Thinking Synthesizing Over the past year, I wrote an article every week and sent it to a growing list of curious readers. The topics were eclectic, sometimes meandering, but always related to a simple question: how do you come up with a good idea?
Thinking Minimum Viable Mindset “Publish houses of brick, not mansions of straw”, says Bill Kaelin, Nobel laureate and professor of medicine. Scientists need to write papers that include fewer grand claims and more proof to make the scientific literature more reliable. Scientists need minimum viable discoveries.
Art But is it art? The conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp is often seen as a key founder of conceptual art. His 1917 piece 'Fountain' is often cited as the first conceptual artwork. But..."It's a urinal." "I don't get it." "Is it art?" Soon, you will see, this is the wrong question.
Thinking Naming things One of the key functions of science is to organize knowledge. Scientists take new information and classify and categorize it — connect it with the known. Name it. But knowing the name of the thing is not the same as knowing the thing.
Thinking Mental models The DIKW triangle is a way to organize the relationship between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. When I first came across this model, it resonated with me. But I wanted to understand: how do you move up the hierarchy?
Thinking Another newsletter I had an in-person conference last week, the first in years for most of us. There, I ran into a colleague on the street. After the customary, "how have you been?", she asked me, "are you still writing that newsletter? I think it's really important." Why did she say this?
Thinking Dynamic range In a common parable, a group of blind men heard that a strange animal called an elephant had been brought to the town. The moral of this story is that humans have a tendency to view the world through their experiences. But this is not the whole story.
Thinking Counting cycles We published a paper last week. 🎉 We worked on this project for several years, plus one additional year for the editorial process (broken, I know). A conservative measurement estimates at least 5 years from start to finish. If a cycle takes 5 years to complete, how many cycles are left?
Thinking Consistency It’s 9 o’clock on Sunday morning. I’ve written an article and sent it out every previous Sunday for almost a year, but I haven’t written this Sunday’s article yet. There goes the streak. I should probably throw in the towel.
Science Scientific judgment under uncertainty How is it that we are quick to be skeptical of science but less skeptical of news? Why this difference?
Thinking Why skeptical sounds smart I'm skeptical. It's the phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of innovators and creatives everywhere. A new idea is fragile and must be nurtured tenderly before it is ready for the slings and arrows of the skeptical world. But how do we protect our ideas from the skeptical skeptic?
Thinking Composable ideas Programming language wars arise when software developers disagree over which language is the best tool for a given task. Which language is best?
Thinking Alternative mechanisms Scientists consider alternative mechanisms for diseases or genes all the time. This is what the path to discovery looks like. But rarely do we consider alternative mechanisms for how something is done. Why this discrepancy in thinking?
Thinking Stop copying me In a world hyper-focused on creativity and novelty, credit and attribution, the last thing anyone wants is to be copied. But then how do we ever learn anything?
Thinking What's in a name? In college, I signed up for an online account for a messaging service called Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Signing up meant you needed a name, and you could find me on IRC under the handle 'RedSuit007'. So what's in a name?
Thinking 10K PFP The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a virtual membership club. Images of these apes have become ubiquitous profile pictures (PFPs), with celebrities ranging from Jimmy Fallon to Stephen Curry, from Mark Cuban to Madonna showing off their Apes. What is behind this current 10K PFP craze?
Thinking Entertaining A pair of couples, each in their late 40s, were lamenting to each other in the freezer aisle how they don’t understand their children. Perhaps these parents just want for their kids something they had. But like most things, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it any less legitimate.
Thinking Zero marginal effort The internet enabled a new digital economy where the cost of increasing the production of digital goods is essentially zero. However, the notion of 'zero marginal cost' extends far beyond selling. Zero marginal effort means scaling activities that would otherwise cost time.
Thinking Exploratory Exploratory data analysis (EDA) is an approach used in statistics and data science, often leading to summarization and visualization of a dataset. This approach is often antithetical to a hypothesis: having an idea and then explicitly testing for its validity. Which is better?
Thinking Custodial When Canadian truckers protested COVID mask mandates by blocking key transportation routes along their border with the US, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the "Emergencies Act". Whether or not you agree with the truckers' protests, or with Trudeau's response, this...changes...everything.
Thinking abstract memes Beyond "funny pictures", memes are abstractions. They capture the essence of an idea in a memorable, relatable, or comical way, and are often related to cultural or current events. Memes work because they share information in an efficient way across a culture.
Art WYSIATI In 1974, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman wrote an iconic article in Science Magazine entitled "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases". They lay out the case and conclude that mental heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but lead to systematic and predictable errors.
Thinking How web3 will enable a new wave of creativity Web3 is a term for new ways of interacting with the internet with new incentives. If Web 1.0 is summarized as most people passively consuming content, and Web 2.0 is the social web where people create content, then Web3 is about creating and owning their content.
Thinking The Future Place of Creative Genius There will never be another Silicon Valley. Like there will never be another Renaissance or Ancient Greece. These locations each had vital elements that came together to form a magical time-place combination. Looking forward, the future place of creative genius isn’t a ‘place’ at all.
Building Featured Sell the sawdust One of the key ideas behind building reputation online is consistently generating proof of work. But how do you do this ? By 'selling the sawdust'. The beauty of this idea is that most people are already doing it, but just not realizing it.
