Andy_G11

Just curious - have any investors pulled out of an investment because one or more of the most senior / talented employees of a firm has left to found their own or to join a competitor? One employer I worked with had pretty much grown around the skills of a tech lead whose business they had bought out. If he had left, their growth would have been compromised. Saying that, I thought he was under-compensated - I am not sure what the compensation model should be to retain key talent, but I think part ownership of the fruits of one's labour seems logical. This is at least an incentive to stay as opposed to a disincentive to leave.

Just living a modern urbanised life seems to be enough to drive humanity towards apocalypse within a few decades. Is that the case? If so, then I expect humanity to behave as it always does - with both good and bad elements of behaviour on display, perhaps accentuated as pressures to survive mount. Cohesive action will be fragmented and many will suffer and some will prosper. Sounds pretty much like the way things work today. I would be interested to know of any models which avert disaster that do not rely on billions of people all acting to live quite differently to how they do today.

What are the tool available to interspecies negotiators - stick / carrot diplomacy? Unfortunately the risks for anyone in control of budget to find solutions to these types of problems make brute force solutions seem quite palatable. Finding a way to create orca free zones or inventing orca deterrents to scare them away from boats is the more likely course of action. Maybe there is something that can be learned from cases where rural populations in India and Africa coexist with elephants or other wildlife that is large, intelligent and potentially dangerous?

Shawshank Redemption has a great line: 'Get busy living, or get busy dying.' Act - even taking a walk can make a difference.

Inspirational to hear about people who defy the odds to live larger than life dreams. I wonder if they were less rare before the 1900s - maybe I just don't meet the types of people whom I would put in the same bracket as von Berlichingen, or if I do, maybe I am either unaware of or discount the courage and achievement of people I meet in day to day life.

It would be great if it was possible to make it easier to assess unscrupulous behaviour by medical professionals and to weed out bad actors whilst simultaneously screening out damaging but unjustified claims about them made by patients or detractors with an axe to grind.

I do have concerns about how easy it is for some specialists to create a gravy train for themselves by simply requiring regular 'assessment' visits for patients under their care or observation at what seems to be a ludicrous rate for five minutes of their time.

In the UK there is an ombudsman that people can report their concerns to, but what then? - How anonymous is the patient really and how significantly do they compromise their relationship with what is actually a small pool of people who all know each other and are subject to the pressures of their professional clique's members?

How can this be improved, because even if they are sure that they are being overcharged and poorly treated there is still an incentive for patients not to go up against the medical establishment?

Pricing transparency is one thing which can help, but if there is a departure from the 'expected' level, then what? Is the right thing to do simply for the patient to always assess the rate vs service and report anything which is an outlier without concern for potential downstream consequences from their specialists? Or does pragmatism prevail, even if it perpetuates poor behaviour by the medical professionals?

Interesting video here of one of the San people running down a Kudu which collapses from exhaustion after an 8 hour chase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o. Hard to compare this to Sorokin because the hunter is running in veld, not on a road, and has far less access to refueling points. Also, if he fails to track the prey down on day one, he would probably have a go again on day two, maybe even day three. Interesting claims too, that as an upright runner which sweats from glands all over his body, and as a creature capable of carrying water, man may have had persistence advantages over creatures with less ability to cool themselves and which run on four legs - a less energy efficient mode of running according to Attenborough.

It makes sense that machine learning would be applied to personality types to correlate them against things like financial performance, level or field of education, personal health, etc. Here is one example of a data gathering exercise carried out by Myers-Briggs and Goldman Sachs: https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-US/Connect-with-us/Blog/20.... The FutureSelf AI seems to take this a step further, to assisting people who sign up to the service with suggestions (presumably exercises to develop specific mindsets, or adjust their psychological state?) that will help them progress to an overall happier state. As a tool, it is possibly of some use, depending on how much effort one puts into it - perhaps not too different to buying a course or a book on NLP. Those who get the benefit of it will no doubt swear by it and encourage others to adopt it, too - people are very keen on anything which can augment the level of their physical, mental or psychological performance.

Thanks for your response - I was curious if AI and tech might be able to bridge from a suitably detailed statistical picture to (at least some) cases of underlying deterministic behaviour, perhaps in a way (or ways) that might surprise us.

Thanks for your response. I did chemistry and physics and uni (almost 30 years ago now) and I remember how complex some of the computer modelling that was done at the time was (even for very simple things - I think we looked at a model of what happened when a proton and a hydrogen atom came into close proximity).

Since then things have advanced hugely - both in biochem and in computing - and I was curious to see what might have been done. Also, hard science is fundamentally pattern recognition, isn't it: it requires that given the same inputs, the same output is consistently delivered.

