Walker Weekly – Game Theory, Frog Eating, and Scooting for Joy

Welcome to Walker Weekly, a regularly scheduled newsletter where I share things that I find interesting, useful, inspiring, or thought-provoking. If you have anything of your own that falls into these categories, please let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for new inspiration.

Blog post I’m reading

Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs (ADAM MASTROIANNI). Productivity is a double-edged sword. It feels good to do more, to achieve great things through sheer exertion of willpower, to flagellate ourselves with more work, more goals, more wants and desires that I can attain if only I wake up at 5AM, hit the gym, meditate for 30 minutes, and do the hard things. Trust me, I’m just as complicit and susceptible to productivity porn as the next person. Adam’s piece forces us to ask an obviously important question that we don’t usually bother with: why?

Hat tip to Monique for sharing this author with me!

Video I’m watching

What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything. Veritasium is a treasure trove of a YouTube channel. This video explains the classic Prisoners Dilemma problem using some fascinating computer science theory. They identify four “successful qualities” that make “the game” easier:

1. Be nice (start cooperatively, encouraging mutual cooperation)
2. Be forgiving (helps maintain long-term cooperation despite occasional “betrayals” by your “opponent”)
3. Be retaliatory (stand up for yourself, which discourages your opponent from continuously betraying you)
4. Be clear (your strategy must be transparent and predictable, which promotes trust)

New toy I’m having fun with

NIU electric scooter. I never thought I’d be a scooter guy, but here we are. We love walking around our neighborhood to visit our local coffee shops, parks, and favorite bookstore, but with the heat and humidity that comes with the Texas summer, we noticed that we weren’t getting out as much.

This scooter makes getting outside a much easier decision. An e-bike is probably far more practical, but sometimes it’s good to do things for the sake of fun alone.

I also did the quick math to see what our payoff looks like… We recently rode a Lime scooter to our local bookstore, which is about 1.4 miles away and cost ~$14 round trip. We got the scooter for about $500 total, so we need 36 trips to break even on the investment. Easy money!

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That’s all for this week, thanks so much for reading.

Stay curious,

Walker