redelbee

I took this to be more about writing for the express purpose of being accepted (or not rejected) instead of a defense of lazy writing. When the outcome of the work can only be “accept” or “reject” it incentivizes writing from a defensive perspective rather than one that is more speculative or questioning.

I was an early employee at a direct response advertising agency that spent $100m+ per year on behalf of clients, and after that I led an in-house team for a retail brand with a $20m marketing/advertising budget.

Based on that experience I think the right agencies can fill the marketing need quite well for startups. I think the main concern is that the knowledge isn’t completely outsourced so there is a core of competence in the company. In my experience it’s much easier to find solid expertise across the multitude of marketing channels with agencies, even though it’s likely more expensive.

I like the idea of getting individual contributors first to kick things off, but then I’d look for agencies as a next step. This could coincide with a CMO hire because many marketers have worked with agencies in the past so they will help in the search for the right partners.

I was thinking of the human “we.” I think that’s my point: It’s hard work whether you work on models or focus on the bigger picture of what outcomes would be best for humanity. I think it makes more sense to work hard on the latter, or at least to work hard on it first and then build the models.

At what point do we shift our investment in time and energy from building models like those mentioned in the article to the bigger picture? Maybe it’s just my perception but it doesn’t seem like we have very many people thinking deeply about what models we should build and to what ends. Instead we are just building the models and hoping we can put them to good use afterwards.

For example, what’s the end game for the cellular signaling modeling outlined in the article? It seems like the result isn’t valuable in and of itself, and it can’t be much more than that because the scientist “doesn’t understand it, and doesn’t think any person could.” So we now have an equation that expresses constants within a cell and that’s it. We don’t understand it and we can’t put it to good use. So was that time and effort well spent? Do we just put this work in a drawer so we can pull it out if it could be useful at some point in the future? Is that what we’re doing with all the similar advances in modeling?

There’s nothing wrong with knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but I think we’ve way over indexed on the tools and predictions side of the system. If we continue to constantly create new tools/models/predictions we might find a use for them by chance. It just seems more efficient to focus on what outcomes we really want and then put the models to work in pursuit of those outcomes. Perhaps we focused more on the outcomes in the past because we didn’t have the technological horsepower to constantly churn out new models.

Maybe I’m wrong and there are people working on the big picture. Are there modern day philosophers doing this work? Do they make up a significant portion of the work being done? If not, why?

I learned touch typing with the help of a cardboard box instead of a fancy mechanical keyboard with custom key caps. I think this is a more economical way to learn, unless you really like mechanical keyboards and want an excuse to buy one (or another).

Get a box that covers your keyboard and leaves room for your hands. Cut a hole for your hands. Place the box over your keyboard, insert your hands, and start typing without being able to see the keyboard.

Of course this is more difficult if you only have a laptop because the screen is also obstructed.

I type around 100 WPM today with the same touch typing technique I learned as a child. I still have labeled key caps, even on my own fancy mechanical boards.

According to Kenya’s own data from 2018, public and private sector annual wages average around 685,000 Kenyan Shillings, or around $6,320 annually (page 47 of the report), and for informal sector employment annual wages topped out at around 240,000 Kenyan Shillings (~$2,300) for urban workers (page 52) and around 104,000 Kenyan Shillings (~$1,000) for agricultural workers (page 51).

https://africacheck.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Economic-...

This NYT article outlines some of the earnings for top Kenyan runners, which run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The article also focuses on some of the issues that come with the increased earnings, which seems to parallel the “lottery winner” effect where riches don’t necessarily lead to health and happiness.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/sports/kenyan-runners.htm...

I’m sure there are opportunities outside of running, and some of them are probably even better. So perhaps it would be more accurate to say that running is a better than average opportunity based on the data.

I think endurance exercise is mostly great for increasing focus and concentration for me, with a few exceptions. Higher training volume sometimes leads to somewhat slower thinking. That could be an advantage in some situations where consideration is better than quickly reacting, but not always. Inadequate nutrition compounds the issue, so if I’ve been training a lot and not getting in enough good calories I might find myself underperforming.

There’s a reason pro athletes consider eating and resting adequately a significant part of their full-time job.

The bike I ride depends on the day and why I’m riding. I’ve collected a few bikes over the years.

I have an old steel cross bike transformed into a grocery getter that’s outfitted with wide slick tires, a rear rack, and pannier bags that I use when I need to haul stuff around. I have a gravel bike with disc brakes, wide knobby tires, and a slightly more relaxed geometry for riding/exploring on gravel/dirt or rougher paved roads. I have a carbon “race” bike with deep section wheels and a pretty aggressive geometry for going fast on paved roads.

