fhe

He's the generally agreed world's best player (and only 20-years-old). but he might not have seen the true strength of AlphaGo. After analyzing the games, it's apparent that AlphaGo only tries to win, and does not try to win by a large margin. Translate that strategy into game play, AlphaGo seems to always try to stay ahead of its opponent by a few points, and often trades an optimal move by a less-profitable one but one that's much safer. So even though the two games with Lee have been close, no one has any idea how strong AlphaGo really is.

I live in China, and I am a user of ele.me - the food delivery service, and have worked with 17zuoye. 17zuoye is a solid business. They have worked for years to penetrate the K-12 education market, which, being public funded move at a rather slow pace, but once you get your foot in the door, you have a natural barrier to fend off new entrants. Ele.me is a rather curious story. They get to where they are by heavily subsidizing restaurants and customers. For all I can tell, they lose money on every delivery they make. and the moment they cut back on subsidies, people stop using their service. As a customer I welcome the subsidies (it works like a wealth transfer program, where the VC's are footing lunch bills), but as a sustainable business I am not sure where it could be headed...

I'd love to read that Jeff Bezos essay. A google search didn't find it. Do you have the link to it, or do you remember the title? Thanks.

I am Chinese and grew up in China. although I wasn't subjected to such parenting style growing up, I have many friends who were. now we are at the age when we are beginning to have kids. for what it's worth, all my friends swear that they'd never put their kids through what they went through. unanimously they hoped for a happier childhood for their children, "like those children in America", even if it means less career success and (Heaven forbid!) less virtuoso-ness with a Western instrument.

I suspect by the time their kids reach school age, some of that parental competitiveness would return, but so far the evidence is clear which way the pendulum is swinging.

I have a feeling that this article is just product of our time, in which the sole remaining superpower of America suddenly realizing China is hot on its heels -- a fear that I think it's largely blown out of proportion. As a reaction there arise all this interest in China, including our parental style. I remember reading Gladwell's book "Outlier" in which he attributed math abilities to Chinese ancestors growing rice and not wheat. seriously? Such farce is more telling of the changing balance of power than parenting styles having anything to do with said change.

On a similar note, we Chinese have been interested in how Americans raise kids for decades. the thinking goes, surely you guys must be doing something right to hold your position in the world for so long.

Factual correction: Jobs went to Reed, hardly a community college.

thanks for the comments. i was really hoping someone would give some kind of framework to think about valuation. things like whatever makes me happy or try to get as high valuation as possible are not so instructive. i know valuation at this stage is more art than science, but i hope there's some structured way to come up within a reasonable ballpark.

indeed, the entire talk struck me as being overly male-centric, beginning with the example of the peacock's tail. he needs to at least argue that sexual selection works both ways to explain the many talented female writers/musicians.

thing is, I don't even buy that musicians' popularity with the opposite sex is a universal thing. For most of history in China (where I live) - if you want to have a random sample of humanity and culture, can't quite ignore China can you - being a musician is quite a lowly occupation. it's only in the last 50 years when they began to make big money that they became desirable as sexual partners.

evolutionary biology no doubt determines what we look for in a mate. but it's not as fixated on some notion of beauty as pure reproductive advantage.

I am a Chinese who went to college (a small liberal arts college) in the States. This was 10 years ago, so I am not part of the current wave. I returned to China after graduation, and have recently begun interviewing applicants for my alma mater (because there are now so many applicants from China). I have been meeting currently enrolled students and applicants. Here are a few observations.

- there are indeed a lot more of them than before. at the time I was attending, each year we had maybe one student from China. Now they enroll 5-6 every year.

- more rich kids. when i was attending, the chinese students were all attending on a full scholarship from the school (private US education cost being what it was, and Chinese per capita GDP being what it was, few Chinese families could afford it without the scholarship) - these probably explains why they admitted only one student from China per year. but these days, the families don't seem to bat an eye paying the full $40K+/year.

