Tag: ideas

In Praise of Jessica Hagy

This is the latest post from Jessica Hagy, and I’m really hoping you’re asking “Who she?”, because that’s what today’s post is all about.

As we come to the end of the year, I want to spend some time thinking about what I learnt (and what I didn’t learn) this year, and utilize my regrets from this year to try and make the next one better. But I also want to try and spend some time reflecting on a rather niche topic. Blogs that I have enjoyed reading for many, many years – and those that I would like to share with you.

I may come across as being ever so slightly biased, given that you are reading this on my blog, but I do wish more people would blog. I’ve touched upon this topic many times in the past, and will no doubt talk about it in the future as well. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, here goes: creating something on a daily basis becomes a superpower over time.

And especially relevant to today’s post is the choice of verb in the last part of that last sentence: creating. A blog need not be about writing everyday, and Jessica’s isn’t. But this, counterintuitively, is what makes it so very powerful.

Jessica draws ideas.

I cannot tell you how much I envy her ability to do this. I prefer to think in words (if that makes any sense). If somebody asks me to explain something, I much prefer to think and speak using words and sentences, and I think I am reasonably good at coming up with an analogy that helps people understand the point I am trying to make. Or given that I teach for a living, I hope that is the case!

But Jessica? She explains ideas by drawing ’em.

If you’re looking for an example, ask yourself how I might explain the concept of, say, complements and substitutes. I might write an explainer post, or I might ask you to think about one of my all-time favorite metaphors (created by Steve Jobs), or I might long and tedious ruminations on AI and human creativity.

Jessica? She believes in the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words:

https://thisisindexed.com/2022/12/diversify-or-cannibalize/

If you think of yourself and AI as having duplicate skills, there is going to be competition between you and the AI. But if you can think of yourself and AI as having complementary skills, you are likely to make a powerful team. I have said the exact same thing that she did (in the context of my example), but there is no question about the fact that she said it much more pithily, and therefore better.

How to express an idea so that it reasonates? How to express an idea so that its applicability becomes clear within a domain? How to express an idea so that people understand that it is applicable across domains? These are questions I think about literally all the time as a teacher, and as with everybody else in this profession, I don’t always get the right answer while teaching.

All the more reason to admire folks who do get the answers to these questions, and have been doing so for much more than a decade(!). Yup, that’s right – Jessica’s blog has been around for a very long time, and scrolling down her seemingly infinte blogposts with a cup of coffee for company (or, if you like, as a complement) is a wonderful way to spend an hour or ten. Llook out for her entry from the 5th of December 2022 if you plan to do this today, and elt me know if you liked it as much as I did.

Jessica has books out, including one that I’m especially looking forward to reading, called The Art of War Visualized. Another of her books is an extension of a lovely little series of sketches that she drew for Forbes, called How to be Interesting. You could, in fact, think of this post as an application of her second drawing/point in that series.

This is her info page, this is the About page from her blog, this is her Twitter account, and this is her Wikipedia entry. Finally, this is her Amazon author page.

If you have found out about her work through this post, I hope you consider subscribing to her work, and I hope you enjoy learning from it as much I have. And I hope you join in me in thanking her for making the world that little bit clearer, and therefore better.

Thank you!

Notes from Launching the Innovation Resistance by Alex Tabarrok

After Murali’s talk in Gokhale Institute the previous week, I got around to reading this book. What follows are some of the highlights from my reading of the book on Kindle, along with a quick review of the book.

Key takeaways (for me):

