It turns out when our body gets excited about something, we can’t reliably tell what caused the excitement.

In David McRaney’s brilliant article, he explains how we routinely misattribute physiological arousal and how the most common target of misattribution is other people. It’s part of why doing challenging or exciting activities with your partner can help strengthen your relationship, and why roller coasters and scary movies can make great first dates — when we reflect on the time, we often assume that it was the person we were with that helped get our heart racing rather than the excitement of the activity.

The misattribution of arousal

Networks effects can lead to massive, rapid growth. Amazon has leveraged this little sketch by Jeff Bezos in 2001 for mega growth — Amazon calls it a virtuous cycle — and, more recently, the Uber variation, by David Sacks explains much of Uber’s wild ride.

When you build a platform that leverages network effects right it can enable growth way beyond what has historically been possible. Also, see Metcalfe’s Law.

The ‘Virtuous Cycles’ of Amazon and Uber

There don’t seem to perfect definitions for either recessions or depressions. A recession is commonly defined as two successive declining quarters of GDP, but it’s not gospel. And a depression is a kind of prolonged recession for 3–4 years. So I liked Harry Truman’s clarifying explanation — US president from 1945–1953:

A recession is when your neighbour loses his job.  A depression is when you lose yours.  —Harry Truman 

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Recession vs depression