- students are getting more mainstream. in the 90s, applying to colleges from China was like a hack. nobody knew much about anything. to even dream of such things was to be a little quirky. but these days there are all these SAT prep courses and consultants (two of my friends were in this business), and high schools have dedicated advisors on applying to US colleges. and this shows in the students admitted. I remember back then the Chinese students were more creative and original and adventurous (for coming to the US is a risky/adventurous thing to do. selection bias here, not unlike the adventurous 1st generation immigrants coming to the States); these days we get far more over-achieving resume-builders who were president of student clubs, and I think will go on to be investment bankers and have successful careers and I hope will donate back to the school generously one day. Instead of the odd kid who couldn't fit in, and said "f&!k it, I am getting the hell out of here" -- I was such a kid. (I realize this is probably an unfair judgment because I did not have as much interaction with the current students/applicants as I had with people whom I attended school with.)

I am quite ambivalent about the situation. I am happy that my school is getting some attention at this end of the world. but I don't know how I feel about the change in the kind of students we attract and will have as alumni.

What I love about this story is that, he is not only persistent, he is also creative. Everyone knows, at least conceptually, how to be persistent, even if they don't always live up to it. But you can't just put your foot done and say "I am going to be creative this time."

It's like the difference between ordinary geniuses and magicians. Ordinary geniuses are like ordinary people, only many times better. Magicians (the orginal remark was referring to feynman) however were a mystery as to how they think.

Then again, there is probably a significant correlation between persistence and creativity, the latter being the result of the former carried to unusual length until one starts to try wacky ideas.

I once watched an interview of Ang Lee (crouching tiger, brokeback mt. the best director of our time, this is from my twice academy winning professor). Lee told of his early days as a director, when he simply couldn't get any gig for six years. (he stayed home, took care of the kids, and did a lot of cooking.) but he stuck with it, and eventually got some money to make a small budget movie that went on to win some international award, which launched his career. Looking back, he said something to this effect, "of my classmates who studied to be directors, the only ones who ended up being directors are the ones who stuck with directing all the way. Those who found jobs as editors, or critics,.. Those were the lucky ones who found stable jobs. But 20 yes later, they were still editing or crtiquing. None made it to directing their own films. Only the ones who stuck with it."

this reads like what the Japanese did in WWII: racing to build the largest battleship when naval warfare had shifted to carriers and airplanes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato).

If you were a non-technical founder like Steve Jobs, well, perhaps. I am reading the book "iCon Steve Jobs". And here's a recount of the very early days of Apple according to the book:

Woz was working on the Apple II. Jobs saw a clever Intel ad. He called Intel marketing and found that Regis McKenna created the ad. After relentlessly calling the agency for weeks, Jobs finally wore down the secretary, and got a meeting with Mr. McKenna, and against all odds, persuaded him to take on Apple as a client. At the time, Apple had no outside investors yet. McKenna introduced Jobs to Don Valentine, who sat on the board of the marketing agency. Valentine said he'd invest if Apple brought on board a more experienced marketing guy. Jobs then relentlessly called Valentine for recommendations (there is a pattern here), who finally relented, and suggested Mike Markkula, who joined Apple and became one of the early investors.

That I'd consider a worthy non-tech founder. but then again, the traits that Jobs exhibited had nothing to do with MBA. I am not even sure there is anything distinctively 'business' about it. It's more just what PG called determinedness.

Am I missing the irony here? (this happens to me occasionally, I being a non-native English speaker). But if this MBA shit is easy as he says (and none of his 4 steps looks that hard), then seriously why does he deserve more than 15% equity...

I am reminded of some line from Paul Graham. He was talking about literature and physics professors, but it fits just as well here. Imagine this thought experiment: technical and non-technical founders were asked to switch roles and do what the other person did. The business guy will write the code, and the technical guy will figure out how to make people pay for it. The one who fails will be shot. Whom would you rather be?

(disclaimer: I am Chinese; living in Beijing). Since this presentation made it to the front page of HN, I was curious to take a look. I rarely found similar presentations (by consulting/investment firms) having a clarifying effect on my thinking. They show an impressive array of facts and arguments, but often after reading it I fail to be able to summarize the main ideas in a couple of sentences (the way I often can, say, after reading a paul graham essay).

to begin with, why "grey swan"? no doubt, it's a reference to Taleb's book. but what exactly do they mean? that what's happening in China is not completely foreseeable, but more foreseeable than the blackest of black swans?

let's simplify things -- if we define growth as growth in wealth, and examine if the chinese are able to pull off creating something like 10% more wealth every year than we did last year. there are two variables to this: how many people are working this year than last, and how productive are they.

