A State Space Traveler - Latest Comments

Re: A Mathematically Proven Way to Achieve Happiness

Gowtham Gundu — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:17:40 -0000

Nice read.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Citypw — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:02:27 -0000

good article.I tried translate it to Chinese version.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Gunnr — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:44:52 -0000

Put a reminder in your calendar to ask this question every Monday morning.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Kévin KIN-FOO — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 06:29:44 -0000

Once you know how you would like to create value? Found means to achieve your aspirations is another story

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Carter — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:41:21 -0000

Thanks, Erik. That's a wonderful quote from PG, and it certainly gets at the
heart of the issue.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Erik — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 07:08:01 -0000

You might find this essay by Paul Graham interesting. (replace "value" with "wealth")
http://www.paulgraham.com/w...
"What leads people astray here is the abstraction of money. Money is not wealth. It's just something we use to move wealth around. So although there may be, in certain specific moments (like your family, this month) a fixed amount of money available to trade with other people for things you want, there is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world. You can make more wealth. Wealth has been getting created and destroyed (but on balance, created) for all of human history."

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Cheng Soon — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:41:37 -0000

Hi Carter,

I couldn't find your email so I thought I'd ask here. Would you grant me the permission to reprint this article in the upcoming issue of Hacker Monthly?

Please contact me if you need more clarification. Thanks.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

sachxn — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:48:29 -0000

awesome thoughts

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

blackofhat — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:52:27 -0000

Let's see now. You wrote some code at night. It paid for toys, eating out, and trips. What value were you creating? Who the hell cares? The value was in the dinners and the tickets to fly across the ocean. You were creating value for yourself. Any time you are outearning the I-Bank folks, I say bravo.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Carter — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:41:47 -0000

Copying this in from Hacker News where a lot of debate was going on (link: http://news.ycombinator.com...

1. I am not implying a moral obligation to do some jobs over others. Nor am I suggesting a framework to judge the value of some jobs over others. If I had known this was going to be read by so many people (over 2,500 in the first few hours), I would have spent more time making sure my message was communicated more clearly. I'm sorry for giving some people the wrong idea.

2. My point is actually very simple and I expect the vast majority of Hacker News readers already get it: for people considering what jobs to do, especially young college students, be wary of focusing on the value of fun and money. Fun and money can be very distracting when you are young and haven't experienced so much freedom before. However, the decisions you make when you are young can have consequences for the trajectory of your whole life. Always think about what will give you long-term and enduring happiness and satisfaction. Often, I think long-term happiness is connected with a cause greater than your own immediate satisfaction. Hence the consideration of value creation.

It's obvious advice, but I hoped my story would make it more digestible for college students.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Vilan Natanzon — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:13:50 -0000

The vague concept of value is more closely associated to big ideas than small ones. I imagine if you wanted to make a big difference in the financial world, you'd need some fancy AI that would build a map of valuable things to invest in based on how connected some industry is to other industries.

For example real estate is connected to construction, logging, home improvement, cars, roads. Computer chip industry is connected to the web, phones, communication, robots, AI, cars, GPS (which is connected to cars and logging), satellites, entertainment, cameras, education and on and on. Simplification but you get the idea, an activity that affects a larger percentage of other activities deserves more investment.

If such a system was widely used, long term investment decisions would be very different. It's one thing to have an internet bubble that had huge benefits even though it burst, it's another thing to have a real estate bubble which is an environmental disaster and makes minor changes to where a person lives (but major changes to their self-esteem).

All the people that worship real estate don't get that houses are a technology, and one that's becoming obsolete. In 30 years more mobile houses made from new materials would make land values less relevant and houses depreciate in value like cars. This is when millions of people would supposedly pay off their mortgages.

An obvious waste of human effort.

But an AI that would tell the difference is a huge leap. Not only a leap in technical difficulty, but one in social re-organization and mindset. That's why most of the hyped up big things like startups are evolutionary small steps. What people do with twitter used to be done with a few more clicks with email, facebook is a minor rearrangement on blogs, forums that was just executed in a way that attracted a large audience.

So what you'll be working on with art sales is also a small step, just like optimizing financial mechanisms. Etsy is a minor change from eBay. Your art trading site would be an even less obvious difference from etsy it seems. What you seem to value in your own life is a good social circle, that's what you had in your financial job, until a tidbit of perspective spoiled it, and that's what you'll have in your startup.

As far as value, I'd say both are even technologically, but social benefit to the lives of those involved may be more important, it's just not measured by our empirical data culture.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Roman — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:51:44 -0000

Yeah, good question :-) May be you'll find this interesting to read: http://norvig.com/speech.html

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

TJIC — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:44:47 -0000

Agreed.

I once worked at D.E. Shaw (well, a subunit up in Cambridge MA) and the lead engineer on the project once confided in me that he thought the goal of an online brokerage account was useless, because it didn't make the world a better place. In fact, he didn't think that the stock market made the world a better place.

