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What if all these weird tech trends actually add up to something?
Last time, we explored why various bits of trendy technology are, in my opinion, simply never going to be able to achieve their goals. But we ended on a hopeful(?) note: maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe the fact that people really, really, really want it, is enough.
Since writing that, I've been thinking about it more.
I think we are all gradually becoming more aware of patterns, of major things wrong with our society. T… Here's a list of errors on this blog that I think were fairly serious. While what I think of as serious is, of course, subjective, I don't think there's any reasonable way to avoid that because, e.g., I make a huge number of typos, so many that the majority of acknowledgements on many posts are for people who e-mailed or DM'ed me typo fixes.
A list that included everything, including typos would both be uninteresting for other people to read as well as high overhead for me, which…
I guess I know something about train wrecks.
One night when I was 10 years old, me and my mom were driving home. We came
to a train crossing outside of town. There was another car stopped right on
the tracks, stalled. A lady was inside, trying to get her car to start. It
didn’t.
Train crossings are bumpy, cars were worse then, it was a long time ago, I
don’t know, I don’t remember clearly. Anyway, it was cold out and most
people didn’t have cell phones yet, so when the car wouldn’t start and it
was…
Let's talk about bug/feature tradeoffs.
Anyone who knows me has probably already heard me rant about Crossing the
Chasm, my most favourite
business book of all time. I love its simple explanation of market
segmentation and why the life cycle of a tech startup so often goes the way
it does. Reading that book is what taught me that business success is not
just a result of luck or hard work. Strategy matters too.
As our company prepares for our chasm-crossing
phase, I've been thinking about th…
One of the most common mistakes I see people make when looking at data is incorrectly using an overly simplified model. A specific variant of this that has derailed the majority of work roadmaps I've looked at is treating people as interchangeable, as if it doesn't matter who is doing what, as if individuals don't matter.
Individuals matter.
A pattern I've repeatedly seen during the roadmap creation and review process is that people will plan out the next few quarters of work and …
Three major tools that companies have to influence behavior are incentives, process, and culture. People often mean different things when talking about these, so I'll provide an example of each so we're on the same page (if you think that I should be using a different word for the concept, feel free to mentally substitute that word).
Getting people to show up to meetings on time
Incentive: dock pay for people who are late
Process: don't allow anyone who's late into the meeting
Cultu…
People frequently1 think that I'm very stupid. I don't find this surprising, since I don't mind if other people think I'm stupid, which means that I don't adjust my behavior to avoid seeming stupid, which results in people thinking that I'm stupid. Although there are some downsides to people thinking that I'm stupid, e.g., failing interviews where the interviewer very clearly thought I was stupid, I think that, overall, the upsides of being willing to look stupid hav… Sometimes I see posts about people’s hope to raise children in a group housing situation, and it often seems overly optimistic to me. In particular they seem to expect that there will be more shared childcare than I think should be expected. Today I talked to another parent who lived in a co-op when her […]
It's common to see people advocate for learning skills that they have or using processes that they use. For example, Steve Yegge has a set of blog posts where he recommends reading compiler books and learning about compilers. His reasoning is basically that, if you understand compilers, you'll see compiler problems everywhere and will recognize all of the cases where people are solving a compiler problem without using compiler knowledge. Instead of hacking together some half-baked solut… I recently got confused thinking about the following case: Calculator bet: I am offered the opportunity to bet on a mathematical statement X to which I initially assign 50% probability (perhaps X = 139926 is a quadratic residue modulo 314159). I have access to a calculator that is 99% reliable, i.e. it corrupts the answer … More EDT with updating double counts Being a “digital person” could be scary—if I don’t have control over the hardware I’m running on, then someone else could get my code and run tons of copies in horrible conditions. (See also: qntm’s Lena.) It would be great to guarantee digital people some control over their situation: 1. to control their local environment … More Secure homes for digital people [Content: death.]I wrote most of this a couple of months ago when Nora was a newborn, but the first few months are not that conducive to finishing blog posts. New babies put you into a liminal period, both in your own experience and in how others treat you. People congratulate you on pregnancies and new […] This is a useful concept that’s been written up in its original military context, but I wanted to write out how it’s also applicable in more mainstream settings. Amy Labenz introduced “watch team backup” to the Centre for Effective Altruism where we both work; Amy learned it from a friend who’d worked on a nuclear […] I’ve been too busy with work to write much recently, but in lieu of that, here’s a batch of links to other stuff I’ve been doing elsewhere.
The thing I’m most excited about:
Wave raises $200m from Sequoia, Stripe, Founders Fund and Ribbit at a $1.7b valuation. It’ll fund faster expansion across Africa. I’m pumped for us to save tons of money + time for even more people!
Welcome to this week's edition of "building a startup in 2020," in which all
your meetings are suddenly remote, and you probably weren't prepared for it.
