More books in the klog.
["Resulting" is the evaluation of a choice based on outcome rather than its process; a different choice that appears to have "won" (especially by luck) wasn't necessarily a better decision or reflective of superior capacities.]
[ETFs tend to declare distributions and pay out in January, which makes it a useful moment to schedule your yearly rebalance.]
[ETFs tracker errors (not matching its benchmark), withholding taxes, and management fees mean that multiple funds tracking the same instruments can have inconsistent results. Compare fund returns with benchmark returns to get a sense for the diff.]
[Allocate less to equities at retirement, but maintain enough to benefit from a remaining investment timeframe of about 20–30 years.]
[Hold bonds in your local currency. Exposure to other currencies adds risk to what should be a safe-haven asset.]
[The Dow (with 30 commitee-selected entries) and NASDAQ 100 (only non-financial) are poorly diversified and not a gauge of the broad market.]
[Template interactions like "Je voudrais un hot dog, s'il vous plaît … merci!"; "Où est le WC? … merci!" are simple to use, but have no cultural or experiential value, and treat the other as a machine. If someone gives a surprising or interesting response, you might miss it.] Wielding language's magic is intoxicating; becoming susceptible to it, even more so.
[Inormation entropy as "how unique or surprising is this?" threads through: text prediction, text generation, autocorrect, search, cloze tests, data compression and transmission, encryption, memory, summarization, random noise, language learning, language evolution…]
["They lived happily ever after" in information entropy terms means "Nothing noteworthy happened for the rest of their lives".]
[People ask "how did you meet your spouse?" and not "how did you stay married?" because the latter is a story of struggle and pain.]
[Advice from someone who responds less predictably has more value because of entropy.]
[Pithy marketing phrases are "clichés with a diff".]
[Drug dealers and their clients have to constantly invent new language as if they were poets when referring to substances, because known euphemisms or clichés can mean jail.]
[Latin speakers naming those with whom they break bread "com-panis" ("with bread") led to our word "companion".]
[People are always changing as you get to know them—partly due to your presence; they are never still.]
[Neurons change their connection structure each time they fire. Functional brains change. Experience changes you or it didn't happen. Relating is risky because you can't get to know someone without changing them or somewhat becoming them.]
[We can't actually touch anything: our perception of contact is really body atoms and table atoms exerting electromagnetic force on each other—dynamic exchange rather than static contact.]
[An aptronym is a surname amusingly appropriate to one's occupation, such as poker champion Chris Moneymaker or British neurology duo Russell Brain and Henry Head.]
[The deaf] can comfortably sign while watching someone else sign. In large groups it still makes sense to have one "speaker" at a time, because people cannot look in more than one direction at a time, but conversations between pairs [have more overlapping communication than spoken conversations, as if they talk and listen simultaneously.]
[Conversation is best as duet over duel: each positioning the other to say great things, playing for the game and assist rather than the score.]
[Debate features adversarial "zero-sum" conversation, where weakening their position is as good as strengthening yours, and largely militaristic metaphors of] defending a statement, attacking a position, falling back to a weaker version of a thesis, countering one accusation with another.
[An alternative to the debate game could be one where two sides are given seemingly incompatible objectives for an upcoming legislation and scored on how well they argue that it supports their side. The score of each side added up and given to both sides, so they rank higher by collaborating more.]
[Answering questions about my book can mean: "short sound bites", "short anecdotes", "long considered reflections", or "long comprehensive explorations". I leave "pores" or pauses in my response to let the listener interject, hint at continuation, or change topics, and then gauge how deep to go based on that feedback.]
[Usage patterns show speakers using "uh" before shorter pauses of less than a second and "um" to indicate that a longer pause is ahead.]
[The longer you analyze stocks, the more markets have time to change. Fashion seasons also change while you shop; most] bad fashion is simply good fashion at the wrong time]
[Bryan Ferneyhough deliberately composes unperformable music to force interpreters to break out of simple reproduction and instead involve themselves as co-creators of site-specific performances (that can't be repeated).]
[Being spontaneous means keeping up with the situation, but you can't be sensitive if it changes while you're making sense of it.]
[Computers may be one of the first tools to preceed their tasks: first build it, then figure out what to do with it.]
"There is no shallow end," a philosophy professor told me. Because any objection whatsoever, from any angle, can fell a theory, you can't carve out ace of philosophical territory, master it in isolation, and move on to the next.
anyone who says that "philosophy is useless" is already philosophizing, building up an intellectual argument to make a point that is important to them, and therefore defeating their own statement in the very breath of uttering it.
