Author Archives: kevin

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Do you kill good ideas?

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Via Bob Sutton, here’s an old post about the importance of killing good ideas.

The thing I remember best was that Jobs advised them that killing bad ideas isn’t that hard — lots of companies, even bad companies, are good at that. Jobs’ argument went something like this: What is really hard – and a hallmark of great companies – is that they kill a lot of good ideas. Sure, this is tough on people who have come-up with the good ideas as they love them and don’t want to see them die. But that for any single good idea to succeed, it needs a lot of resources, time, and attention, and so only a few ideas can be developed fully. Successful companies are tough enough to kill a lot of good ideas so those few that survive have a chance of reaching their full potential and being implemented properly.

[..]

His argument also resonates with our experience teaching in the d.school — the groups that often do the worst work have too many pet ideas and can’t bring themselves to kill enough of them, so they don’t do a decent job on any of them.

This applies at the personal level, as well. In an interview with Colin Marshall a few months ago, Robin Hanson noted that he’s similarly interested in many areas, but he forces himself to focus and become a specialist in particular areas. This is probably my biggest failing so far – being interested in many different things but not doing enough work to get extraordinary at any of them. The consulting blog was an attempt to get around this.

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Thoughts on CMC’s Graduation, May 15

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  • The primary purpose of the graduation speaker is to reassure the parents in the audience that the 200K+ that they spent on their college education was worth it. The speaker's impressiveness helps with this but they also should stick to one of a few topics: discuss the impressiveness of the students, the value of their education, the challenges of the broad world and how their sparkling degree helps them to meet these challenges head on, or how their education prepares them for a life of success, just like the speaker. Henry Kravis was the speaker today, and I have all the respect in the world for his ability to turn around companies and improve their management, but his speech didn't fit the above criteria. Instead he decided to give lots of advice, in short bursts. He also mixed in current events terms like "iPad" and "Obama" to keep people on their toes. I thought it was pretty bad but the bar and expectations for graduation speeches are pretty low. He got a standing ovation.
  • Pretty much everyone from Kravis to Pam Gann to William Robelo-Lara either downplayed the amount of work that goes into getting a degree or played up the amount of drinking they or the students did at college. Andy says it's because it's impressive that you can drink and still get good grades. I think that it's an attempt to reframe the relevant status game from "who gets the best grades" to "who can party hardest." Because we can delude ourselves about partying hard but it's difficult to delude ourselves about GPA, especially when the Summa Cum Laude students are wearing special tassels. It's partly self defense. And, in the big picture, Kravis did just fine after school even though he did pretty terribly while he was here.
  • Airhorns! People blow airhorns because they want to show everyone else that they care about the student that's graduating. Unfortunate. I'd prefer something more subtle, or more awesome, like releasing doves into the air, co-ordinating an Air Force flyover with my name being read. Surely there are better ways to show that you care about someone.
  • Another common graduation failure is that speakers don't coordinate. Everyone starts their speech like they're the first person to get to the podium. If you're not the first speaker you don't need as much of a hook, because everyone's on the same team. Just say your bit and leave the stage before you think you should.

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The downside and upside of our ability to rationalize

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We had another discussion last night about how happy the people in the villages seem to be, in spite of hunger, unstable water supply, long days of labor for low wages, etc. This time someone brought up how shallow it seems that rich people get upset over things that, to the poor people, sound ridiculous, like the wireless being down or not having enough money to purchase some new toy. Anyone who's read Daniel Gilbert's book "Stumbling on Happiness" would know the amazing power of the human brain to rationalize and adjust to new circumstances. The band of possible human conditions is much wider than the band of human emotion; people near the top are only a little bit happier than people near the bottom. Paraplegics report higher levels of happiness than normal people, despite not having the use of their legs. If we couldn't adjust, then people who've scaled the heights of income and status would just walk around in a halo of golden, happy feelings, and people who are desperately poor would be despondent and depressed all of the time. That world state is definitely worse than our current one. People who live in conditions absolutely and materially much worse than those in the West have a chance to be happy. On the flipside, though, people in the West who live in historic material and absolute comfort have a chance to experience sadness, and because their lives aren't filled with drama such as "will I be able to get a gallon of water today, or three?" this sadness always seems shallow, even though the feeling is surely real. The ability of poor people to be extremely happy and the ability of rich people to be extremely sad are flip sides of the same token, I believe. I'm not sure you could have one without having the other. This tradeoff has been positive on net for the human condition.