I was appalled - first of all, it's entirely clear to me that efficiently figuring out what ideas are worthy of capital and what ones are not is a HUGE boon to human happiness and standards of living. Compare how the Soviet Union allocated capital to how markets do it.

Second of all, if you don't think that a firm is making the world a better place, and that your work has any value, why are you doing it?

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Carter — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:44:08 -0000

I agree that it creates some value. And I'm certainly not saying it's by definition an un-noble pursuit.

But my point is that I lost sight of what matters to me and became focused on superficial things that I don't think would have led to long-term happiness and fulfillment.

Art.sy is not saving the world, but our goal is to create a fundamental change in the way art is bought, sold, and appreciated. We envision a dramatically different future where artists can pursue their passions more sustainably, and where everyone else will be more inspired by original art.

I know it sounds like a sales pitch, but we really believe it. It's a very different cause from pushing spreads just a tiny bit closer together and shaving off huge amounts of profit. I think part of the financial bubble was caused by too many people focused on pushing together those spreads and not on creating fundamental value. And why not? Because it didn't pay as well.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Carter — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:31:53 -0000

Thanks, Brad. He was awesome. And even more ironically, he left the job to
pursue a completely non-technical career.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Brad Hargreaves — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:28:13 -0000

Great thoughts, Carter. Your CTO sounds like an awesome guy to work with.

Re: Have you ever wondered what value we create here?

Louis Marascio — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:24:41 -0000

Efficient markets -> lower transaction costs -> greater access to the markets by everyone. Why is that un-noble? Isn't Art.sy doing the same thing? By creating a place to buy & sell art online you're making the market more efficient and are, in turn, opening it up to more buyers and sellers.

To any students reading this, go do what makes you happy. Work in a field you find stimulating. Everything else will sort itself out.

Re: A Mathematically Proven Way to Achieve Happiness

Carter — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:26:25 -0000

Thank you for your insight, Venu. I can't tell you how exciting it is to garner reactions and perspectives from such interesting places. I can feel my own state space expanding as a result :).

I'm curious how you find out about this blog?

Regarding reincarnation, I think that it is a great way to view life, since we should always be trying to create value for the world to inherit once we are gone. Likewise with karma, I think it is the optimal framework for how we treat others. However, beyond using these concepts as a way to make decisions in life, I see no evidence that reincarnation is physically possible. Is that what you're suggesting? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Re: Startup Lessons from Marine Officer Training School

giffc — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:43:20 -0000

there's nothing like practice and trial runs to smooth the rough edges

Re: A Mathematically Proven Way to Achieve Happiness

Venu Gopal das — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:06:43 -0000

I am a monk living in a bhakti-yoga ashram in India.
Interesting thoughts my friend. Because landscapes in the world are so variegated, this provides a rich metaphor with a lot of possibilities.
Regarding trying to come to full happiness within this lifetime, I agree we should strive for that. Of course, I'm sure you're aware, being interested in meditation, that the general consensus in the eastern part of the world is that this is not our only life, and that just as we sleep every evening and renew our activities the next day, we die at the end of every life and continue the trend of our activities in the next. According to this conception, we can continue our work within our consciousness in our next life where we left off in this one. (although being born again is said to be a bit of a hassle)

Re: Startup Lessons from Marine Officer Training School

Carter — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:23:29 -0000

That's true, but sometimes long-term goals also change completely
based on your first encounter with the market.

Paypal's vision was initially all about this hardcore PDA to PDA
payment technology. But when they launched the service people kept
using their website until eventually they shut down their PDA to PDA
service and changed the entire focus of their business.

Re: Startup Lessons from Marine Officer Training School

Richard — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:39:31 -0000

This is an interesting post, but I believe it applies to one aspect of startups - the importance of testing. Hypothesize (i.e. have an idea), test, verify (and repeat).

However, it does ignore one aspect of startups and that is the importance of strategic direction, or vision.

As a startup there are always many "opportunities" - I believe that is typical of the startup mentality, the ability to see opportunities where other's don't.

As such it is important to separate the wheat from the chaff and ensure that these experiments on consistent with long-term strategic goals.

I think that is one of the major difficulties of a startup is the ability to try out new things, but cut them when they aren't working. So while I agree with the main thrust of the post... I thought I would comment with this caveat.

Re: A Mathematically Proven Way to Achieve Happiness

danielkahneman — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:34:52 -0000

http://www.ted.com/talks/da...

Re: Commando Usability Testing

Saltwolf — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:53:37 -0000

Great stuff . Do it. Budget be damned!

Possible hint: Tell the cafe owner you will buy your participants food stuffs since they are there to presumably buy a coffee drink anyway. Owners usually want to move those perishables too.

Re: Commando Usability Testing

Carter — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:27:53 -0000

That is an awesome post, Hang. I got the name 'Commando' from Andres presentation.

I like Cafes because I can make changes and then immediately test them out right then and there. Makes for for quick iteration that same day. The bar strategy is genius and sounds pretty fun. But I don't know if I could work there between testing. I'll add your post to my last one where I aggregate a bunch of usability resources. Thanks!