune 500 company was fueled by her ability to attract great mentors at every turn. And whenever it comes up, Nooyi says some version of, “I never went to somebody and said, will you be my mentor? I just worked hard. I put my head down. And I always worried about how to make the life of my superiors easier by not upwardly delegating stuff. Many people do that: they do a half-assed job and hope their superiors will fix it. I was very conscious of not doing that, of not upwardly delegating. And when you do all that, people come out of the woodwork wanting to mentor you. Because they can sense that the time and energy they invest in you will not be wasted.” Echoing what Nichols learned about the mirrored reciprocal relationship between what we put in and what others give back, Nooyi continues: “Mentorship is a two-way street. You’ve got to put the effort into the work you hope others will in turn put into you.”
Have A Good Past
In 1993, Jensen Huang pitched a startup idea to his former boss, Wilf Corrigan. After Jensen’s pitch, Wilf said, “I have no idea what you just said. That was one of the worst pitches I’ve ever heard.” Wilf then called the renowned venture capitalist Don Valentine, and said, “Don, I’m going to send a kid over to you. He’s one of the best employees I’ve ever had. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but I think you should give him money.” As the founder of Sequoia Capital, Valentine—the so-called “grandfather of Silicon Valley venture capital”—had made early investments in companies like Apple, Atari, Oracle, and Wilf Corrigan’s LSI Logic. Walking in to pitch the most sought-after investor in Silicon Valley, Jensen (at the time, 29 years old) was nervous and intimidated, and therefore, “I did a horrible job with the pitch.” “Against my best judgment,” Valentine said, “I’m going to give you money because Wilf says to give you money. But if you lose my money, I’ll kill you.” With funding from Sequoia, Jensen and his co-founders, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, started Nvidia—initially, a company focused on improving the quality and efficiency of computer graphics. It would go on to become a force in the technology industry, revolutionizing not only computer graphics but also pioneering advancements in artificial intelligence, data centers, autonomous vehicles, and more. At the time of this writing, Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world, worth around $4.3 trillion. Asked about Valentine giving him money despite the terrible pitch, Jensen said, “The thing I learned from that is your past is more important than your ability to pitch, interview, or anything like that. You can’t run away from your past. So have a good past. Try to have a good past.” A good past tends to be reciprocated in the form of a good future.
Fear And Preparation Are Perfectly Mirrored
In the documentary Free Solo, a team of neuroscientists perform an fMRI scan on Alex Honnold’s brain. They conclude that he was born with an abnormal brain, one that “doesn’t experience fear like the rest of us.” “I find that slightly irritating,” Honnold later said. Because saying his brain is abnormal—a detail repeated in nearly every interview and article—is sort of like the admirer chalking the beautiful, magnificent, thriving garden up to God. It implies that Honnold’s physical and mental abilities are merely a genetic fluke, something he was born with. It overlooks the burden, the toil, and the trouble he has taken upon himself to become who he is. “I’ve spent 25 years,” he said, “conditioning myself, through systematic practice, to work in extreme conditions.” In 2009, for instance, Honnold began thinking about free soloing (rock climbing without ropes or safety gear) El Capitan—a 3,000-ft rock wall in Yosemite. “For the next seven years,” he said, “I’d drive into Yosemite, look at the wall, and think, ‘No way. Too scary.’” “To gradually expand my comfort zone,” as Honnold put it, he took on incrementally harder climbs. He climbed El Cap hundreds of times with a rope. Hundreds more, he hiked to the summit, rappelled down with over a thousand feet of rope, and rehearsed every hand and foot movement on every section of the wall. Through this systematic practice and preparation, over time, the wall looked less and less scary each time Honnold drove into Yosemite. And on June 3, 2017, he became the first person to climb it without a rope. “I think the real takeaway from that fMRI experience,” Honnold concluded, “is that with enough effort and preparation, you can change the way scary things register in your brain.” Fear and preparation are inversely proportional, Honnold likes to say: The level of fear “depends [on] the level of preparation.” The level of fear is perfectly mirrored by the level of preparation.