tinymollusk

6 ms·

1.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
Just a quick vote to reinforce what you did. You made something, and asked for the most absurd audience to critique it. Keep being you. HN hated Dropbox, of all things. I am hesitant to announce my product here because I struggle with as
2.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
Jon, I run a few sites in a similar space. I feel 1MB is fine for my customer base. If HN isn't your customer, don't worry about them. If HN is your customer, you have the hardest job in the world because none of us will ever p
3.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
With 100k grants to give, I think you'd want quite a few crackpots, and maybe even some lazy mathematicians. Those could be the types who come up with a game changing result.
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I switched to 90+% audiobook after being an avid reader my whole life. I think my eyes have gotten worse, so physically reading because tiring quickly. The secret for audiobooks, for me, is to listen to them while walking. Currently doing
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I interpreted that remark as a commentary on humans preference for failing in a conventional manner being perfectly acceptable, versus possibly failing in an unconventional one. (I also grew up professionally in the 2000s, well after IBM wa
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
Something I've been wondering about for a while now... Would it be possible to train an algorithm to identify similar characteristics of data from different schema? Looking at the actual data, I mean, and inferring a translation table
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
Richard Feynman's famous quotation is applicable here: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool". False positives are often more dangerous than false negatives. This is
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
Madoff said he is happier in prison than he was while fearing his scheme would be discovered. [0] That doesn't really make me any more sympathetic to his criminal and unethical activities. [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/ne
9.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
Humans, on the other hand, have all kinds of biases (intentional and unintentional, conscious or not) that creep in because they do have context. The important thing is that we build systems that account for the process-based problems, not
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
The company decision makers could be making a bad decision. They're likely in dire straits to be in this position in the first place. Add in shareholders, some slick marketing/badmouthing from Bain reps, and you have a good oppo
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
Your second paragraph is problematic. First, truly free markets are unlikely to be an accurate statement of where someone earned their money (e.g. the US is nowhere near that, so that excludes every wealthy American). Second, the use of e
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
My perspective is that unit economics guesses are important because you want to estimate the scaling factor. You might not know where they are now, but it's important for runway goals to know where the unit economics will breakeven. D
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
My approach is to spend 98% on substance, then use a template (like Beautiful.ai) or contractor to quickly put together something visually appealing. Doesn't have to be a unique design, but for under $100 or a couple hours time, I can
14.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
I'm not suggesting it's true, but it does fit the narrative of his (and his employer's!) incentives. People usually act in line with their immediately obvious incentives. Not a smoking gun, but to me it's definitely an
15.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
I agree about this particular comment -- your interpretation is likely correct. I was just trying to connect it larger, to the decision making skills that I'm working on (and thought might be interesting to a HN audience). FWIW, the P
16.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
Is that true, and is that objectively more impressive? To the former, I always assumed there were in flight adjustments after launch. Elon's roadster had inaccurate calculations, I heard they were off by like 2%. I assumed the moon l
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I can't wait to see what AI can do with the collective time and resources it took for that seagull to evolve.
18.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
Doesn't his "99/100" give us a much better idea of his confidence in his own knowledge, compared to something more vague like "usually" or "the vast majority of the time"? I ask because I've been
19.
by tinymollusk 9y ago
When you say economic consensus, do you mean there are testable predictions based on the consensus that have been shown to be reproducible in multiple real world experiments? Lots of economics seems to me like it's models that appear t
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I suppose I believe it's less important whether or not we collectively determine the correctness of the other person, and more important that I use their contrarianism to question my own knowledge. I'm less interested in judging
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
Outside of the slightly distasteful attitude ("I didn't bother" and "I bet" are slightly abrasive sounding), isn't the attitude one of the skeptic? It jibes with my understanding of how to make better decision
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I think your analogy would be more apt if you were spitting seeds onto public property, and the state took the trees. Or even further: you spit seeds (your data) onto Google's property while they gave you a free tram ride to the other
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
It also adds human redundancy and specialization, both of which reduce risk for a company. In the "product/market fit" words, before fit, a company is all risk. After fit, during growth and long term profit extraction, comp
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
How much should you bet to never be ruined but maximize the long term expected value of your bets?
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I didn't find "Everybody Lies" particularly compelling. It was an interesting piece of exploratory research, but I didn't see a lot of effort on generalizability. Several of his examples were using rare occurrence rate
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I'm very sorry that you have to suffer through this alone. All I can offer is my electronic compassion -- I hope you are able to find even 1 small thing in this world that brings you joy. Sometimes that seed can flower into something
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
As a dense primer on the subject, I'm reading Sapolsky's book "Behave". It was recommended by Gates and Mike Mouboussin as the best book they read in 2017.
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
Yoga practice, 3-5 times per week has done wonders for my posture and how I physically feel over the course of a day. Doesn't have to be hot or boot camp; I prefer restorative classes.
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I agree on an individual level. In order to develop policies, however, it's important to base decisions on the truth. (Not that this always happens)
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by tinymollusk 9y ago
I have no question that people who have built brands believe that it was successful. We can even look at "big brands" like Coke -- they sell sugar water + a brand -- surely that must be real. My nuanced take is that a brand &quot

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