A Learning a Day

The story of the Green Revolution can be traced back to the synthesis of Ammonia by the Haber Bosch process. This is because it became clear to anyone who studied land productivity that we needed a way to bring back Nitrogen into the soil. Ammonia turned out to be the answer.

Synthesizing Ammonia, however, required a breakthrough. While this is often ascribed to two geniuses, Haber and Bosch, the truth was far from that.

While Haber provided the initial insight, Bosch and a large team of scientists at BASF synthesized ammonia after relentless iterative experimentation. The result was a process that enabled us to all benefit from cheap fertilizer that was crucial to ensure that soil remain productive for farmers.

The result wasn’t just profits. This laid the foundations for victory in a fight against famine and starvation. It was expected that countries like India and Pakistan would see hundreds of thousands of death due to starvation in the 1970s.

However, thanks to Ammonia-based fertilizers and disease resistant wheat varieties created by Norman Borlaug, the green revolution came to be.

In hindsight, it is also fascinating that there was a lot of resistance in India and Pakistan to this innovation. Opposition arguments warned about all sorts of societal problems if it worked or if it didn’t.

Thanks to fertilizer and the “dwarf wheat” varieties, India ended up becoming an exporter.

3 reflections:

(1) As I read Matt Ridley’s “How Innovation Works”, it is clear just how repetitive the pattern of innovation is. While one or two people get the credit, it took an army to go from insight to mass adoption.

(2) Even the most obvious innovations face opposition.

(3) Innovations build on each other and produce a compound effect. The Green revolution wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the synthesis of Ammonia. Compounding is the most powerful force in the world.

Often, the most important step we take toward solving difficult problems is reminding ourselves that there is no silver bullet.

We have to do the work and get there – the old fashioned way.

One of the toughest challenges when calibrating talent in my experience is unconsciously weighing like-ability more than judgment.

Some thoughts on what we pursue.

Once we’re fortunate to have our essentials taken care of (security, food, shelter), we begin a journey in the pursuit of wealth.

The wealth we ultimately seek is the ability to have a rich life filled with great memories and quality time.

However, a rich life, like success and happiness, is an outcome that cannot be pursued. It ensues when we earn the right combination of inputs.

We can pursue two kinds of input wealth –

(a) External wealth (this is easily visible): Financial or status.
External wealth is a necessity. Financial wealth tends to be less fickle than status wealth.

(b) Internal wealth (this is visible only to self/close relationships): Physical (fitness), mental (equanimity), emotional (relationships/love), and spiritual (purpose).
Internal wealth, in the long run, often shows up in the amount of external wealth we have. Often but not always.

The challenge, in any given season of our life, is choosing which inputs to focus on and in what order.

A friend shared this piece by the late actress Portia Nelson.

Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in. I am lost….I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the side walk.
I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I fall in….it’s a habit…but my eyes are open.
I know where I am. It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5
I walk down a different street.

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The arc of this story is beautiful – she managed to say so much with so little.

It resonated.

As humankind entered the 1980s, small pox was eradicated, and polio and cholera were in retreat. However, malaria was still impacting hundreds of thousands of people.

A group of scientists came up with an ingenious experiment. They started with 36 mosquito nets – some of which were for double beds and some were for single beds.

Half of these were soaked in Permethrin (a powerful insect repellent). And half had holes torn into the nets to simulate wear and tear. They expected most nets to be torn – and for the owners to not have enough money to replace them.

In sum, there were 9 nets each with combinations of treated/untreated and torn/intact. Those treated with Permethrin were all laid flat in the sun for 90 minutes and then installed in 24 huts.

These huts had mosquito traps – some were designed to catch mosquitos inside the house and some as they left.

Between 8pm-6am for 6 days a week, volunteers slept in the huts. Mosquitos were collected 3 times during the day and live mosquitos were kept under observation.

After 21 weeks, 4,682 female anopheles mosquitos (Malaria vectors) were collected.

The researchers were expecting the Permethrin treated nets to be very effective. However, they were skeptical about the performance of the torn nets.

The results were astonishing.

The Permethrin treated torn nets reduced mosquitos entering 70%, increased mosquitos leaving the hut from 25% to 97%, and reduced the blood meal between 20%-10%.