I sometimes get close to the “zen” feeling that I got when running ultra distances but it goes away pretty quickly when I’m doing anything but going in a straight line on flat roads with no traffic. As you can imagine this doesn’t happen often. Contrast that with trail running (most of what I did for ultras) where I was just rambling along in nature. It was much easier to look inward when running on the trails.

On a second read I see what you mean. I didn’t make the connection between the comparisons of motivation where the amateur is motivated to “suffer” and the pro is motivated by something unspecified. The closest thing is when he says the pro “wanted to feel good and strong and the moment that stopped, he stopped.”

It probably would have been more charitable to point out the fact that the pro is probably motivated by continuing to pursue his livelihood instead of feeling “good and strong,” or even that feeling good and strong is required for his day job.

I also bristled a bit at the contrast of running as a professional sport versus an extreme test of body and mind. It seems to me that pro athletes are definitely engaged in an extreme test of body and mind, and likely moreso than the weekend warrior looking to suffer occasionally to escape the doldrums of modern work or whatever.

I used to run ultramarathons and I’ve since switched to cycling. I find that I injure myself less on the bike, probably because of my very flat feet and unwillingness to mix in the strength training that would make me less injury prone when running. Running isn’t bad for your knees (or any other body part) but doing it a lot and not paying attention to issues is a recipe for disaster. I ended up injuring myself repeatedly because I was chasing the feeling that I got from running.

I’m still chasing that feeling on the bike. I don’t get quite as zen on the bike. I think it’s because there is more speed involved (going into my mind at 20+ mph isn’t a good idea) and because I’m not getting the proprioception feedback (there’s just something about ambulating through space that’s hypnotic). I still get the post-exercise benefits and I’m hoping to chase down more of the zen as I go farther and farther on the bike.

I think the article has some dubious reasoning when coming up for justifications for why ultramarathons tend to attract rich white guys. I think the biggest elements in any endurance sport are time and overall nutrition. If you don’t have the time to train and the resources to fuel yourself consistently with high quality food you’re probably not going to enjoy training and participating in ultra endurance events, no matter how much you “yearn for a rawer form of human experience” or want to exercise your “control-and-conquer mentality.” Societal inequality means that the people who have an excess of time and money can participate, hence the rich white guys.

I’m grateful to be one of the lucky ones who can participate, even though I probably only qualify for one half of the “rich white guy” descriptor. I’m fortunate to be self employed, which gives me a lot of control over my schedule.

Final thought: The anecdote about the Kenyan professional is ridiculous. The “motivated” amateur calls out the professional for quitting the race when he injured his toe and says it’s because “he wasn’t there to suffer,” then goes on to insinuate that the professional only wanted to feel good. In reality the Kenyan professional relies on running as his profession (one which likely gives him a better standard of living than almost any other opportunity in his country) and rightly wants to protect his body as it needs to be in good working order to do his job. What kind of person puts down a professional for looking after himself so he can feel better about running a long distance?

It’s exactly this type of thinking (and acting) that created the dismal state of search, especially in the product review space. I can’t find anything but “content sites” when what I really want is genuine reviews or experiences from people who use the products I’m considering purchasing. It’s obvious that most of the sites in the top results for almost any product search are using a playbook similar to this. I can almost never find trustworthy, real reviews.

Now I try to find communities on Reddit or elsewhere to find real information and opinions. In some cases I’m sure my purchases have been influenced by some marketing drone that gets paid to post positive reviews on Reddit as well. Finding and supporting great makers and products shouldn’t be this difficult!

Please don’t make everything worse by following any advice in this article. If you truly want to turn a hobby into cash (a potentially fun-killing enterprise as others have mentioned) then let it happen organically, or at least keep the end users’ experiences in mind. For every person making $10k a month on terrible content sites there are thousands of people wasting their time sifting through hundreds “content” pieces in an attempt to find reality.

I think a better headline for the post would have ended with “... doesn’t work that well for me.” The author tried the “strongly held” strategy, found it difficult, and decided to justify another strategy of asking “how much are you willing to bet on that?” instead.

Why not both? After all, deciding “how much to bet” is probably one kind of fairly strong opinion. It’s at least strong enough to bet on. Betting strategy changes as information changes, so maybe you could construe that bet (or strong opinion) as being loosely held.

I agree that pithy phrases shouldn’t be used to justify “strongly held bad opinions” but how are we even deciding what a “bad” opinion looks like?

In the end we probably all want to come to the most correct conclusions and be willing to change when presented with new information. How we get there probably doesn’t matter as much as a majority deciding it’s worth the time and effort to do so in the first place.

What do you think the present-day cryptological equivalent of the Enigma machine and its decryption is? I’m most interested in examples of consequence (e.g. saving lives by shortening war) rather than comparisons of technical achievement.