I know I wasn't. We started a "fully remote" company back in 2019, but that
was supposed to mean we still got together in person every month or two to
do strategic planning, share meals, and resolve any accumulated
conflicts. Well, not this year. Instead, we had to learn to have better
remote meetings, all while build… [Spoilers for several old musicals.] TV Tropes lists dozens of examples of the “I want” song (where the hero of a musical sings about their dream of escaping their small surroundings). After watching a bunch of musicals on maternity leave, I’m wondering how many examples there are of the song genre “I’ll never leave my […] As I’ve mentioned, I think the tax code could be improved. In a departure from my usual style, this post fleshes out some fairness-based arguments for one of my favorite changes. (I think that this proposal, and many of the arguments in favor, is old. Wikipedia quotes Joseph Stieglitz making the basic point in Economics … More Improving capital gains taxes
I love Nora. She is a really fun sister. I give her a hug and a kiss
each night. Nora is pretty much always nearby so I can go and cuddle
her. Unless she's nursing. Or sleeping. Or having her diaper
changed. Which is a lot of the time. But, overall, Nora is a really
really fun sister. She's also very silly, and she makes silly faces.
Before we had kids, Jeff and I fostered a couple of cats. One had feline AIDS and was very skinny. Despite our frugal grocery budget of the time, I put olive oil on her food, determined to get her healthier. I knew that stray cats were not a top global priority, and that this wasn’t even the best way of helping stray cats, but it was what I wanted to do.. . . . .The bike path near where I live has a lot of broken glass on the ground nearby. My family likes to go barefoot in the summer, and a lo… Several people I know are expecting a first baby soon, and I wrote up notes for one of them. Might as well share here too: Medical:Scott Alexander’s Biodeterminist’s Guide to Parenting is an interesting read, and some parts are actionable. If you live in an old building (pre-1978 in the US), here’s my writeup on lead paint. […] Music
Dagny, Love You Like That (2017)
Willow, Wait a Minute!, ARDIPITHECUS (2015)
Blue Kid, The Dismemberment Song, Upright, Love (2012)
Gregory and the Hawk, The Bolder Thing To Do (Demo Version), Self-Titled Demo (2007)
Frances Forever, treehouse, pockets (2018)
Cavetown, Boys Will Be Bugs, Animal Kingdom: Comet (2018)
UPSAHL, Drugs (2019)
Destructo Disk, I Wish I Was A Riot Grrrl, Punk Rocks For Kids Who Can't Skate (2018)
Sidney Gish, Impostor Syndrome, No Dogs Allowed (2017)
The Derevolutions, … For the last few years I’ve been avoiding factory farmed eggs because I think they involve a lot of unnecessary suffering. I’m hesitant to be part of that even if it’s not a big deal on utilitarian grounds. This is a pain since factory-farmed eggs are used all over the place (e.g. in ice cream, … More Demand offsetting (Translated from a transcript of an ancient Sumerian speech by Uruk's most well-respected Scriptological Ethicist)
Writing is a profoundly dangerous technology:
Access to writing was initially, and still remains, uneven. What's worse, the rich are more likely to be literate, so it not only creates inequalities but exacerbates existing ones.
Written language embodies the biases and prejudices of the people responsible for writing. Writing makes those prejudices more permanent and influentia… When a harm is created as a result of both external actions and a
psychological reaction, how should we apportion blame?
Today I made valentines. I made fruit valentines. There were orange
fruit valentines, and grape fruit valentines, watermelon fruit
valentines, and pineapple too. I made them for my classmates and
teacher. They had a little jokes or puns on the back. The jokes or
puns were on a sticker that we could stick on the back. I stuck on
googly eyes, and I drew a mouth. I added hearts and a sticker.
That's how I made the valentines. Here is a picture so you can see
some of my valentines:
2020 Giving in ContextIn 2020, I donated $ 24,918.01. By organization, these were:Legal Priorities Project: $ 10,005.50Long-Term Future EA Fund: $ 8,036.00Joe Biden for President: $ 2,800GiveWell (regrant): $ 1,551Center for Election Science: $ 1,000Charter Cities Institute: $ 1,000EA Cameroon: $ 250Against Malaria Foundation: $ 120GiveDirectly: $ 83.51Malaria Consortium: $ 30Nuclear Threat Initiative: $ 22Wild Animal Initiative: $ 10MIRI: $ 10This does not include donations made on my behalf a…
"Systems design" is a branch of study that tries to find universal
architectural patterns that are valid across disciplines.
You might think that's not a possibility. Back in university,
students used to tease the Systems Design Engineers, calling it "boxes and
arrows" engineering. Not real engineering, you see, since it didn't touch
anything tangible, like buildings, motors, hydrochloric acid, or, uh,
electrons.
I don't think the Systems Design people took this critici…
I mixed milk with some colored pigment. First, the color spread a
little tiny bit. And then when we added we added some dish soap the
colors spread and a big colorful wave.
