Notices by Logan Dice (logandice@mastodon.social), page 10

What are the most interesting fields to apply CS skills to?

There's a lot of value on the intersection between CS and other fields. You don't want to just learn programming, you want to learn programming + some other field, so that combining them would allow you to solve cool problems, create a lot of value, make profitable startups.

What are some examples of such fields? If you were to apply CS to another field, what are the top 3 fields that would generate the most value?

- IQ (intelligence quotient) - assessment of the mind’s raw horse power.

- RQ (rationality quotient) - assessment of how well the mind’s models map to the real world; a measure of efficiency of the IQ’s application to real problems.

- EQ (emotional quotient) - ability to recognize, label, and deal with emotions.

Brilliant people can be jerks and kooks, empathic people can have wacky ideas about reality, and effective people can have average intelligence.

A local optimum is the best solution in a neighboring set of possible solutions, a global optimum is the optimal solution among all possible solutions.

You can get stuck in local optima when you're making small incremental improvements, but can't see the whole picture. At that point, you can't get better no matter how many small steps forward you take.

If you pick suboptimal career or a startup idea, you need to be willing to backtrack and explore other options.

Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17726345
#hackernews #tech

Idea meritocracy is an environment where the best ideas win.

3 key elements for building an idea meritocracy:

- People are free to speak their mind and say what they really believe

- Information is as transparent as posisble, everyone has access to everything

- Believability-weighted decision making - decision are made weighted by best track record of solving similar problems and have great explanations of their approach.

Apply scientific method to your marketing.

- Form a hypothesis ("changing the call to action will increase the number of signups by 40%")
- Test it (do split testing on 2 pages so you could compare the results)
- Analyze the outcome, use it to adjust hypothesis, come up with more experiments, and get better at predicting the outcomes.

This will make your progress way more strategic and effective. You can come up with multiple hypothesis, and test the most promising ones first.

Evaluating a startup:

https://medium.com/@startuplab/evaluating-a-startup-1e32f182a811

#startup #business #tech

One of the cool things about working at a startup is that it enables you to take on jobs you're not yet qualified for, and learn as you go - which means you'll be able to do exciting things and learn extremely quickly.

Three reasons your work feels exhausting (when it shouldn’t be):

https://medium.com/@startuplab/three-reasons-your-work-feels-exhausting-when-it-shouldnt-be-2c68f8010b82

#startup #programming #writing #productivity

Convergent thinking is following a set of logical steps to arrive at one correct solution.

Divergent thinking is the process of generating as many answers to a question as possible.

Divergent thinking is very useful skill for creativity, because creativity involves generating a lot of possible ideas you can then select from.

Exercises:
- Try to come up with 50 ways to use a paperclip (or another ordinary object)
- Write a chain of associations from a topic
- Generate 10 new ideas every day

Not every change is improvement but every improvement is necessarily change.

Just striving to improve/optimize things using first principles is enough to be original. When you strive to maximize some value you necessarily end up creating something different.

You can't invent an iPhone by asking "How do we make a keyboard better?", you have to ask "What a mobile device should look like?"

What important truths very few smart people agree with you on?

A proximate cause is an event immediately responsible for some outcome, as opposed to the root cause - the ultimate, "real" reason something happened.

To diagnose the real cause, you can use "5 Why's" method.

For example, a problem:
I got a speeding ticket.

- Why?
Was driving too fast. (Proximate cause)

- Why?
Was late for work.

- Why?
Woke up late.

- Why?
Went to sleep late.

- Why?
Watched Netflix whole night. (Root cause)

4 types of innovation:

1. Basic research - making fundamental scientific discoveries.
(Deep Learning, Blockchain)

2. Breakthrough innovation - applying fundamental discoveries and thinking from first principles to engineer new products. (Tesla, SpaceX)

3. Disruptive innovation - finding new applications and business models.
(Uber, YCombinator)

4. Sustaining innovation - gradually improving what already exists, making it better/cheaper. Solving clear problems using preexisting skillsets.

Set goals that are:
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, Time-bound. (SMART)

And:
- Written in present tense.
- Stated in the positive.
- Attached to an identity, or 'self-image'.
- Expansive.

"I will own 30 apartments" (future tense) -> "I own 30 apartments." (present tense) -> "I am the owner of 30 apartments." (identity) -> "I am the owner of 30 or more apartments." (expansive)