Seems pretty straightforward to me: 1) programming objects have properties and methods; 2) within cells it is probably possible to have analagous entities (perhaps various types such as molecules, organelles, etc) which have defined properties and predictable behaviours; 3) could we soon have a computer and a sufficiently comprehensive database of these objects and their behaviours for an AI to start correlating how they are combined and how they would need to act to produce a cellular effect (e.g. regenerate a damaged cell); 4) could this be speeded up with the advent of quantum computing?

What don't you understand?

I wonder if we could get AI to code biological outcomes using biomolecular objects (as in object oriented programming), and what level of computing technology / how comprehensive a database of biochemical reactions would be needed to do this. Could this be something that is achievable in 20 yrs, perhaps speeded up with the aid of quantum computing?

Interesting - could really help some people who do not have a fixed address. Great to see that an employment services firm, Reed in Partnership, is one of the partners who will be used to validate the candidate's authenticity - it can be a struggle for someone without a fixed address to get a bank account and it is often easier to initially get part time employment than it is to get a bank account or a lease in your own name. Lessors want a bank account, and banks want proof of a place of residence. However, where does the employer deposit the salary? I know this is a problem - I was in this precise position twenty years ago.

If the actual bid is not going to go your way no matter what, and if possible, just advertise subsidiary products which might be bolt-ons to other projects that the customer may want. That way, you give the sham process a veneer of respectability (which will no doubt be appreciated by both competitors and customer) and still get to raise the customer's awareness of some things that they might actually want to buy from you.

Climate change and associated socio-economic / political upheaval, ICE vs EVs, pandemics, and space colonisation are some of the headline points I picked up on in the article. But there are so many other things going on, too:

1. The aging population in many societies with the associated adjustment of services in some economies including medical and care homes, perhaps also reduced economic growth rates and strain on savings and pensions. Rise of the robo-attendant? Increased 'retirement estate' mode of living? 2. Medical advances to deal with age-related disease (telomere studies, stem cells, advances in treatment of alzheimers, cancer, arthritis, deterioration of eyesight, hearing and teeth, new prosthetics etc). 3. Increased wealth concentration - a natural outcome of capital accruing a faster rate of return than labour (see Piketty), and associated with reduced per capita and overall productivity. How to preserve high standards of living for the wealthy and increase the standards of living for the less well off whilst dealing with the tensions with the potential to turn this into a zero sum game. 4. Technological advances which may increase productivity, including AI and robotic process automation. Perhaps further labour shedding associated with the increasing automation of 'thought' and 'creativity' (i.e. brought under the remit of capital).

And of course a raft of other things... Plenty of opportunity and risk ahead.

JRR Tolkien by Humphrey Carpenter. Author of Lord of The Rings and Oxford professor. Fascinating to get a broader idea of the person behind the fantasy world and to learn more of his passion for languages and nature and his friendships with others such as CS Lewis. Very glad to have been able to have a pint at the Lamb and Flag pub which has now closed as a result of Covid after 450 years of operation.

It is tricky being in a community which is predominantly more moneyed than your family and burns a brand into poorer people that never goes away. Greasers and socs stay greasers and socs into their 90s, and then they die.

It would allow career diversification, though. Maybe there's a bit part going in Sly Stallone's 'Expendables 3194'?

Sometimes I sit and think; sometimes I just sit.

Really have to object to manuals of this kind - the B_INFINITE_TIMEOUT() function - see the miscellaneous functions link at the top of the page - seems to have been adopted by too many automated call centres.

Relentless, critical implementation of individual performance testing (e.g. football teams) might help shift organisational sclerosis.

How can this be done for white collar roles?

Maybe like Amazon? - See this article : https://chrislaing.net/blog/the-memo/ (just a suggestion)

This is not a planning problem - this is a power problem. If competent and incompetent people alike are told to regard each other as peers in a meritocracy, a range of possible outcomes ensues.

The only option for incompetent staff will be to game the system by ensuring that they pass a load off their shoulders to competent staff and cultivate cultural and organisational aspects that let them give the impression of performance without actually having to perform.

This article is quite anecdotal but it is possible for organisations to require high performance from members. E.g. I assume that there is less scope for less competent individuals to hide out in teams like SWAT teams, heart or brain surgery teams, bands or movie crews: every one is visible and under the spotlight for delivery at any one time and relied upon by others to be at the top of their game.

Critical dependence should trim incompetence from organisations, but will only work if scrupulously applied. Perhaps logically, this might work best in fluid structures where selection and deselection of team mates / suppliers is very easy.

Great, well-written article.

Interesting how mathematicians simplify the the number system to test theories. In Fermat's Last Theorem, the author describes Andrew Wile using the same tool of a reduced set of numbers cycling as if on a clock face in order to test his hypotheses.

