Dailies - Observations (Page 15)

Understanding Entropy

@paraschopra clears up some misconceptions about entropy in this Tweetstorm [https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1012346863905923072]. Worth a read.

Dailies

The Economics of Buffets

This [https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-all-you-can-eat-buffets/] is a short, fun article on how the economics behind buffets works. Nothing too surprising – buffets try to keep costs down by using psychological tricks (like putting cheaper items at the front of the line) and economies of scale

Dailies

Reality has a surprising amount of detail

John Salvatier's essay [http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail] articulates something I've been trying to wrap my head around for a while. Reality is surprisingly complicated. Almost every field of science and engineering has an immense amount of detail and

Dailies

How Machines Learn

This [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo] video is a great, although basic, introduction to how the machine learning algorithms that power most of the new tech platforms work. No technical knowledge required.

Dailies

Why India has so many Mughal tombs

This article [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/tomb-economics.html] explains an interesting feature of the Mughal Empire that led the nobility to build more tombs than palaces: > Since land could not be handed down to the next generation, there was very little

Dailies

Ballots

This [https://ncase.me/ballot/] interactive essay covers common types of voting systems and the tradeoffs associated with each. The simulations are great fun to play with. My takeaway was that it is very difficult to design a voting system that is fair to

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Joel Spolsky's Strategy Letters

Joel Spolsky, the founder of Stack Overflow, has a series of strategy letters than blew me away with their level of insight and clarity. There are six of them, and I think you should read them all: * Ben and Jerry’s vs. Amazon [https:

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The Wisdom of Crowds; The Madness of Crowds

I recently read about the Mississippi bubble of 1717-19 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Company] in Charles Mckay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B075R6RV2N/]. That bubble along with the others detailed in

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Napoleon on Homer and Virgil

I found Napoleon's very amusing perspective on Homer and Virgil in The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Napoleon-Selection-Written-Spoken/dp/B000HJRIBI]: Napoleon was fond of Homer. On the Iliad he says: >

Dailies

Dunning-Kruger Effect

> [...] in many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize—scratch that, cannot recognize—just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect]. Logic itself

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Money Stuff

> A lot of kids starting at Harvard Business School next fall will be hanging up posters of Adam Neumann in their dorm rooms. Neumann, the founder of WeWork, will walk away from this corporate bonfire with a billion dollars and a bunch of

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How Advertising Works

The most interesting thing I read today was Kevin Simler's blog post on how advertising works [https://meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/]. My biggest takeaway was about how ads work by creating common knowledge in a community rather than simply advertising to an individual:

Dailies

Model Thinking Course

I've started a lot of online courses but finished very few of them. One of the few I've finished and enjoyed was Scott Page's Model Thinking [https://www.coursera.org/learn/model-thinking] course on Coursera. This is a

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Light Reading Recommendations

When I'm going to bed or otherwise want to relax I find light reading helps a lot. Here are a few of my favourites: * Three Men in a Boat [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Men-Boat-AmazonClassics-Jerome-ebook/dp/B07VW95T8X/] by Jerome K. Jerome * Written

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How Doctors Die

This article [https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/03/how-doctors-die/] on how doctors face terminal illnesses was fascinating. Most medical professionals, when diagnosed with a terminal illness, chose not to prolong their lives with invasive surgeries and treatments that would leave them permanently bedridden. They

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What Caesar Looked Like

Someone Twitter has created a facial reconstruction [https://twitter.com/sUAtateslier/status/1215693850708185090] of Julius Caesar. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but somehow this is exactly what I expected him to look like.

Dailies

Paper Read: The Mundanity of Excellence

This paper [https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-mundanity-of-excellence-an-ethnographic-report-on-stratification-and-olympic-swimmers] talks about how excellent performers come to be, specifically in the context of swimming. The primary takeaway for me was that quantitative improvements in performance result from continuous qualitative improvements compounded over time. For example, the quantitative

Dailies

Writing and Structure

If you can find a copy of George Gopen's The Sense of Structure, you should buy and read it. The central idea behind the book is simple: Understanding how readers read, and the structural cues they look for to know what to

Dailies

How Wolves Change Rivers

This cool, short video is an illustration how changes to systems can have unintended (and in this case, positive) consequences. The introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park literally changed the paths of rivers in the park.

biology

The Secret Of our Success

The Secret Of Our Success by Joseph Heinrich was probably the most fascinating book I read in 2019. Heinrich tries to explain why our species has been so successful on this planet when compared to others, most notably to our primate cousins (e.g.

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