4 ms·

The essay describes a 2x2 grid with axes of generality and surprise. Things that are suprising and general are valuable. Things that are general but unsurprisin

The essay describes a 2x2 grid with axes of generality and surprise. Things that are suprising and general are valuable. Things that are general but unsurprising are platitudes, and things that are specific but surprising are gossip. The essay itself is a platitude.

zaptheimpaler 9y ago
Brutal but accurate summary! I get the feeling there is something he is not (or cannot) saying that prompted the essay.
- Kluny 9y ago
  Yeah, it has a bit of a vaguebooking feel!
  - mattacular 9y ago
    I can't see the exact published date but it strikes me as a rebuff to critics of the iPhone X unveil
bambax 9y ago
It misses an important element that may seem obvious but isn't: truth. Some insights are indeed, general and surprising, but when examined closely, turn out to be false. That's what happened to many of the ideas presented by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, fast and slow. He obviously aimed for "general and surprising" but accepted as solid results the outcome of lone, irreproducible experiments. We (our current culture -- it wasn't always like that) love originality and "surprises", but as a rule, the more surprising the result, the more scrutiny it should withstand.
- tlb 9y ago
  Circulating ideas where people disagree about whether or not they're true is an excellent way to discover things. Not just whether the particular ideas true, but why or why not, and where the uncertainty comes from. In your example, perhaps the most lasting value of priming studies is a much greater understanding of how p-hacking actually misleads us. Everyone knew that it could in theory, but it was general and surprising that entire fields could have an apparent scientific consensus entirely based on p-hacking and file drawer effects.
  - bambax 9y ago
    Maybe we will learn... but maybe not. From Daniel Kahneman himself: > there is a special irony in my mistake because the first paper that Amos Tversky and I published was about the belief in the “law of small numbers,” which allows researchers to trust the results of underpowered studies with unreasonably small samples. (...) Our article was written in 1969 and published in 1971, but I failed to internalize its message. We simply want to believe.
nopinsight 9y ago
What you describe is the setup. The key point of the essay lies in the later part about the delta of novelty and how useful an insight can be in relation to its novelty and generality.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Which is a pretty banal conclusion that stems right from the setup.
rdlecler1 9y ago
I saw this essay as a process to come up with an interesting idea. He's even applying this process to the essay itself. Start with something general and iterate until you find something novel. Maybe he's there, maybe something is not quite right but it's another step in the gradient ascent random walk.
jamesrcole 9y ago
You don't say why that is meant to make it a platitude. Why?
patio11 9y ago
I think "Repeating close variations on your usual theme unlocks far more value than you'd expect given minimal novelty value" is a surprising result. I utterly buy it. The advice I give which has produced the single biggest deltas in outcomes is "Charge more." It is so simple that I could literally print it on T-shirts and wear it to any event which discusses pricing. People know it is my catchphrase and sometimes I get knowing laughter when I say it... ... and then a few minutes later they've agreed to try charging more, despite having an accurate model which suggests "Hah, I bet when we ask Patrick about our new pricing he is going to ask us what it is, think about it for less than five seconds, and then suggest charging more." They knew what I'd say before I even got in the room, but even the tiniest marginal connection to their own pricing grid / customers / data pushes them to actually try it.
- le-mark 9y ago
  > think "Repeating close variations on your usual theme unlocks far more value than you'd expect given minimal novelty value" is a surprising result. I utterly buy it. I was hoping for an example, but your example of repeating your catch phrase doesn't quite fit imo. There's no variation. Is there a variation of your catch phrase or message you're not mentioning here?
  - jacalata 9y ago
    I think the variation at each point is that he says "charge more because (some detail about the askers customers/costs/business model)".
- Gracana 9y ago
  Are you actually surprised (isn't that just "practice makes perfect", a platitude), or is "more value than you'd expect" just telling you to be surprised?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

zaptheimpaler 9y ago

Brutal but accurate summary! I get the feeling there is something he is not (or cannot) saying that prompted the essay.

Kluny 9y ago
Yeah, it has a bit of a vaguebooking feel!
- mattacular 9y ago
  I can't see the exact published date but it strikes me as a rebuff to critics of the iPhone X unveil

bambax 9y ago

It misses an important element that may seem obvious but isn't: truth. Some insights are indeed, general and surprising, but when examined closely, turn out to be false. That's what happened to many of the ideas presented by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, fast and slow. He obviously aimed for "general and surprising" but accepted as solid results the outcome of lone, irreproducible experiments. We (our current culture -- it wasn't always like that) love originality and "surprises", but as a rule, the more surprising the result, the more scrutiny it should withstand.

tlb 9y ago
Circulating ideas where people disagree about whether or not they're true is an excellent way to discover things. Not just whether the particular ideas true, but why or why not, and where the uncertainty comes from. In your example, perhaps the most lasting value of priming studies is a much greater understanding of how p-hacking actually misleads us. Everyone knew that it could in theory, but it was general and surprising that entire fields could have an apparent scientific consensus entirely based on p-hacking and file drawer effects.
- bambax 9y ago
  Maybe we will learn... but maybe not. From Daniel Kahneman himself: > there is a special irony in my mistake because the first paper that Amos Tversky and I published was about the belief in the “law of small numbers,” which allows researchers to trust the results of underpowered studies with unreasonably small samples. (...) Our article was written in 1969 and published in 1971, but I failed to internalize its message. We simply want to believe.

nopinsight 9y ago

What you describe is the setup. The key point of the essay lies in the later part about the delta of novelty and how useful an insight can be in relation to its novelty and generality.

coldtea 9y ago
Which is a pretty banal conclusion that stems right from the setup.

rdlecler1 9y ago

I saw this essay as a process to come up with an interesting idea. He's even applying this process to the essay itself. Start with something general and iterate until you find something novel. Maybe he's there, maybe something is not quite right but it's another step in the gradient ascent random walk.

jamesrcole 9y ago

You don't say why that is meant to make it a platitude. Why?

patio11 9y ago

I think "Repeating close variations on your usual theme unlocks far more value than you'd expect given minimal novelty value" is a surprising result. I utterly buy it. The advice I give which has produced the single biggest deltas in outcomes is "Charge more." It is so simple that I could literally print it on T-shirts and wear it to any event which discusses pricing. People know it is my catchphrase and sometimes I get knowing laughter when I say it... ... and then a few minutes later they've agreed to try charging more, despite having an accurate model which suggests "Hah, I bet when we ask Patrick about our new pricing he is going to ask us what it is, think about it for less than five seconds, and then suggest charging more." They knew what I'd say before I even got in the room, but even the tiniest marginal connection to their own pricing grid / customers / data pushes them to actually try it.

le-mark 9y ago
> think "Repeating close variations on your usual theme unlocks far more value than you'd expect given minimal novelty value" is a surprising result. I utterly buy it. I was hoping for an example, but your example of repeating your catch phrase doesn't quite fit imo. There's no variation. Is there a variation of your catch phrase or message you're not mentioning here?
- jacalata 9y ago
  I think the variation at each point is that he says "charge more because (some detail about the askers customers/costs/business model)".
Gracana 9y ago
Are you actually surprised (isn't that just "practice makes perfect", a platitude), or is "more value than you'd expect" just telling you to be surprised?

deleted 9y ago

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