I don't have time to research on this, but I am guessing workforce size reduction if it happens is going to be more than offset by China simply copying mature technologies from the West and increase the productivity of its people, as it has been doing. the wild card is projects like centrally planned bridge to no where, which looks productive but doesn't actually create things people want, i.e. wealth. But China has always (i.e. last 60 years) been a centrally planned economy, assuming the leadership doesn't all of a sudden get a lot more stupid, and given that the portion of the economy that's centrally planned is shrinking every year, I think one can even make an argument of putting on a few basis points of growth simply from the gov't playing a smaller role in the economy than before. (now of course the big stimulus package might completely skew the balance for these couple of years, but it's temporary noise that probably wouldn't reverse the trend.)

and argument of how big a village needs to be before it can be called a town is irrelevant.

it merely reflects what professions attract the smartest students (or at least the most ambitious) in the different countries. (by the way, Chinese here, living in China). In the States, 30 years ago, the most ambitious kids went to study law; in china at the time, the most ambitious/intelligent studied engineering. A friend of mine from latin america pointed out that in there, political leaders tend to be medical doctors.

at any rate, I certainly have no problem with china rising, but i sure hope the China model doesn't gain credit and acceptance, with economic growth at the expense of sacrificing the environment and personal liberty. I don't know if the US was anything like this at a comparable stage of economic development, but lving in beijing for just a couple of days and you'll realize the heavy environmental toll that the Chinese are paying.

a design issue: as I scrolled down the page, at half way I was confused if the city name was associated with the map on top of it or below it. of course I could have scrolled back to find out which was which, but it seemed a poor design if I had to do that.

The psychologist who discovered this, Seligman, had since turned to studying the opposite: the psychology of happiness. Check out his TED talk, where he talks about his new research: http://www.ted.com/speakers/martin_seligman.html

In summary, according to Seligman, the three levels of a happy life (in order of short to long-lasting): 1. pleasure (physical comfort, great food, etc.) 2. engagement (loving what you're doing, e.g. getting into flow state while coding) 3. meaning (be part of something larger than yourself, e.g. Mother Teresa, Gandhi)

Of note is that, in Seligman's original experiment, a percentage of the dogs never gave up, i.e. never learned that they were helpless. they kept on trying despite their efforts never paying off. when they were put in an environment where they actually had control, they quickly took charge of their own lives (at least in terms of avoid electric shocks) -- a heart-warming story to entrepreneurs.

One solution to the "many characters sounding the same" problem was turning Chinese into a tonal language. I guess technically that makes them sound different. but even with tones (in modern mandarin Chinese there are 4 tones; in older time there were more; Cantonese reportedly still has 9).

Even with tones though, there are still too many characters sounding exactly the same. In a Chinese dictionary (you might want to pause for a moment and imagine what a Chinese dictionary looks like. if you come across an unknown English word in writing, you can look it up by spelling. but what's the equivalent thing to do for a chinese character?), under any one sound specification, you can easily find 10-20 characters.

where I disagree is that, yes, classic written Chinese is tricky to understand, but not in the sense that they are mostly one-syllable words. they are tricky to understand in the same sense that Shakespearean (or Chaucerian) English was tricky to understand to modern English speakers - due to unfamiliar vocabulary and old-style grammar. if this opinion is valid, I further propose that, when the Chinese talk, they might rely more heavily on semantics to parse sentences in real-time, since based on sound alone there might be too many character candidates. in other words, they use what's being talked about to do some pretty heavy-handed proning as they process incoming syllables.

I lost interested about 1/3 of the way through the article. I remember reading somewhere that long forms (5000+ word articles,which this particular one is, or 2hr videos) just don't work so well on the Internet: either it's something intrinsic to the Internet as a medium or we are being trained to having short attention spans. Just as I was giving up on the article (and came to HN for a summary), I realized that this is precisely what the article was talking about: not having the patience/stamina for delayed gratification, presumably will come about as one ploughes through the entire article.

My takeaway from the article: 1. delayed gratification is important to success. but even if you aren't good at it, you can hack it, by understanding your thought process. 2. there might be a place for long form journalism like at the New Yorker, but it's probably going to be a small niche.