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More on the difference between millions and billions

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I wrote earlier on the ease with which people confuse millions and billions, even though one is 1,000 times larger than the other. The million/billion problem struck again today: a trader accidentally sold $15 billion worth of Procter & Gamble shares, even though he meant to sell only $15 million. Procter & Gamble soon recovered but the market didn't; it lost 10% of its value. As I said before, if we start referring to billions as "thousand millions" we'd have much smarter thinking about the issue. And "T" is pretty far away from "M" on a keyboard so people wouldn't make this kind of mistake.

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Let’s reframe “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

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Asking kids what they want to be when they grow up is a silly question. Because the answer has pretty much zero bearing on where they're going to end up. What job you take when you grow up isn't really a question of what you want to do so much as it is a question of how hard you're willing to work to get there. Almost always the kid will answer with some high-status profession that's designed to impress the person asking the question, like NBA player, singer, firefighter, and everyone nods sagely. I'm not one for bursting a kid's bubble, but I am against lying through statements about beliefs that you have no intention of following through on, no matter how old you are. Sure, these kids are young, but it's a bad habit to develop; look at how many adults profess to care about the environment, or animals, and then do nothing about it, or only act in ways that signal their care, without actually helping the problem. If a kid tells me what he wants to be when he grows up, I want to know right now what that kid's doing to make that dream a reality. Better questions are, "How hard are you working right now? Are you in the top 1% of your class in terms of work rate?" "How much do you read?" (if he/she wants to be an athlete, musician, programmer) "How much time are you devoting to practicing your game?" Bill Bradley, one of my heroes, once said that anyone could be an All-American, all it takes is three hours a day. It helps to be 6'6, but the point is well taken - the best athletes/musicians are those who work the hardest and practice consistently. (if he/she wants to be an entrepreneur) "How many businesses have you started?" "Do you have an addictive personality? How hard do your friends work?" - evaluate risk of backsliding Taking a kid's answer at face value when he tells you he wants to play in the NBA is hurting the kid. It prolongs the belief that just wanting something to be true will make it so, and the cheap approval lets the kid know his current work rate is okay. I wish that people would start designating the kids that are working on their game for three hours a day as the kids who want to play in the NBA, not the ones who tell you they want to be an NBA player.

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Cognitive Bias of the Week: The Availability Bias