You question the assumptions of physics and you end up in metaphysics—a branch of philosophy. You question the assumptions of history and you end up in epistemology—a branch of philosophy. You try to take any other discipline out at the foundations and you end up in philosophy; you try to take philosophy out at the foundations and you only end up in meta-philosophy: even deeper in than when you started.
we create a caste system at our companies that mimics the caste system we create with respect to our own bodies and selves. My hands are mine, we say, but my brain is me. This fits in nicely with our sense of an inner homunculus pulling the levers and operating our body from a control room behind our eyeballs.
[If a musician is constantly and fluidly inventive, it's partly because they refuse to bore themselves.]
[What you call "being stuck" is for me "composing".]
[Art resists scale.]
What I can do here, I cannot—I cannot do in another place.
[Chess openings and closings can be tabulated, whereas the middle is actual gameplay.]
[Customer service] works by the gradual buildup of sympathy through failed attempted solutions. If person X has told you to try something and it doesn't work, person X feels slightly sorry for you. X is slightly responsible for the problem now, having used up some of your time. Person Y, however, is considerably less moved that you tried following her colleague X's advice to no avail-even if it is the same advice that she herself would have given you had she been party to that earlier conversation. That's beside the point. The point is that she wasn't the one who gave you that advice. So she is not responsible for your wasted time.
[The same customer service representative miraculously] returns. "I can make an exception for you," she says.
It occurs to me that an "exception" is what programmers call it when software breaks.
["Impersonal friends" are those we are drawn to for their type, which makes them more or less fungible, in contrast to specific individuals we care about which can't be swapped. The difference develops through shared history.]
I've seen it happen between friends: "Once again, you've neglected to do what you've promised." "Oh, there you go right in with that tone of yours!" "Great, let's just dodge the issue and talk about my tone instead! You're so defensive!" "You're the one being defensive! This is just like the time you x!" "For the millionth time, I did not even remotely x! You're the one who …" And on and on. […] each remark after the first is only about the previous remark. Th "context, a kind of "Markov chain" of riposte, meta-riposte, meta-meta-riposte. If we can be induced to sink to this level, of course the Turing test can be passed.
I imagine an ancient Egyptian woman, say, who catches a man looking tenderly into her eyes, up at the far extreme of her body near her useless, good-for-nothing brains, and chastises him, hand at her chest. Hey. I'm down here.
[If every act is the means to an end, "eudaimonia" (εuδauovia in Greek) describes the ultimate end of "well-being of spirit". Closer to "flourishing" than "happiness" (which could be through consuming a destructive vice) or "success" (which could be cutthroat if you win, scam, or kill). It's not a feeling: you either have it or not, regardless of how you feel. Related is "arete" which refers to "excellence" and "fulfillment of purpose":] Flowers are meant to bloom; knives are meant to cut; what are we meant to do?
I find it so tragic that when an infant cries, the parents sometimes have no idea what might be the cause of the cry—hunger? thirst? Dirty diaper? fatigue? If only the child could tell them! But no, they must simply run down the list—here's some food, no, still crying, here's a new diaper, no, still crying, here's your blanket, maybe you need a nap, no, still crying … But it occurs to me that this also describes my relationship to myself. When I am in a foul mood, I think, "How's my work going? How's my social life? How's my love life? How much water have I had today? How much coffee have I had today? How well have I been eating? How much have I been exercising? How have I been sleeping? How's the weather?" And sometimes that's the best I can do: eat some fruit, jog around the neighborhood, take a nap, and on and on till the mood changes and I think, "Oh, I guess that was it." I'm not much better than the infant.
In a Canadian study, a woman gave her number to male hikers either just before they reached the Capilano Suspension Bridge or in the middle of the bridge. Those who met her on the bridge were twice as likely to call and ask for a date.
[They explained that although things would get much better after death, suicide is decisively against the rules.]
What you get, the cobbling together of hundreds of thousands of prior conversations, is a kind of conversational purée. Made of human parts, but less than a human sum. Users are, in effect, chatting with a kind of purée of real people-the ghosts of real people, at any rate: the echoes of conversations past.
We once thought humans were unique for having a language with syntactical rules, but this isn't so; we once thought humans were unique for using tools, but this isn't so; we once thought humans were unique for being able to do mathematics, and now we can barely imagine being able to do what our calculators can.
each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not.
[Jargon is an indicator of high-resolution conversation between those inside domain. It may exclude people outside, but that doesn't it should be avoided inside. Help newcomers quickly get up to speed and they'll be happy to join in.]
[The experiment suggests that participants chose cake afterwards not only because their challenging cognitive task required more calories, but also because the same process drained their willpower to resist. There's only one pool for both.]
Every moment spent struggling with a confusing UI, frustrating customer service, poor documentation, or anything requiring patience, self-control, or intense concentration on the tool could be stealing resources from learning, practice, and becoming badass at the thing they really care about: the context.
