William Grassie

Applied Big History: A Guide for Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Other Living Things William Grassie

Applied Big History is a guidebook to doing good and well in a fast-changing world. With the help of numerous experts, author William Grassie builds a latticework of diverse disciplines-physics, chemistry, geology, cell biology, energetics, informatics, evolution, anthropology, psychology, economics, and more. Grassie explores the significance of chaos and complexity, as well as the dynamics of discovery and innovation, in evolution and economics. He does so with a practical eye as to how these new sciences can help to better understand and practice economics, business, and finance in the face of uncertainties. Applied Big History weaves many specializations together in a useful framework for application in work and life contexts alike. The book includes a foreword by Mitch Julis, co-founder of Canyon Partners, a hedge fund with $25 billion under management. Julis writes: "Applied Big History does macro and micro. It zooms elegantly in and out, between the two throughout this engaging book by applying the general principles of acquired scientific and historical knowledge available to us today. As a result, we learn that value and wealth represent not just the flow and accumulation of money, but also stand for the fundamentals of energy, matter, and ingenuity that flow in and out of the economy and the financial system.... Grassie's exposition is careful, concise, informative, and engaging in telling and applying this origin story to the investment world."Table of ContentsForeword by Mitch Julis, Canyon Partners1. Thriving in a Complex WorldOut Performing the Market/ Caveat Emptor /Applied Big History/ Wikipedia2. The Great MatrixSize/ Time/ Matter/ Energetics/ Electromagnetism/ Sound/ Information-Ingenuity/ Sentience-Intelligence/ Evolved Cultural Hierarchies/ Emergent Complexity/ A Multi-Dimensional Matrix3. The Economy of a Single CellThe Central Bank of Chemistry/ The Currency of Life/ New Business models/ The First Agricultural Revolution/ The First Industrial Revolution/ The Whole Economy of Nature4. Complexity Economics 'All Hell Breaks Loose'/ Big Money/ Short and Long-Term Oscillations/ Scaling Effects/ Complex Adaptive Systems/ Complicated versus Complex/ The Fluid Dynamics of Markets/ Natural and Economic Selection5. Death and TaxesEnergy Density Flow/ Goldilocks Gradients/ Energy Regimes/ Instability and Resilience6. Your Hunter-Gatherer BrainA Really Great Ape/ The Great Cooperators/ What We Don't Know/ Survival/ Reproduction/ Gendered Differences/ The Cognitive Revolution/ Stone Age Brains/ Divided Self/ System 1 and System 2/ Luck of the Genes/ Our Inner Demons/ Our Better Angels/ Elephant Morality/ Caveats and Cautions7. The Big Lollapaloozas Welcome to the Anthropocene/ The Secret of Our Success/ Collective Learning/ Network Effects/ Imaginary Worlds and Artificial Instincts/ Energy Capture/ Information-Ingenuity Capture/ Gene-Culture Coevolution of Collective Brains8. Existential ChallengesAnthropogenic Existential Risks/ Natural Existential Risks/ Case Study: Peak Humanity/ Case Study: Climates Change/ Useless Arithmetic/ Next Great Leap9. The Bottom LineCreating and Capturing Value/ Parasites or Symbionts/ Species of Specialization/ Little Bets and Big Wins/ Picking Winners/ Diversification/ The Alphas and the Rest of Us/ Teams work/ Inventing the Future/ Bad Things Happen to Good Investors/ Disaster Preparedness/ Investing in Values/ Universal Values/ Impact Investing/ Our Big Future/ Bottom LineAcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorBibliographyISBN-10: 171985307XISBN-13: 978-1719853071229 pages