When I have a tricky bit of coding to get on with, I often just resort to prototyping with very simple test cases - e.g. just simple arrays like [[dog, 1], [cat, 2], [cat, 1], [bird, 3]] (OK, not that simple, but you get the idea). Yet I often find that others are unwilling to go back to basics as if it is too time consuming - they would rather plug away with whatever unwieldy data set and tangle of relationships that comprise the ultimate problem set of input data.

Breaking something down to very simple fundamentals can be key.

Interesting. 1,250 students surveyed and of those 437 were male, 813 female (if I have done my simultaneous equation correctly). Why the discrepancy? - Are white males currently less represented than white females on the surveyed campuses in the USA?

There is probably room here for the stats to vary widely by campus surveyed, potentially even across courses within a single college.

According to Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow), sample deficiencies are one of the biggest causes of incorrect deductions. Are there other surveys for comparison?

This is a great question.

The Internet to me does seem to have settled on an equilibrium level of variety which is quite narrow and perhaps to some degree stagnant, whereas in the past it seemed to represent a universe of more opportunity.

This is not dissimilar to how markets can sometimes price in the value of optionality. For example, I remember reading somewhere that the share price of a pharma co which has a wide pool of R&D avenues available for further investment can actually shrink when the co settles on a particular choice, setting its budget and strategy for the next few years on following that single (hopefully) star even though this is a necessary step for latent potential to actually be realised into practical reality.

The Internet has collapsed into a tool which serves the functions that are most in demand for the audience, and to some degree it has sacrificed possibility (who pays for that?) for utility.

Even the appetites of the masses (who provide the demand for what is most prevalent on the net) for fresh content are perhaps stabilising around particular 'centres of mass'. With large numbers of viewers, patterns and uniformity are now predominating which may have been muted when the internet was a platform for explorers and non-standard viewers.

The same thing could have happened with other forms of media, too. For example, movies now seem to increasingly rely on special effects to the extent that I sometimes now find it more of a disappointment than otherwise. Sure, it might be pretty to see whirly colours of space or magic, or fascinating to see buildings and glass facades bursting under shockwaves, or planets colliding, but only for a while - we can move on now. Even literary fiction quite often starts to feel same-y when browsing.

Also, it takes more work now for content providers to produce something that can escape from the gravitational field of established content platforms. Newness and optionality has value (ask Black-Scholes), and when it does raise its head, it is quickly mopped up by 'fast followers' with deep pockets.

A consequence of this, too, is that the reticence of content providers to share anything new without a pay wall has also increased.

Unintuitively, it may be that tides of people and attention associated with a platform's maturity tend to homogenise and flatten the landscape of original thought (even making it harder to find valuable newness).

Smart people with ideas know that that uploading fledgling, unrealised ideas into the world can mean feeding their baby into a meat grinder of criticism, scepticism, plagiarism and probably some other -isms.

E.g., Andrew Wile had some pretty good insights as to how to go about tackling the solution of Fermat's theorem (read Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh - good book), but did he go 'Hey, listen everybody - what if we did X?' Like hell he did.

Instead he secluded himself and worked on it till he could present a robust proof fait accompli.

This is by no means an unusual story - think of all the bright folks who are tinkering with projects all over the world, even devoting themselves to it full time - trying to realise something that they can call their own.

So, the 'gap between intelligence and ideas' may be partly due to the desire of intelligent people to contain their ideas until they can own the downstream benefits arising from them.

The consulting / building combo is a good way to keep earning moderately well while trying to build a new co.

Building revenue generation is not easy. If you're going all-in on the build, there may well come a point where if your revenues are not sufficient you will start to feel pain. If you can structure the development process to deliver revenue from as simple and maintainable a product as possible and quickly find a route to sales that would be ideal.

I would guess that in terms of surviving to long term viability there are far more not-so-great but quickly revenue-generating products than there are great products that were unfortunately slow to get recognised and generate revenue. With cash, further development is possible to clean a product up - without it, even great stuff will rot. There are tons of genius ideas that have been through successful (working) development but then just died because they never made money.

Access sales resource - effective sales resource (not easy to find) - as quickly as possible. If you're aiming for investment financing, remember that few things build investor confidence like existing sales and cash flow.

I am sure that the abuse stopped him from rising to the top - a key requirement for an elevator operator.

Sadly, his victory will no doubt lead to fewer low paid roles in big firms as CEOs will not like it that even the littlest man or woman can hold behemoths to account: a big motivator for automation.

Thank goodness for people like this person - I would not be surprised if many firms would do as well, if not better and with improved internal culture, if promotion was done simply by random selection of candidates in the different role categories. The amount of randomness for a new candidate is higher when going external than it is for promoting from a pool of people you know, so good on you for using this path.