This week, I decided to start a review of the things that caught my attention over the past week and that I think are worth sharing with you.
The plan is to make this a weekly or biweekly feature (still to be defined).
Some of these may resonate with you as well.
A few of the items I share here may later evolve into full posts.
1- Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza:
A profoundly beautiful and uniquely insightful description of the universe, Benedict de Spinoza's Ethics is one of the masterpieces of Enlightenment-era philosophy.
Published shortly after his death, the Ethics is undoubtedly Spinoza's greatest work - an elegant, fully cohesive cosmology derived from first principles, providing a coherent picture of reality, and a guide to the meaning of an ethical life. Following a logical step-by-step format, it defines in turn the nature of God, the mind, the emotions, human bondage to the emotions, and the power of understanding - moving from a consideration of the eternal, to speculate upon humanity's place in the natural order, the nature of freedom and the path to attainable happiness. A powerful work of elegant simplicity, the Ethics is a brilliantly insightful consideration of the possibility of redemption through intense thought and philosophical reflection. The Ethics is presented in the standard translation of the work by Edwin Curley. This edition also includes an introduction by Stuart Hampshire, outlining Spinoza's philosophy and placing it in context.
2- On War by Carl von Clausewitz:
Clausewitz had many aphorisms, of which the most famous is, "War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means," a working definition of war which has won wide acceptance.
1- Reed Hastings - Building Netflix
2- The future of intelligence with Demis Hassabis
3- The arrival of AGI with Shane Legg
4- 10 yeats of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)
5- Sin noticias de Gurb
6 - Joan of Arc - Warrior Maid
7- Wagner: Live at the Royal Albert Hall
8- How to make a few more billion dollars: Brad Jacobs
9- Film club: our sci-fi favourites - https://ift.tt/048IMtE
10- Unfinished business (part 1): quantum physics turns 100
https://ift.tt/tlax9rk
11- Unfinished business (part 2): fixing the “biggest problem” in physics
https://ift.tt/CmBZeSE
12- A conversation with Binyamin Netanyahu
https://ift.tt/HPBmhkQ
13- The technologies to watch in 2026
https://ift.tt/K2HUN5u
14- How is AI changing warfare?
https://ift.tt/Luvfd0n
1- Your Analytics team is dead man walking
2- Highest-Paid Athletes in the World: Comparing Salary/Winnings with Endorsements
1- Panel Data Regression Tutorial
2- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, escritora. Desde África con amor
3- HPI 25: ‘Context is King’ When Interpreting Premier League Match Demands - Dr. Paul Bradley
https://ift.tt/O5ID9Mm
1- The Amateur
That’s it for this week. If any of these caught your attention—or if you’ve come across something worth sharing—feel free to reply or leave a comment.
Intelligence is like trying to assemble a 1,000-piece puzzle when you only have 250 of the correct pieces. On top of that, you’re surrounded by 5,000 pieces from other puzzles that do nothing but create noise. And yet, based on this incomplete and messy picture, you’re expected to provide an educated opinion on the subject.
A few months ago, I watched a MasterClass on The Art of Intelligence that I found extremely insightful. I took away several valuable “knowledge nuggets” that helped me better structure and challenge my thinking on this topic—and that I’ve since been able to apply to my day-to-day work.
Below are my notes. Hopefully, they may also be of value to you.
Analysis is not speculation or opinion. Analysis means systematically reviewing all available information, identifying what is relevant, and determining how it fits together to provide insight on a subject. In other words: which puzzle pieces matter, and how do they connect.
There are two primary sources of intelligence:
Human (people)
Technical
Technical intelligence is important—mandatory, even. However, a good human source of intelligence will always outperform purely technical sources. The key is not access, but quality: the source must be reliable, informed, and credible.
A defining trait of strong intelligence craftsmanship is the ability to build relationships with key people who can provide relevant and valid insights. This requires trust, which is built by using information consciously, correctly, and responsibly.
Listening is a critical skill. You must:
Ask the right and most pertinent questions
Actively listen to what people—or the data—are telling you
Avoid forcing feedback to fit a pre-existing narrative. As a rule of thumb, follow the WAIT principle:
Why Am I Still Talking?
Build trust through patience
Listen with undivided attention
Apply the WAIT principle
Avoid purely transactional relationships
Understand the other person’s challenges and motivations
Establish a baseline behavior for when human sources are telling the truth. As with lie detection techniques, truthful behavior tends to show low variance and consistent patterns. Deception, by contrast, often introduces higher variance, making patterns harder to maintain and identify.
Create space for honest opinions within your team by:
Selecting the right people (avoid “yes-men”)
Giving your opinion last
Asking junior colleagues to speak first
Acknowledge that everyone has biases—and understand their impact
Be especially alert to anchoring, confirmation, pendulum, groupthink, and mirroring biases
Always express conclusions with an explicit confidence level
Beware of compounding bias effects
Always factor in the motivations of your sources
Always keep the risk/uncertainty matrix in mind
Identify as many risks and uncertainties as possible
Develop mitigation plans for each
For more refer to my note:
Build personal, timely, and close resonance with the decision-maker
Use accessible language—even for complex or technical topics
Tailor your message to the decision-maker’s preferred decision-making process
Intelligence is not about having perfect information—it’s about making sense of imperfection. It requires discipline over instinct, listening over speaking, and humility over certainty. The real craft lies in knowing which puzzle pieces matter, which ones are noise, and how our own biases shape the picture we think we see.
Strong intelligence work is ultimately human work. Trust, relationships, and judgment matter as much as tools and technology. By creating safe spaces for dissent, questioning our assumptions, and clearly communicating uncertainty, we don’t just improve our analysis—we improve the quality of the decisions that follow.
In a world overloaded with data, the advantage belongs not to those who know the most, but to those who think the clearest.
(text revised by a LLM)