How valuable is the “making your team feel good” result mentioned at the end of the article? I think good team cohesion and understanding are valuable outcomes of brainstorms that can be overlooked.

In my experience at an advertising agency “Making people feel good” was the best result of brainstorming, but certainly not the only one. Everyone had a chance to voice their ideas and offer feedback on other ideas. In the end the ideas usually ended up coming from the people who were great at making ideas, and the tactical executions of those ideas came from the people who were good at making ideas come to life, and sometimes they combined to make an even better idea and execution.

As a creative leader I also required each person involved in the brainstorm to do individual work beforehand. Perhaps this is why we saw good results.

Either way, measuring brainstorming success by number of ideas or some other measure of “creativity” is likely missing out on the social benefits of the process.

First answer from Google:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7191274/

The research includes cloth masks, medical masks, and respirators in community and medical settings.

Conclusion:

“ The study suggests that community mask use by well people could be beneficial, particularly for COVID-19, where transmission may be pre-symptomatic. The studies of masks as source control also suggest a benefit, and may be important during the COVID-19 pandemic in universal community face mask use as well as in health care settings. Trials in healthcare workers support the use of respirators continuously during a shift. This may prevent health worker infections and deaths from COVID-19, as aerosolisation in the hospital setting has been documented.”

Thank you for the Hitchcock anecdote about creativity under pressure, that idea is new to me.

When it comes to the physical realm, perceived effort (or “rating of perceived exertion”) was shown to be as effective as heart rate for pacing interval training in this study and others it references:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4296211/

From my layman’s perspective it makes sense that perceived effort would be a great guide to overexertion as those perceptions seem to be driven by the same system that prevents us from overreaching in general. Tim Noakes calls it the “central governor” that keeps us from doing harm to ourselves:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_governor

Perhaps the best way to set yourself up for success is to decide on an optimal threshold and try to stay within its bounds, no matter the endeavor. It seemed to work for Hitchcock’s creativity and we know it works in the physical realm as well.

Then you can stress the system to see if it’s beneficial or not. Maybe we should all be doing “creative interval training” to increase our capacity for creation, just like we would to increase our cycling capacity!

Anyone else notice significantly more notification spam from LinkedIn lately? It seems like I’m guaranteed to get a badge notification daily now compared to once a week or so in the past.

LinkedIn is one of the few apps I still allow notifications from. In retrospect I probably turned them on in fear of missing an opportunity when looking for a job. I can confidently say I haven’t missed out on any opportunity and the content notifications are mostly terrible. It’s so bad I’m considering following the author’s lead and getting off the platform altogether.

What does the future look like? I can only assume someone at LinkedIn is looking at daily active users and trying to juice that number with app notification spam. In theory LinkedIn is perfect: keeps business and personal separate, a dedicated platform for work-related everything after the Microsoft acquisition. In practice it’s awful. Is there any future where a social media company like LinkedIn could coalesce around something useful instead of chasing metrics (DAUs, etc)?

Neal Stephenson explores something like your “user agent” idea and comes up with an different solution in his novel “ Fall; or, Dodge in Hell.”

Spoilers ahead:

In Stephenson‘s world people can hire “editors” to curate what they see, and those editors effectively determine reality for people at a mass scale. This is just one of the many fascinating ideas Stephenson explores and I highly recommend reading the book.

This interview covers some of the details if you’re not willing to dive into an 800+ page novel:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/neal-stephenson-explains-his-visi...

A consumer goods company operates two brands that sell the same products to different target audiences. The company works from a database that comprises 15 million+ entries for customers/leads/etc. Each brand sends one email a day, mails 6 catalogs throughout the year on different schedules based on seasonal buying patterns, runs search/display/etc ads across Google and Bing every day, runs Facebook/Insta/Messenger/etc ads every day, posts on various social networks every day, works with hundreds of affiliate advertisers that advertise every day, puts time/effort/money into SEO every day, and just started running TikTok campaigns because the founder’s daughter’s friend is an “influencer” on the network.

Some people buy. Some of those people have bought before when they lived in a different state before they were married. Some people see an ad on their phone and purchase by telling their spouse to order from Amazon. Some people wait until their paycheck clears the bank two weeks later then buy, but not before they’ve seen the brand an additional 15 times on various channels.

Multichannel attribution aims to attribute those purchases to the correct channels, usually to determine ROI and help with planning.

Keeping track of all those customers and touch points is non-trivial. Assigning weight to each touch point is non-trivial. Modeling behavior accurately is non-trivial. It’s theoretically 100% possible. Software companies and consultants sell solutions that seem plausible. In practice it feels impossible.

Source: A decade of agency and in-house advertising/marketing work for some of the largest brands in the world