This Isn't Rocket Science (Unless It Is)

Plus: A VERY exciting new feature!

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Welcome back, Shit Givers. It’s a big day!

We’re back from vacation(s), and I’m very excited to announce two exciting updates:

  1. We’ve moved our main website to beehiiv. The address remains the same — importantnotimportant.com - and the podcast is linked from there.

  2. We’re launching Comments!

And now, some explanation:

We loved our old website. It was beautiful, a real calling card for our work. But it required a LOT of work, and a LOT of duct tape, and beehiiv has some new built-in features we can’t ignore, and can’t use with a third-party site, like growth tools, and as of today, comments.

And there’s much more on the way.

In addition, by unifying our email and web platform, there should be measurably less admin and design work for us, which means we can focus on doing the work (massive thanks to the team at beehiiv for building an amazing platform, and for helping us migrate home).

Anyways, the same thinking goes for the podcast. We LOVED how the pod looked on the old site, but it was a lot of work, and PodPage does most of that work automatically, and still looks sexy as hell.

Today’s big news, though, is Comments.

For the first time, you can provide feedback and build conversations with other Shit Givers right on the site — if you’re reading this on email, you can use the new button below to click right through.

Bits:

MOST IMPORTANT NOTE: Moderating comments is a hell of a lot of work, and time costs money, and if we’re going to do this, we want to provide a home for future-positive feedback and conversations.

So while all subscribed readers can comment for now, comments will soon become a paid Member exclusive, so we can literally afford to keep it going.

Good shit to come: Watch your inbox on Monday for exciting news around Membership.

Let’s get to it.

👩‍💻 You can read and comment on today’s post on the website.

🎧 Or you can listen to it (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

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THIS WEEK

A very basic way to use a mental model, you’re welcome.

PLUS: Mosquitoes, overseas abortion pills, healthy ice cream, German nuclear power, electric school buses, and more

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This isn’t rocket science (unless it’s actual rocket science).

Sure, yeah, our world is endlessly complex.

We’ve got about eight billion people, eight million-ish species, twelve-ish major religions, one hundred and ninety-two-ish countries, a wide variety of climates and topographies, as well as finite natural resources and seemingly infinite technological innovations that are somehow both unequally distributed and can make or break nations and economies and livelihoods.



So we’re going to have problems. That’s life.



But some of our problems, like the climate crisis, need to be solved ASAP. And solving them can actually bring about something even better.

In devising how to build a radically new world, I like to imagine a specific, measurable outcome, and then, instead of jumping to “How do we fix X to get there?”, pivot instead to “Why the hell is X this way at all?”



And this is where first principles thinking can be helpful.

“In every systematic inquiry (methodos) where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these; for we think we know something just in case we acquire knowledge of the primary causes, the primary first principles, all the way to the elements.”

— Aristotle

Before you say it, I’ll say it. First principles and other Twitter-thread-mental-models cat-nip are often over-rated bullshit, but if you try to actually demonstrate them in practice, someone somewhere might find them useful.

So. Let’s try that.

Ready?

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