The Zeigarnik Effect means cognitive resources are being consumed in the background while you're doing other things. The more open/unfinished tasks that are running in the background, the less resources are available for focusing, practicing, and learning.
[Marketing materials focus on the compelling context, while remaining easy to understand. Learning content focuses on the tool, and the dry or hard to read material gets interpreted by the brain as spam.]
[Asking "Why?", "So what?, and "Who cares?" can help reframe unfocused material so that the brain says "worthy".]
[Easier for their brain is good, but less is better: is that element truly necessary?]
[Help them move from "can't do" to "can with effort" to "effortless mastery", ideally skipping the second step.]
[Help them practice toward better outcomes by designing exercises that bring them within a session or two to 95% reliability for a small skill or task.]
[Through perceptual exposure, your brain is learning without telling you what it learned.]
[Good perceptual exposure training needs lots of high quality examples that seem different on the surface but aren't.]
[Ideally, the exercises don't explain but enables the learner's brain to "discover" a pattern.]
[A common theme when newbies get derailed is that they can't express their frustration to the product maker. You can at least acknowledge their experience and encourage them to continue or hint at what could make progress easier; tell them the struggle is normal and that it's part of getting started.]
[The manual's sin is not complexity but making people feel like they're idiots for not understanding.]
[Anticipate the faces they're likely to make and compensate for their inability to show you.]
[Find what needs compensating by looking in the top comments in discussion groups for the tool or its larger more compelling context.]
[Design a performance path with skills that motivate them towards mastery can also magnetize them away from derailers. Use existing paths based on training programs, discussion forums, or definitive guides. If you create a path, order skills from beginner (less time/effort) to expert and group by rank.]
[They need to believe they'll improve, then actually improve, and also realize they've improved.]
[The first thirty minutes is a critical period to support them doing something new or that they didn't know they could do: their first superpower.]
[If they're worried about breaking something, they'll hesitate to touch anything. Make recovery easy. Help them feel free to just try things. Consider it a "Wild Experimentation Mode".]
["This product is awesome" really means "I'm awesome".]
[Most focus on product quality before quality of user results.]
[Businesses claim "world-class service" for their customers, but their customers are likely more interested in being a "world-class customer".]
[Make a better master rather than a better tool.]
[The post-UX UX of results begins after the clicking is done. What does it now enable them to do or show or say? How are they more powerful?]
[Substitute "How can we succeed at X?" with "How can our users or their users succeed at X?"]
[Imagine a scenario where your users are out-performing your competitions users in the bigger context.]
[Your price represents not just the product but also the documentation, support, and future roadmap.]
[Sage accounting software sucks, but you buy reliability in knowing it will update for new tax laws, your bookkeeper's likely familiarity with the product, and the support of staff who respond to forty thousand callers a day.]
[Black and Decker introduced their DeWALT drill series by giving away pulled pork sandwiches and holding drill-off competitions at construction sites, and being present at rodeos and NASCAR races where their end users hang out.]
[The goal of having multiple versions at different prices is to be capable of selling to customers with different maximum thresholds. Versions could be created based on features, earlier access, economic demographics (students, hobbyists, professionals), geography, customer industries, platform (Apple users may pay more).]
[An app might be lower-priced in a country whose currency is lower-valued, but localized in their language which renders it useless to those in countries with higher-value currency.]
[A 'jumbo' size with zero sales will increase sales for the 'large'.]
This effect makes the newsrack and the traffic light interactive; the newsrack, the newspapers on it, the money going from people's pockets to the dime slot, the people who stop at the light and read papers, the traffic light, the electric impulses which make the lights change, and the sidewalk which the people stand on form a system - they all work together.
the urban taxi can function only because pedestrians and vehicles are not strictly separated. The cruising taxi needs a fast stream of traffic so that it can cover a large area to be sure of finding a passenger. The pedestrian needs to be able to hail the taxi from any point in the pedestrian world, and to be able to get out to any part of the pedestrian world to which he wants to go. The system which contains the taxicabs needs to overlap both the fast vehicular traffic system and the system of pedestrian circulation.
The playground, asphalted and fenced in, is nothing but a pictorial acknowledgment of the fact that 'play' exists as an isolated concept in our minds. It has nothing to do with the life of play itself. Few self-respecting children will even play in a playground.
[In a natural city, play happens in a thousand places within the cracks of adult life. Children become full of their surroundings through play, unless they're in a fenced-off cage.]
[Putting a concert hall beside an opera house is almost never practical to either audience, and only a consequence of that simple-minded part of us which puts things with the same name in the same basket.]
[Theories describing leadership by 'government' rather than 'governments' expect it will rush to the rescue whenever the market 'fails' and rely on economists to advise when and how, without any concept of private individuals to solve collective problems among themselves.]