Inspired by Luke Muehlhauser, I'm going to try to start using my blog to highlight some media I've enjoyed over the past ~quarter. Since this is my first post, this contains some stuff especially I liked in Q3 as well.
Music
Will Wood, The Normal Album (2020)
ミラクルミュージカル, Hawaii: Part II (2012)
Lots of stuff by Billy Cobb, especially:
Zerwee (2020)
Zerwee, Pt. 2 (2020)
Rocky Horror, on Strokes of Incarceration (2018)
Lots of stuff by Beach Bunny, especially:
Prom Queen, on Prom Queen (2… Life is short • There is no speed limit • How to Be Successful • You and your research • Becoming a Magician • 95th percentile isn’t that good When I’ve listened the most effectively to people, it’s because I was intensely curious—I was trying to build a detailed, precise understanding of what was going on in their head. Why it’s worth it to deeply understand the fiddly, boring-seeming details of the computer systems you use every day. A UBI (e.g. paying every adult American $8k/year) would reduce recipient’s need for money and so may reduce their incentive to work. This is frequently offered as an argument against a UBI (or as an argument for alternative policies like the EITC that directly incentivize work). This argument is sometimes presented as economically hard-headed realism. … More It’s not economically inefficient for a UBI to reduce recipient’s employment I spent way too long figuring out the how to make video calls feel natural. Here’s the best advice I came up with.
I came up with this game. In the game one person thinks of something
and then gives the other person a clue. And the other person writes a
guess down on a blackboard or a piece of paper. Or really anything
you have that's laying around that's available for writing on. The
other person says whether it's right or wrong. And then when they get
it right the other person takes a turn. When they get it wrong the
other person gives them another clue and they guess again. It has to
be clos…
This is jewelry I made, but I didn't really make all of them. My au
pair Erika made a few of them but I made most of them. I made at
least six of them. Erika made two.
Free delivery within a half hour bike ride of West Somerville.
Otherwise I will send it to you in the mail. You pay for shipping.
Email my dad, Jeff (jeff@jefftk.com) if you want to buy
something.
Butterfly Bracelet
It costs $8. I was thinking about butterflies when I made this
bracelet.
Pom-pom Bracelet
I was thinking about pom-p… When people come to an effective altruism event for the first time, the conversation often turns to projects they’re pursuing or charities they donate to. They often have a sense of nervousness around this, a feeling that the harsh light of cost-effectiveness is about to be turned on everything they do. To be fair, this is a reasonable thing to be apprehensive about, because many youngish people in EA do in fact have this idea that everything in life should be governed by cost-effectiveness. I&… I’m late to the party, but I've been thinking about the documentary “The Life Equation” about how people use data to decide make life-and-death decisions. The central example is a woman named Crecencia, a mother of seven who lives in rural Guatemala and has cervical cancer. The doctor treating her knows that screening other women for cancer is more cost-effective than treating this woman, and that the community doesn’t have enough money to fully fund both. The filmmaker writes: “Crecencia’s… Here are three places Jeff and I are donating this year. The first two are similar to what we’ve been doing for years, and the third represents a change.Direct workJeff and I want to support work that directly makes the world a better place. (Some arguments against falling into a “meta trap” here.) As usual for us, this year we’ve given just over half our donations to direct work. We made these donations to the Against Malaria Foundation, one of GiveWell’s top picks, except for small amounts th… Last week the Boston Effective Altruism group had a discussion on self-care for altruists. I've written about the topic before, but I wanted to share some of the more practical advice people had. Think beyond day-to-day choicesSelf-care isn’t just short-term decisions like whether to make time for yoga tonight. It’s larger life decisions too, like what job to take, where to live, how to budget money, and how to make time for partners, friends, and family.For me, having children was self-car…
100 years of whatever this will be
Major errors on this blog (and their corrections)
10 years of... whatever this has been
SimSWE 4: Wants, needs, and chasm-crossing
Individuals matter
Culture matters
Willingness to look stupid
Experiences in raising children in shared housing
What to learn
EDT with updating double counts
Secure homes for digital people
Meditations on newborns
Watch Team Backup
What I've been doing instead of writing
Thoughts you mightn't'a thunk about remote meetings
Songs about terrible relationships
Improving capital gains taxes
Nora
It's ok to feed stray cats
Books and websites on babies
Media I Liked: Q1 2021
Demand offsetting
The Troubling Ethics of Writing (A Speech from Ancient Sumer)
Blameworthiness for Avoidable Psychological Harms
Valentines
My 2020 Giving
Systems design explains the world: volume 1
Milk Experiments
Media I Liked: Q4 2020
My favorite essays of life advice
To listen well, get curious
In defense of blub studies
It’s not economically inefficient for a UBI to reduce recipient’s employment
How to make video calls almost as good as face-to-face
Learning Game
Jewelry
You have more than one goal, and that's fine
No one is a statistic
Two standard donations and one new one
Practical steps for self-care