ears ago friends introduced me to the work of German painter Gerhard Richter. Richter often layers paint which he then scrapes away at giving the piece a third dimension. What I like about Richter's approach is how he literally digs deeper.
In carving up my tome of a children's book on financial education, I settled on a single story that transcends financial education. This made me wonder - have I dug deep enough or have I just scratched the surface?
The depth of my exploration of this topic became particularly clear as I read Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. Make that the book's afterword. For as good as the book is, the afterword is even better because of Ferguson's discussion of cognitive psychology - particularly our ability to avoid biases such as overestimating success and underestimating risk and failure - and its impact on our ability to make good financial decisions on a daily basis.
Question is, how many of us will ever read Ferguson's afterword? How many will read the 26 page study by Eliezer Yudkowsky that the afterword is based on? 10% of the population? 1%? How many of us have read all our email? Exactly.
In the last few years Rockabye Baby! started putting out albums called "Lullaby Renditions of..." various musical artists. They've done Radiohead, Bob Marley, Adele, Journey, Kanye West and many more. In each case they replace vocals with xylophones and other kid-friendly instrumentals. These renditions did for pop music what Baby Einstein did for classical music.
Yudkowsky's study discusses eight points in particular that are just as interesting as the findings of the marshmallow test. In a series I'm simply calling, "Big Ideas, Little Books," I will now for my next trick write a 32 page children's book for each of the eight ideas discussed in the study. And I will write them all in the next eight days. If DiMaggio can get a hit in 56 straight, I can write 16 rhyming couplets for eight days straight.
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