Notoriously Curious, Data Science Nerd & Entrepreneurship Advocate
Author of CuratedCuriosity - a bi-weekly newsletter with hand picked recommendations for your information diet
The best people in both groups spend a lot of time reflecting on some version of the Hamming question—"what are the most important problems in your field, and why aren’t you working on them?” In general, no one reflects on this question enough, but the best people do it the most, and have the best ‘problem taste’, which is some combination of... See more
Any skill or attribute you claim makes you unique—”I’m really funny”, “I’m good at shining shoes”, “I’m an attentive lover”—you can always find someone else better than you on that dimension. They’re funnier, fitter, richer, sexier, smarter, or better at shining shoes than you are. We can’t help but desperately compete in this unwinnable game of... See more
Move faster. Slowness anywhere justifies slowness everywhere.
2021 instead of 2022. This week instead of next week. Today instead of tomorrow.
Moving fast compounds so much more than people realize.
Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.
Reflexivity is at work in talent markets as well. (...) No prospect is more attractive to a 10x engineer than working with other 10x engineers, and no opportunity is more irresistible to an investor than funding a team of 10x engineers.
“The break point in America is exactly 1973,” he says elsewhere, “and we don’t know why this is the case.” Well, we may not know for sure, but we have a pretty good guess: The Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, was founded on July 1, 1973.
EXPLOREWORK IN PROGRESSThe Forgotten Stage of Human ProgressInvention is easily overrated, and implementation is often underrated.By Derek ThompsonA light bulb shatters.Al Barry / Stringer / GettyMAY 11, 2022SHARESign up for Derek’s newsletter here.What if we invented a technology to save the planet—and the world refused to use it?This haunting... See more
Only the best researchers in a field actually make progress, and the best researchers are already in a field, and probably couldn’t be kept out of the field with barbed wire and attack dogs. If you expand a field, you will get a bunch of merely competent careerists who treat it as a 9-to-5 job. A field of 5 truly inspired geniuses and 5 competent... See more