7 concepts in 7 minutes
Be the most interesting (or annoying) person in the room
Hello Smartypants,
If you’re signed up to Pocket Polymath, chances are at some point you’ve wanted to be the smartest person in the room – or, if you’re lucky, you’ve enjoyed the dizzy heights of feeling like the smartest person in the room.
Whichever kick you’re chasing, this week’s issue has something for you; today’s Pocket Polymath is a list of seven fascinating ideas that take under seven minutes to grasp, but make you sound like a minor genius at dinner, on car journeys, or during that awkward first five minutes of Zoom calls while you’re waiting for the last couple of people to show up. (Just imagine never having to say, “Wow, looks like someone’s got a fancy background!” ever again.)
Stay curious (and lazy),
Curiosity canapés
Keep these smart-sounding titbits to hand – and drop in to any uncomfortable silence like a well-timed palate cleanser.
1. The Lindy Effect
The longer something has survived, the longer it’s likely to survive. Books, ideas, technologies… if they’ve been around a while, odds are they’ll stay. The Odyssey? Lindy. Labubus? Not Lindy.
🔍Find out more – BBC: The simple rule that can help you predict the future
💡Great for: Justifying why you stopped listening to any music after 2007.
2. 📚 The Antilibrary
Your unread books are more important than the ones you’ve read. Nassim Taleb argues that unread books represent potential, curiosity, and humility… not failure.
🔍 The Marginalian: Umberto Eco’s antilibrary
💡Great for: Making your teetering unread book pile look like a flex instead of a cry for help.
3. 🧠 The Dunning-Kruger Effect
People who know very little tend to feel extremely confident. Actual experts? Often unsure. See: every single social media post by a GB News presenter, ever.
🔍 The British Psychological Society: The Dunning-Kruger effect and its discontents
💡 Great for: Explaining the entire existence and purpose of Twitter/X.
4. ⚖️ Cognitive Load Theory
Brains have bandwidth. Overloading them – especially with complex info – kills learning. Simplicity isn’t dumb, it’s strategic. If anyone tries to bombard you, I recommend using a phrase one of my dear friends employs: “I will not be taking in any further information at this time.”
🔍 The Education Hub: Introduction to Cognitive Load Theory
💡 Great for: Getting out of convos about Bitcoin (or about the Dunning-Kruger Effect during a celebratory meal, for that matter).
5. 🌌The Overview Effect
The profound mental shift that astronauts describe when seeing Earth from space: borders vanish, conflict seems petty, values shift, and they experience feelings of awe and connectedness. Suck on that, Event Horizon.
🔍 Disruptively Useful: The overview effect
💡 Great for: Sounding really deep, man.
6. 🌍 Most maps are lies
Greenland isn’t bigger than Africa. The Mercator projection distorts everything. All maps lie a little – it’s a compromise when representing a globe as a flat image – but some lie a lot.
🔍 Mova Blog: Why all maps are wrong – the uncomfortable truth
💡 Great for: Giving people colonial guilt complexes.
7. 👀Baader–Meinhof Phenomenon
Ever learn a new word and suddenly see it everywhere? That’s not fate – it’s your brain tuning in to a pattern you just learned to notice. Or in more technical lingo, it’s a “cognitive bias [that] leverages the brain’s penchant for pattern recognition.”
🔍 Psychology Today: Frequency illusion
💡 Great for: Explaining why it seems everyone’s third friend won’t shut up about wild swimming on Instagram.
What’s a concept you think should be common knowledge? Hit reply or leave a comment below and tell me — I might include it in a future issue.
Word of the week
CRUCIFEROUS
/kroo-SIF-er-uhs/ [From Neo-Latin cruciferae (‘cross-bearing’)]:
Tucking into kale at this dinner party? Wheel out this little baby and enjoy glazed expressions table-round: The name ‘cruciferous’ refers to the shape of the plants’ flowers, whose four petals resemble a cross. May also explain why Jesus banned cauliflower from the Last Supper*.
*not remotely a fact, obvs
And finally…