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The availability bias is the human tendency to judge the natural frequency of an event by how many examples of the event come to mind. For example, people can readily think of examples of plane crashes or murders, because these events are well publicized, but not so easily think of examples of death from heart disease, so they tend to believe rare deaths happen more frequently than they actually do. One fact that may shock you is that children are about eighty times as likely to drown in a swimming pool than they are to kill themselves or another with a parent's firearm. When judging the chance of landing in one of two future world states (flood or no flood, banking crisis or no banking crisis), we tend to over-weight the one that we have examples for. We should expect that people who have never lived through an earthquake, like me, would underestimate the probablility and necessity of earthquake preparation, while people should over-prepare for an earthquake in the years following a large one. Availability bias is what leads sports fans to view a team's win streak and compute that there's no way that team could lose; there just aren't examples of it happening. This is relevant for consultants because consultants often need to estimate the risk that various events occur, and if they underestimate the probability that a bad event occurs, then they can damage themselves or their company. For example, in 2006 everyone underestimated the probability of a nationwide downturn in the housing market, because it had never happened before. To give good advice, consultants need to have a good grasp on the various risks and probability that each one occurs. Furthermore, consultants may be swayed by advice they've recommended in the past, because it's available to them. As Bob Sutton and Jeffrey Pfeffer write in Hard Facts,
[VC Steve] Dow has been a general partner at Silicon Valley's Sevin Rosen since 1983 and served on dozens of boards over the years. He tells us that many board members, especially young venture capitalists who lack operational experience, are quick to talk about replacing the CEO at the first hint of trouble. Dow asks them, "Now, suppose you were CEO, what would you do differently than the one we have right now? Dow says that most of the time they can't think of much, if anything, they would change.
For many of those young VC's, the CEO is the available face of the company, and swapping the CEO's been what they have done in the past. These cognitive shortcuts lead people to believe that replacing the CEO will do good things for the company. One good way to overcome this bias is to force people to bet on their beliefs, or establish a market for predictions. When people can profit from mistaken beliefs, the odds are high that the price of an event occurring will be a good guess of the probability that it actually occurs. The bias may still be there, but if only one person in your organization is unbiased, they could bet enough money to correct the market. A second measure is to fight a heuristic with a heuristic. If you're giving the odds that an event will occur, and the event's never happened before, give it two or three times as much weight as you think it deserves. It's not perfect but it's probably better than the original estimate.

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Poor people are probably not happier, or better off, than we are

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One thing that's really gotten on my nerves recently is when other volunteers or people I know talk about how happy people in the rural villages are. The person who brings this up usually goes on to imply one of two things: a) these people are happier than people in the West, and we should be embarrassed to have so much and yet so desperately seek happiness, or b) in absolute terms, their lives are better. Sometimes this is accompanied by the speakers longing for simpler times, without so much technology. This is also the premise behind the ending to the final season of Battlestar Galactica; the space folk find a planet inhabited by simple people, with limited technology, and decide to abandon their sophisticated, space-faring ways and lead pastoral lives. We're led to believe that millions of people voluntarily give up their technology for a fresh start. This is also the message that Jesus had for the tax man when he said, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Granted, Jesus may have been discussing a gate rather than a sewing needle, but the message remains: to earn eternal life, you have a better chance if you give up your possessions. Presumably giving up your possessions makes you less selfish, more aware of suffering, or merely benefits others enough that it's worth it for you to do. Given this evidence, the way people talk about the poor, and the urging of a figure hailed as a savior by billions, I would expect rich people to abandon their possessions in droves. Surely if being poor, and lacking possessions, was so much better for peoples happiness, or if they were serious about gaining eternal life, then they would shun new technology, give up their things and live among the world's poorest. Even if a fraction of a fraction of Western civilization acted on this idea, we're still talking about a hundred thousand people or more. The fact that virtually no one from Western civilization actually does this, to my knowledge, leads me to conclude that pretty much everyone prefers having more money, and more possessions, to having less money and fewer possessions. This is backed up by the Stevenson study showing that everywhere around the world higher income is related to higher levels of happiness. These both suggest that development measures tied purely to increasing levels of income among rural villagers aren't terrible. Why do so many rich people talk like that, where they imagine that poor people are relatively happy? I can think of two reasons. One, it's extremely difficult to imagine what life is like as a poor person. If you've always earned a steady income, had access to food, and/or had health insurance, it might be hard to imagine life where you earn 70% of a meager yearly income in only two months, where you may have to skip meals, or where a simple trip to the doctor can waste a months salary. Furthermore, the consumption margin for the rich is things like iPhones, more clothes, or a fifth TV. The relevant consumption margin for the poor are goods like a laundry machine or dishwasher, a first TV or mobile phone, or a first two wheeler. These are all goods which we use every day and can't really imagine what it would be like to live without. Doing laundry by hand for three months has taught me that it really sucks, both in terms of time and effort, and I don't doubt that having the means to save time and acquire a laundry machine would make people happier. The second reason might be an attempt by rich people to rationalize vast differences in wealth by noting that the poor are happy. From a utilitarian perspective, a marginal dollar gives more benefit to a poor person than a rich person, putting the rich in an uncomfortable position. Any measure which allows people to justify not immediately giving all of their money to the poor is usually welcome.

