⦿ Field Notes 8 // Malta, sci-fi thrillers, and Scott Adams

Welcome back to Field Notes! I didn't plan it this way, but somewhere between a few days unwinding in Malta and a sci-fi novel about monsters that mess with our memories, I spent a lot of time this month thinking about what we actually need, and what we're better off forgetting.

Five days relaxing in Malta

I spent a few days in Malta in the middle of a particularly intense period at work, and felt detached in a way I haven’t for years. We stayed in St Julian’s, which has many modern buildings and bright lights, but it still felt so far away from news and tech and social media – the exact opposite of how I felt when I went to New York. Listening to conversations on the streets and in restaurants, everything felt so immediate. Only a good night out, a rich meal, a glass of wine, or a chat with friends seemed to matter to anybody.

Malta itself is gorgeous. We took the ferry to the island of Gozo (avoid the fast catamaran at all costs if you are at all susceptible to seasickness) and explored the citadel and the old towns. An unexpected highlight was the National War Museum at the tip of Valletta, which documents the nation's history through the lens of war, from its early days to EU membership.

As much as I enjoyed roaming around Malta, my biggest discovery of the trip is that I don't need any of that. Naval Ravikant said that if you can't be happy with a coffee then you won't be happy with a yacht, and for a few blissful moments, when I was propped up under the duvet on the first morning with my book and an espresso from the hotel room coffee machine, I felt just that. I knew it would fade as soon as I returned to my responsibilities in London, but even knowing the potential for that feeling is inside me is enough.

There Is No Antimemetics Division

My holiday reading was There Is No Antimemetics Division, Sam Hughes' sci-fi thriller about an agency that hunts down entities called Unknowns. These creatures either cannot be remembered, can alter their victims' memories, or both. The setup lends itself perfectly to unreliable narrators with zero idea of who they are or why they're there, and it's only as they piece together their identities and histories that the reader learns the truth themselves.

On one hand this works in the book's favour, allowing the author to show the horrors that await without killing the tension. Terrible things can happen and the characters can just forget – they don't know what's waiting for them. Conversely, without a coherent memory between all the characters, chapters often read like isolated incidents. It's only about halfway through that one character breaks this containment and the plot can really get moving.

That's the primary theme of the book – that given enough time we can forget anything, including how to inoculate ourselves against bad, viral ideas and avoid repeating past calamities. The message is important, but simple. Your enjoyment of the path to get there will depend on your tolerance for the kind of sci-fi universe that revels in its own rules and terminology.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

When Dilbert creator Scott Adams passed away in January, I caught several online conversations about his writing, which I was far less familiar with. So I bought a copy of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, a half-self-help guide, half-biography that argues that you don't need to be the best at anything to do well in life – you just need the right perspective.

I would sum up Adams' recommended outlook as one of accountability and simplification. Much of the book covers the fundamentals you need to feel good – sleep, nutrition, exercise, and so on – and the avoidance of unneeded complexities like depressing media that drags you down. He also covers some key logical fallacies that push people into a constant negative state.

There's nothing ground-breaking here even for the book's first publication in 2013, but Adams delivers a broad collection of practical advice, ranging from tips on being a good conversationalist to a discussion on goals and systems along the lines of Atomic Habits. You won't find the depth of similar books, but it's a good place to start – almost an index of concepts and terms to skim before digging deeper via more focused books by domain experts.

This month on the blog

Things that left an impression

Field notes from the world of technology and design:

• Cal Newport joined Ed Zitron on Better Offline to discuss some of the most common tricks and fallacies in AI reporting. Keeping up with AI is a minefield requiring greater media literacy than the average news story, and this was a great primer how how reporters imply non-existent cause and effect, extrapolate to grand proclamations on the future, and otherwise fall for Big Tech's AI hype.

• Dr Read Montague joined the Huberman Lab podcast to discuss the roles of dopamine and serotonin in our daily psychological lives. One of the biggest takeaways I took from the episode was that dopamine isn't just a reward for the outcome of our actions. It also plays a role along the way as we adjust our approach to increase our chances of success – for example, consideration of each move in a chess match.

• Rounding off a trio of podcasts for this month, I also enjoyed David Senra's interview with 37signals' Jason Fried, who discussed the ascent of the Basecamp developer. The interview was wide-ranging, but it was particularly interesting to hear about Fried's philosophy of building for yourself, rather than to beat the competition. You only need to appeal to a small market segment and maintain revenue greater than your costs to be successful, he said – so don't get distracted by the noise.

That’s all for now - I’ll see you next month!