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"What’s interesting and, anyway should be concerning, is that for almost every conceivable applied measure we seem to be getting at best constant returns. But t
by pyb 7y ago
"What’s interesting and, anyway should be concerning, is that for almost every conceivable applied measure we seem to be getting at best constant returns. But that’s really bad because we see exponentially increasing inputs and constant return outputs."
Ironically, in terms of innovation, the yearly output of companies such as Facebook and Stripe has seemed somewhat constant, despite those companies getting many orders of magnitude bigger!
Maybe MZ and PC should investigate this issue at their own companies, and perhaps even begin to fix it. After that, they'll be better able to look at fixing innovation in the world at large.
- buboard 7y agoif that were true the companies would have gone bankrupt, but even google keeps increasing its year to year profits.
- mkagenius 7y agoIt is possible that there are low hanging fruits for innovation in the world at large but less so at these companies? So it still might be worthwhile to think about it.
- jonmc12 7y agoI had been listening to some "Game A" vs "Game B" podcasts - Schmachtenberger, Hall (Greenhall), Rutt, etc, just before listening to this podcast. For example: https://soundcloud.com/venturestories/game-b-in-a-silicon-valley https://soundcloud.com/venturestories/game-b-in-a-silicon-va... These thinkers propose a common constraint for stagnant growth in education and medicine: a philosophy of science. There is much more to it, and unfortunately it's not a concise explanation. However, I find this conceptual frame much stronger than the education/medicine problem "commonalities" described by Zuck, Collison and Cowen. Further, the "Game A" insight seems to predict the shortcomings of an applied meta-approach of "the tool-building which comes from having the experience building engineering teams." Game A: ("hill climbing") invest in better microscopy tools, even though "right now, the actual technology of microscopes is ahead of scientists’ ability to process the data". Game B: ("valley crossing") invest in a philosophy of science to better understand complexity management, causality and sense-making in the domains of education and medicine. "And as engineers.. you really want to get into the code and step through it to see where the thing is breaking down" (Zuck). But whats 'broken' at FB? is it a server infrastructure? monetization? or is it interpersonal psychology of user relationships? Mistaking our tools' observation for reality, and optimizing for only what we can measure can build profits, but it has limits to make sense of complexity - and undefined/unmanaged complexity is common to the nature of education/medicine problems.
- t_serpico 7y agoWhat exactly does it mean to invest in a 'philosophy of science'? I broadly interpret that as efforts geared towards gaining a big picture understanding of a problem, its subproblems, and interdependencies.
- scarejunba 7y agoIf I could be a shareholder of the things they're talking about (CA HSR / NY MTA / non-HHMI scientists), I would be better served by switching to Facebook or (if they were public) Stripe. Facebook, especially, with the Oculus stuff, their tech stuff (React, Thrift, etc.), Instagram. They're damned good. No way around it. Facebook is absolutely on top of things.