Human 35: Uri Bram

Writer, publisher, dilettante

Uri Bram is the publisher of the Browser Newsletter, which has recommended the best articles every day for the past 10 years and is still going strong. He has authored two books: ‘Thinking Statistically’ and ‘The Business of Big Data’, and co-created the game ‘Person Do Thing’, which is kind of like Taboo but backwards. One of his life dreams is to invent a useful physical object… “there’s just something really satisfying about physically embodied things.”

Uri has insisted I include his shortcomings. I’m going to leave that up to him… “whenever I read introductions I feel intimidated and inadequate, and I guess I just want to say for my introduction that I’ve spent vast proportions of my time/life doing nothing and feeling bad about it.”

Uri is a human mammal. Here are his thoughts:

What brings you the most joy in life?

Long dinners with interesting friends.

What does success mean to you?

I think remaining a good person despite the temptations, especially when other people are currently being bad to you? Especially if those people are achieving traditional/material success at the same time? It’s very hard not to let that get to you, and to keep your own model of success and meaning. (I don’t know if I’m successful, by this count, but I aspire to be).

What do you see as your greatest achievement?

I’ve tried really hard not to screw over other people for my own benefit -- that’s kind of a “negative achievement”, but in some sense maybe it’s bigger than the small positive achievements that would usually come to mind.

What are you most grateful for?

Just the stuff I take for granted and without which my life would be so much worse -- health, a strong passport, some minimal modicum of social skills (I said minimal! and modicum! ok?)

What is something most people don’t know about you?

Close to 8 billion people don’t know I exist so… probably that. Hello everyone!

What do you regret?

Joining Substack, and helping them to grow; I truly didn’t imagine that they would cause so much grief to so many people. Something I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately is if/how much I’m responsible for their rise, and what I could have done differently, and why I didn’t. (And then, of course, whether there’s still ways to make amends).

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Is it sad that I really don’t remember? All those dreams, where do they go….

What advice would you give your younger self?

So the thing is, a lot of people did give good advice to my younger self, and I (or should I say “he”?) didn’t take it. I have a theory that the only useful advice is “cusp” advice, advice that gently nudges you over the cusp of something you were pretty close to doing anyway; a very dear friend once told me that they don’t regret any of their choices in life, but they regret not-making all those choices slightly sooner. So I think if I met my younger self I would just advise him to do whatever he ended up doing later, sooner -- it’s not that that’s the best he could have done, it often wasn’t, but it might be the only advice I could give that he might realistically follow.

If you could have a conversation with anyone, living or dead, who would you choose and why?

Daniel Palmer, seems like a super cool and thoughtful human mammal.

What do you doubt most?

If I’m doing the right thing (all the time, whatever I’m doing).

When did you last have a significant change of mind?

Damn I’ve been staring at this question for five minutes and I’m just thoroughly, thoroughly embarrassed that I don’t have any real examples coming to mind. I will try to significantly change my mind more often, it seems like a really admirable thing to do, and it’s sad how hard it is to do it. And how hard it is to remember you’ve done it, once you’ve done it -- I bet mostly when we change our minds in any big way we suppress any memories that we ever felt otherwise.

What is the role of luck in our lives?

Larger than we can possibly get our heads around, right? Not only the many things we narrowly avoided but aren’t even aware almost-happened, but on a deeper level how even being who “we” are, whatever traits and beliefs and priorities we have, are all fundamentally matters of fortune, and we could just as easily be the opposite way.

Do you have a favourite quote? What is it? Why do you like it?

“Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew”, from the poet Jack Gilbert.

You can stress it in two very different ways: that just because you’re flying doesn’t mean you’re not Icarus, and that even if you’re Icarus you might still get some time in flight.

(While we’re at it, another quote, why not: “I leave no trace of wings in the air / but I am glad that I have had my flight” - Rabindranath Tagore).

Do you believe in God?

I believe that God believes in Claude (that’s me, that’s me, thaaaaaaat’s me).

What do you see as the biggest existential threat to humanity?

I’m just going to segue here: what do you think are the chances that the biggest existential threat to humanity is something we’re not even thinking about? Or even something that hasn’t been invented yet? I feel weird about humanity ending, but I somehow feel weirder about it ending from some cause that I’ve never imagined.

What question should I have asked you?

“Hey Uri, any words about The Human Mammal project?”… “Yeah it’s awesome, great questions, super thought-provoking -- thanks for making it.”

Thanks for your time, Uri!

Twitter: @UriBram; @thebrowser

Website: thebrowser.com

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