With that said, I am sure there are a lot of different methods that could work depending on the people involved, it's not as if there is only one "right" way to do it.
It talks about exactly this issue:
If company A is successful, we explain it by saying that the management is absolutely brilliant,
if company B does the exact same things but is failing, we explain it by saying that management are totally incompetent.
It's a major cognitive bias which renders most "business press" articles totally worthless.
The solution, obviously, is to gather a large amount of data and do some rigorous analysis.
People have tried to do this but the general conclusion is that there are no real simple rules that a business can follow to always succeed despite our eager desire for simple explanations.
Yeah reminds me of one of Buffett's sayings "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.". Perhaps illustrated by Eddie Lampert who used to be considered a genius ("first Wall Street financial manager to exceed an income of $1 billion in a single year"), taking over Sears which hasn't gone great (stock from ~$100 to $2.3).
I love that book. Short anecdote: back in 2006 I was lucky to get an early copy through a high-flying management consultant. The book basically rips into everything that is wrong with management consulting — but for some reason this person was completely unaffected by this book and kept praising it. After talking for a few minutes, it dawned on me: this person hasn’t read the book! ha ha.
Anyway after reading the book I thought phil rosenzweig was a genius and this book ought to be more popular.
I personally refer to this as the "Marissa Mayer problem." To me the real mark of success and brilliance is not just succeeding once, its succeeding multiple times. Jumping on the Google or Amazon rocketship and doing well there, while there is something to be said about the fact that you didn't screw it up, doesn't necessarily mean that you are brilliant. She went to Yahoo, and while she did a decent job putting lipstick on a pig, I think it showed that she is a mere mortal and not a genius.
What is impressive about Amazon IMHO is that they have succeeded in multiple businesses. One could argue that they are all under the halo of "ecommerce" but what was just a bookseller spread into virtually everything sold online, reshaping distribution networks, moving into groceries, content, etc.
In a recent NYT interview, here's what she had to say about that: "[T]iming is everything... Yahoo’s offerings could consume hours a day, and trying to regain that moment in time was really hard... regaining that contextual relevance that was afforded to Yahoo in 1999 and the early 2000s was difficult."
(1) Unlike in the story, in real life aging is a natural process that almost all living creatures go through. It is not something that is externally imposed by a malovolent entity. So I would question the implication that not preventing aging is immoral.
(2) Death allows each new generation to take the lead and shape society according to its values. If aging was eliminated social conflicts might increase between the ideologies of each successive generation.
(3) Younger people could no longer just wait for the boss to retire or die to ascend to senior positions, they would have to overthrow the boss in order to advance in the organization.
(4) Even a low birth rate might lead to overpopulation if people don't die.
Aging and death are not necessarily bad things. There is a natural completion to the process. A sense of closure. Do your time, have your experiences, say good bye. Having the knowledge that we will die and that we will lose our youth makes us appreciate them more and gives us a sense of urgency.
Indeed, it is arguably mostly our primitive instincts that make us fear death and want to stick around in perpetuity. Is there something important that won't happen because any specific person dies?
Now, with all that said, if a cure for aging was really discovered I would be the first one in line!
NOTE 1: If the human life span remained the same, but people were able to be as healthy at age 80 as at age 20 that would be great and would pose very little social problems I think.
Well, he WAS a child prodigy who published his first major paper at 18 and got his PhD when he was 20, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he actually did independently come up with the idea of hashing at age 13.
In general I think people should just stop being triggered by Wolfram's comments.
Yes, he does go out of his way to emphasize what he feels are his personal contributions.
Yes, in some cases some of his claims do appear to be a bit exaggerated (e.g. some of his cellular automata stuff)
But at the end of the day, he is still a pretty smart guy who actually writes about math/science topics fairly well, and I think that is far more important than raging every single time he gives himself credit for something or emphasizes his own work on a topic.
Most people who are smart learn that emphasizing that you are smarter than others leads people to hate you and it generally makes one's life more difficult. How did Wolfram not realize this?
Actually, I am sure he did, he's too smart to not have realized this, but I think he has one of those incredibly fragile egos where he needs to validate himself all the time to random people, even if doing has negative impacts on him.
Zuckerberg doesn't do this, Musk doesn't do, Gates doesn't do this, the Google guys do not do this. I could go on and on. So many smart successful people do not have to do this all the time, but Wolfram does. It is so self-inflicted.
> Most people who are smart learn that emphasizing that you are smarter than others leads people to hate you and it generally makes one's life more difficult. How did Wolfram not realize this?
That also speaks tons about people who take offence at (hate) others for giving themselves generous credit.
> That also speaks tons about people who take offence at (hate) others for giving themselves generous credit.
Maybe, but if someone was really beautiful and they had to keep pointing this out to you, would you like to hang around them? Or would you think they are vain and self-centered and basically avoid them because they fit the definition of "obnoxious."
I have been thinking about it and I think the issue with Facebook in particular is how AGGRESSIVE and CARELESS they have always been in violating privacy. Just like Uber their philosophy is "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission". And of course they have an official slogan of "Move fast and break things".
So all these different controversies are not just a coincidence but are very much baked into their organizational culture. They are obsessed with winning at all costs and clearly see privacy issues as just inconveniences to achieving their goals.
I am not sure if it is possible to imagine a social network that truly respected privacy at its core, that didn't try to get away with as much as it could, that put its users interests ahead of increasing Daily Active Users.
But if Facebook actually operated like that, I suspect there would be a lot less concern.
This is the nature of startups, even if you do every single thing right, work hard, manage the cash flow, innovate, etc., there is a more than 90% chance you won't get that billion dollar plus exit.
The only unique thing here is that Lytro got a lot of hype and raised a lot of money, so people naturally expected a unicorn.
What I am saying is these guys don't necessarily have anything to be ashamed of. In the worst case they gained a lot of experience that they can apply to their next idea.
That said, I am curious: Will the founders get ANY money out of it? A comment claimed that they raised $200 million at $360 million valuation, so theoretically they may end up with nothing.
My estimate is that the founders took money off the table during those rounds. It's doubtful they'll see anything from the sale. I wouldn't worry too much about them I'm sure they're sitting fine.
I am a CS professor and these are exactly the kind of things my undergraduate students struggle with!
Especially these two points:
* Start assignments as soon as they are given out. Stupid, right?
* Be curious. You are there to learn, which means digging beyond the provided material. So many students are sadly focused on the grade or assignment, not on the learning.
I was recently and undergrad (now a grad student)---I've done research, work, taught classes, led competition teams, etc... and I still struggle with this.
I really like this obituary, this is exactly what I was looking for.
Penrose not only understands the details of Hawking's work at a much deeper level than most of us, but as a contemporary of Hawking's he has followed his career for decades and can give us a good overall impression.
https://www.amazon.com/Slicing-Pie-Funding-Company-without/d...
https://slicingpie.com/
The idea is to dynamically adjust equity based on how much everyone is contributing.
Some people report good experience using this dynamic split method:
https://cofounderslab.com/discuss/has-anyone-used-the-slicin...
With that said, I am sure there are a lot of different methods that could work depending on the people involved, it's not as if there is only one "right" way to do it.