Coolest Things I Learned in 2019
perell.com
perell.com
> “Twitter is the most amazing networking and learning network ever built.
> For someone whose pursuing their dream job, or chasing a group of mentors or peers, it’s remarkable. In any given field, 50-80% of the top experts in that field are on Twitter and they’re sharing ideas, and you can connect to them or follow them in your personal feed.
> If you get lucky enough and say something they find interesting, they might follow you, and the reason this becomes super interesting is that unlocks direct message, and now all of a sudden you can communicate directly or electronically with that individual. Very, very powerful.
Man, so many things about the statement make my skin crawl. The idea that you should be "chasing" mentors or peers. The idea that you should be "lucky enough" to say something "they find interesting" and then "they might follow you".
Lucky you, you little worthless common person!
Talk about a subjugating attitude about the world. Bill Gurley seems to be very excited about the idea that people are just hoping and pleading and begging for more powerful people to notice them.
Sorry for the negativity. But this is just such an unproductive attitude and perhaps the cause of a lot of what makes Twitter awful.
EDIT: Let me add a more positive take. I agree with the underlying sentiment here -- that Twitter does provide folks with an opportunity to actually engage with people they might not have otherwise had a chance to engage with previously or in other contexts, and that is truly excellent. I'm just reacting strongly to the way it was presented ("you should be so lucky as to be noticed by someone more powerful than you.").
In the past, you could find more or less anyone in the phone book. Basically every person who succeeded in tech without family connections pre-1990 got their start by using this (Steve Jobs immediately comes to mind; he home-dialed Bill Hewlett (yes, that Bill Hewlett) as a child, asked for spare parts, and got a job because of it).
For a while, you could also do this before people were scared to post their mail addresses on the internet. Have a question for someone? Type USERNAME@DOMAIN.COM into the box, and they'll answer in a few days!
That's more or less gone, though.
That manipulation is now the standard should be looked on with incredible sadness rather than "Wow, what a huge opportunity!"
If you contribute to the field, you are more likely to be noticed. No family connections, no red tape, no peer reviewed paper - pure immediate merit.
It's what a meritocracy would have.
"Jerry Seinfeld said in an interview last year that his favorite part of the Emmy Awards was when the comedy writers went onstage to collect their prize. “You see these gnome-like cretins, just kind of all misshapen. And I go, ‘This is me. This is who I am. That’s my group.’ ” By your 40s, you don’t want to be with the cool people; you want to be with your people."
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/sunday/what-you-l...
After futzing around in other industries and doing bs work for waaaay too long, I felt like the girl in the bee costume from the 1990s Blind Melon video who at the end of the video finally comes across and parties it up with a bunch of other bee-people:
I guess doing the research rather than the practice is a key difference?
I do work with a lot of oncologists and while like any industry there are a few big egos and jerks the majority of them are simply amazing people. I've seen patient's families screaming and yelling at our PIs (literally spitting on their faces) and the Drs. stay calm, cool and professional. It's hard to be the ones delivering bad news but they do a great job.
Most of the MDs I work with are both researchers and regular oncologist physicians. They participate in clinical trials and have labs where they investigate new treatments and drugs, but they also provide standard of care treatments for patients who aren't eligible or choose not to participate in trials.
> “Pay the backline,” said the dealer. And just like that, the man won over $1.5 million. He calmly filled the empty suitcase with his winnings, exited Binion’s into the desert afternoon, and drove off. It was the largest amount ever bet on a dice roll in America.
The one about the Phantom Gambler had a discussion earlier here:
You quite often see people in e.g. Zurich (and I suspect in other European cities as well - smoking seems to be much more socially acceptable there) smoking while riding a bicycle. I was kind of baffled by that the first time I saw it, but when you think about it, it's not too weird.
In the US you ride a bicycle to get some exercise in, to stay healthy. I don't think I've ever seen anyone smoking while on a bicycle here. In Europe they ride bicycles to get around, so smoking a cig while riding a bike doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary to them.
The thing i have learned this year is -"Deductive logic doesn't always work in complex systems - especially when it involves large number of people"
This anecdote about the NYC doctor who was praised for being able to predict Typhoid, but was actually just spreading the disease to all his patients is a scary reflection of some businesses.
Reminds me of tech companies from HBO's Silicon Valley, to them they're "Making the world a better place..." but in reality they could be harming everyone without even knowing it...
Whatever you do, DO NOT apply this advice to your significant other. Perhaps a better man than me can do it effectively but I can say from experience the results are always disastrous.
“Maybe I should get a job as a data analyst.”
“Really? I think you have everything you need to be a data scientist.”
I guess I'm saying experience varies.
Like, don't encourage your SO to find someone better than yourself.
> The gain would hardly be noticeable in a single individual. But if the 10 million scientists in the world all benefited from the tool, the inventor would increase the rate of scientific progress by roughly the same amount as adding 100,000 new scientists."
This used to be called Chinese maths, not sure what it's called now.
In total there are 10 million researchers so it'd have to be pretty generic.
And unless it's a bottleneck it'd have no effect. Reducing transport times by 1% just means people go home early.
Helping the 90% of researchers who are dead wood wouldn't help either.
The internet and computers are examples of successful tools so it is possible. The replication crises is an example of a problem that could be looked at.
But targeted tools seems like a better attack.
And this all assumes science is where we are lagging, compared to the commercial application of science (which the internet and computers have also helped)
spit take
As much as I nerded out seeing the latest Star Wars movie yesterday, and the half dozen good movies a week my wife and I watch on streaming media, my favorite way to be entertained by people’s writing, with really good conversations coming in a close second.
I wonder what is causing that, in the times of Amazon, how do these stores survive?
Some real interesting stories on their negative effects on communities here:
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/08/23/dollar-store-dominan...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/12/30/will-dol...
https://www.fastcompany.com/90278384/why-dollar-stores-are-b...
https://www.businessinsider.com/dollar-stores-taking-over-am...
I think a lot of shoppers rely on it for basics like toiletries and other items you'd get from Target or Walmart. The markups on Amazon for these items are actually pretty outrageous. Amazon, imo is not cheap - and also way too high of a risk of getting a fake and knockoff product. At least in a brick and mortar store you can be confident in the supply chain and know you're not getting some sketchy reseller from China.
We bought some decorations for our wedding there and they were perfectly adequate. No lesser quality than anything we would have gotten from amazon or a party store, imo.
Isn't this exactly what makes them so cheap?
Whereas in Amazon I've gotten faked products- instead of Jeffree Star lipstick is "Deffree Star" etc. Or just completely accurate looking banana powder but it smells off and doesn't work correctly - after investigating on reddit some other people had gotten the same knockoff- turns out it was just baby powder died yellow.
Since getting so many fakes on Amazon, we stopped buying anything from there that goes on your body or in your body. It sucks, tbh. I'd rather pay a way higher markup and be guaranteed the product is legitimate than be rolling the dice with who knows what from China.
But maybe I'm personally biased to accept new technology. (And my grandfather began using microcomputers in his 70s, so genetics/familial influence may play a role as well).
Those are not technologies, but I doubt it was exactly the tech that the last generations were complaining about. Anyway, there is one piece of tech: the all hearing helpers we get on telephones and alexa style devices.
[1] - Also concerns about privacy and quick obsolescence of tech
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