  1. Alex Tabarrok ends his own post on the book over on MR by saying “although we share a few common themes that perhaps due to differences in personality Tyler focuses on describing problems while I am more excited to promote solutions!”
    That comes through in both the title of the book as well as what I think is they key question for Tabarrok: “What combination of incentives and foundation will bring the greatest innovation to the modern world? How can we create a 21st-century Renaissance?”
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  2. “But there is also a more fundamental critique: After hundreds of years of experience, there is surprisingly little evidence that patents actually do promote the progress of science and the useful arts.”
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    This has been an eye-opener for me: both from Murali’s talk as well as this book. There just isn’t that much evidence that patents have worked.
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  3. “Firms innovate because they know that if they don’t, someone else will. In this kind of industry, instead of stimulating innovation strong patents may create a “resting on laurels” effect. A firm with strong patents may reduce innovation, secure in the knowledge that patents protect it.”
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    And it may actually be even worse! Patents may actually discourage innovation, let alone protect it.
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  4. “Overall, however, the ODA did create real innovation, and as the number of new drugs for rare diseases increased, the mortality rate for people with rare diseases fell.”
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    The Orphan Drug Act seems to have been one of the few things that can be used as an argument in favor of patenting.
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  5. “When asked to rate various sources of competitive advantage only 4 percent of corporate managers regarded patents as highly effective. Much more effective was getting a head start, learning by doing, and investing in complementary sales and service.”
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    ..and…
    “The aircraft patent-war slowed innovation in the American aircraft industry so much that just prior to World War I the government forced the industry to share its patents for reasons of national security.”
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    …were real eye-openers for me
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  6. So what might be the solution, if not patents?
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    “The major vice of a prize fund is that it replaces a decentralized process for rewarding innovation with a political process.” In this regard, you might want to read this book, by Peter Diamandis
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  7. “I see two views of humanity. In the first view, people are stomachs. More people mean more eaters and less for everyone else. In the second view, people are brains. More brains mean more ideas and more for everyone else.”
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    And patents, of course, are a way to restrict ideas.
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  8. “From Florence in the 14th century to Great Britain in the 19th and the United States in the 20th, the leading economic power has always been a leading educational power.”
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    Alex Tabarrok goes on to speak about the usual econometrician’s worries about a statement like that, but all that notwithstanding, this is exactly why India’s education standards (outcomes?) need to be way higher.

 

Overall, definitely recommended.

Links for 16th April, 2019

  1. ““Wow, they really train you over there,” our father said. In the weeks since her release, he had become a champion government booster, missing no opportunity to point out to Lulu how nicely the roads had been paved since she’d left, how grand the malls were that had been built. “There are so many opportunities for young people now,” he said. It was a new tic of his, and it grated. Earlier that day, as we strolled the neighborhood, he’d taken the chance to point out a set of recently upgraded public toilets across the way. “They even installed a little room where the sanitation workers can rest,” he said. “It has heating and everything. You see what good care they take of all the workers now?””
    A tale of what happens if you happen to against the authorities in our big neighbor to the east. Sobering reading.
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  2. “Friends and relatives in other parts of the developed world tell me that many of these services and speed are unique to India. While we were busy cribbing in India, a huge shift happened in the last 10-15 years in services—both public and private—that we’ve failed to notice. A mix of technology, cheap labour and super competitive firms have unleashed this service boom in the private sector. Technology, political will (across parties and governments) and the failure of the human government interface in public services has driven the public service boom. Just on the services metric, India will soon plunge ahead of most of the developed world. Take a moment and reflect on how far we’ve come in just a decade.”
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    Meanwhile, Monika Halan points out how much things have improved here, in India.
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  3. “And it reinforced a change in mind-set that already was bubbling up from Chinese urban planners—one that then got ratified in a startling way. In 2016 the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council, the highest organs of the state, issued a decree: From now on Chinese cities were to preserve farmland and their own heritage; have smaller, unfenced blocks and narrower, pedestrian-friendly streets; develop around public transit; and so on. In 2017 the guidelines were translated into a manual for Chinese planners called Emerald Cities. Calthorpe Associates wrote most of it.”
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    There is much to excerpt from this article about how urbanization is changing, taking root and improving (mostly) the world over. A great bird’s eye view to urbanization in various parts of the world today.
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  4. “A brief description of Lambda School for the uninitiated: A live, fully online school that trains people to become software engineers, data scientists and designers which is free until you get a job. Instead, students pay a percentage of their income each year after they’re employed, the maximum of which is capped at $30k.”
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    Rahul Ramchandani explains what Lambda School is, in case you haven’t heard of it before. Also a good article to learn about Bloom’s 2 sigma problem.
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  5. “But remember: gravity was considered creepy occult pseudoscience by its early enemies. It subjected the earth and the heavens to the same law, which shocked 17th century sensibilities the same way trying to link consciousness and matter would today. It postulated that objects could act on each other through invisible forces at a distance, which was equally outside the contemporaneous Overton Window. Newton’s exceptional genius, his exceptional ability to think outside all relevant boxes, and his exceptionally egregious mistakes are all the same phenomenon (plus or minus a little mercury).”
    In praise of having bad ideas, and how one bad idea (or even a few of ’em), shouldn’t really define a person for you.