This was unexpected as these tears in the net were large. And what’s more, even after 5 months, the Permethrin was still highly effective

It proved to be a breakthrough. The widespread use of impregnated bed nets stopped Malaria mortality from increasing and started to decline. These nets were twice as effective as anti-malarial drugs and sprays… and were responsible for almost halving the death rate from Malaria.

This was such an elegantly designed experiment – a beautiful illustration of the scientific method in action.

H/T: How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley

Plastics have negative externalities. The cost of plastics don’t reflect these negative externalities – so we all end up paying for them. There’s a story we like to believe about plastic recycling. However, most plastic isn’t recycled.

So we end up with microplastics and nanoplastics – in our food and our water – that end up in our bodies. It isn’t easy yet to just phase out plastics from our life. They’re cheap and ubiquitous.

The single highest leverage thing we can do is ask our elected officials to ban single use plastics. But, in the absence of that, here are 4 things we can do at home:

(1) Steel water bottles instead of plastic bottled water: Plastic bottled water, it turns out, is a great way to eat plastic. We don’t need that. Just keep steel water bottles with you – they’re better in every way.

Soft drink companies are going all in on marketing these as people reduce soft drink consumption. But plastic bottled water is a farce in developed countries where tap water is high quality. And, if we’re very picky about our neighborhood water source, we can use a filter.

(2) Refuse to take new plastic grocery bags: That will ensure we either bring cloth bags or reuse our existing plastic bags. Both can work.

(3) Replace plastic detergent and laundry pods: These are very convenient and innocent looking. So much so that I didn’t even realize they were plastic (duh). Liquid laundry detergent made of natural materials is an easy replacement.

Plastic-free dishwasher detergent can be harder to find – we’ve found Blueland’s pods very good so far.

(4) Use the compost bin: All food material and paper can go into the compost bin. “Hold On” has good 4 and 13 gallon compost bags that can be used together (depending on the size of your bin).

These are all small ways in which we can contribute to reduced microplastics.

They add up.

The easiest way to make sure we eat healthy is to not bring ultra-processed food at home.

No need to work on ways to add willpower and self control.

Just subtract the temptation.

I’ve loved reading Matt Ridley’s “How Innovation Works” so far. A point he makes emphatically is that the nature of innovation is always misunderstood.

Crucial innovations are often thought to have been accelerated by war. However, most innovation has happened incrementally and has been driven forward by many people.

For example, aircraft fatalities have gone from 3000 people per trillion miles to 50 people per trillion miles between 1970 and the 2010s. An incredible advance – it is 700 safer to be on a jet vs. to drive a car.

This happened not because of one person -but because of many experiments in manufacturing and crew communication best practices.

This is how the jet engine, the car, the electric bulb, and so many other inventions became part of our daily life.

I’ve sometimes heard grown-ups share their frustrations about “kids these days.” This always comes with a story about how kids are (mis)behaving in ways they wouldn’t expect.

This is generally the point in the conversation when I jump in to point out it isn’t “kids these days,” it is “parents these days” – i.e., it’s us. No need to point those fingers elsewhere.

For example, I’m seeing a lot of kids in our neighborhood zoom around in what looks like a combination of e-bikes and e-scooters. Seeing groups of middle school aged boys ride at speed on the road, on the sidewalk (often in the opposite direction), etc., is scary to watch. It always feels like an accident waiting to happen.

Ultimately though, it comes down to a decision their parents made. It defies logic. Why wouldn’t you let kids burn their energy riding a bike? Why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to learn how to stay fit at a young age?

Similarly, there’s always news about bad electronic habits. But that second grader with the Apple Watch didn’t walk into the Apple store and swipe her card. Neither did the fourth grader with the iPhone. Or that kid who gets unlimited access to YouTube because there’s a TV in her room.

Sure, they might have asked their parents for it. Begged even. But kids ask for a lot of things…

My wife shared a public review of our neighborhood middle school recently. It was from a parent who shared that her kid had had a rough time. But she went onto explain that the school and teachers were just fine. The kids were fine – left to themselves – too. The issue was parents who seemed to be intent on buying the affection of their kids.

True story.