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The infinite bits problem; skills I’d like to build upon

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The other day I made this list of things I'd like to learn more about (within the next year). I'm convinced that not focusing on one area has really hurt my impressiveness, so I need to cull this down and ruthlessly prioritize. The first priority at this moment is landing a kickass job, so that'll take precedence. I started by deleting RSS feeds not related to these areas. If you don't at least have a list of skills you'd like to improve upon you're probably spinning your wheels. I welcome comments. Desired skills/areas of knowledge Increasing Productivity Better speaking Reading faster Management skills Making people happy Linear programming Accounting Interview - Conducting and Responding Programming (general) Finance (options, bonds) Reading faces Game Prospect theory "Finding alpha"-related theory (hurdle rate) Depression Asperger's Syndrome Ways to increase or lower someone's status Coaching/Leading people (basketball) Consulting (knowledge) Web Design Design/Usability Photoshop summer activities: working at atlassian explore green startup speech coach coaching AAU consulting blog reading 1 book a week practicing game thesis Filming myself omnifocus plugin/iphone app toastmasters (?) 10 informational interviews Weekly podcasts next fall activities: start-up business Advice for a quarter stand thesis apply for jobs the cmc forum (?) complete classes Robert Day coaching practice interview club good eating club Create online course guide for CMC students planned courses: programming (practice for the ACM) thesis accounting accounting linear programming next semester: philosophy neuroscience (fulfill bio GE) accounting/economics computer science

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Street Egg Curry recipe

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2-3x eggs
x tomatoes
1/2-1/3x onions
some coriander leaves
1/4x sprigs of ginger
Some garlic
2x green chillies
5-6x small slices of bread, maybe 2 inches on a side.

Spices:
Ketchup
Salt
Garam masala
Chilli powder
Coriander powder (optional)

Here’s a photo of all of the ingredients laid out:

Recipe:

  • First, boil the eggs for 15-20 minutes. For the newcomer this means you put them in water and turn the stove on high for 15-20 minutes. This turns the eggs interior from runny to mildly clingy. I didn’t actually know that before I started cooking last night, if you wanted an idea about how clueless I am in the kitchen.
  • While that’s going wash and chop all of your vegetables.
  • Grab a mortar and pestle and crush the garlic and ginger. Yeah, a motherfucking mortar and pestle, like you learned about in 3rd grade history class. If you’re feeling less manly you can substitute a rolling pin and board.
  • When the eggs are done pour the water out and peel the shells. This is easier to do when the eggs are cool.
  • Chop the eggs up into about 6 parts per egg. Again, if you want to be super manly palm the egg and run a string through it 3 times. I didn’t have a string like Kumar does so I used a knife.
  • Add a little bit of oil, Throw the eggs in the pan/wok (it’s best if you have a really wide motherfucker) and turn on the stove.
  • After 20 seconds or so add the rest of the oil, the onions, and the chillies. Use your spatula
  • After 2mins 30seconds add the tomatoes
  • After 5 mins add enough chilli powder and garam masala so that you think it’ll be pretty spicy. I guarantee you did not add enough to achieve the proper level of spice, so add about 50% of what you just added. Also add ketchup liberally (ideally Tiluram’s, the hot kind), coriander powder, and salt. Mix well w/ the spatula.
  • After 8 mins 45 seconds turn off the stove and pour the curry into a secondary container. Lay all the slices of bread in the pan and use it to scoop up the sauce that remains. When they’re mildly toasted flip em over. It looks like this:

Add the coriander leaves, put some onions and ketchup on the side and serve!

Here is a photo of the final result. It was really tasty, I’m going to try to make it at least once a week.

Again, here’s a photo of what I was aiming for:

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