3 ms·

Is this the earliest know document written by GPT-3? Because Taleb writes to not be understood (which would bring scrutiny) It's hard to know exactly what it's

Is this the earliest know document written by GPT-3? Because Taleb writes to not be understood (which would bring scrutiny) It's hard to know exactly what it's saying but take 2. for instance. It doesn't explain how to make this actionable. If I understand it correctly, Paul Graham famously wrote about this a few months earlier in English - http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html (Ironically using Taleb's 'Swan'). It's not great at answers either, but at least it's understandable. How do you action 3. ? It's just a clever way to say you might have to pivot, I think? Things have costs. Being open to pivoting has a cost. Of course no cost pivoting is a no-brainer, like the numberless graphs. But in the real world with costs what do you do?

yablak 6y ago
Reading between the lines, it sounds like what you should do is make it as easy as possible to pivot early in your research process... Lowering the temperature and increasing the activation energy over time as you find the black swan. Concretely: * Socialize that you plan to frequently reevaluate and that don't get too attached to an idea * Don't spend time automating while you're just testing ideas out * When you do automate, make sure it's there so the cost of switching to a new idea is as close to 0 as possible.
sooheon 6y ago
It's an essay against the common pattern of "architecting expensive highways to the destination" (teleological) as opposed to "cheap meandering towards payoffs" (convexity, optionality). > Things have costs. Being open to pivoting has a cost. Of course no cost pivoting is a no-brainer, like the numberless graphs. But in the real world with costs what do you do? The first is to avoid voluntary teleological ("I know where we're going and how we're going to get there, and here's the itemized budget for the next 3 years") costs.

yablak 6y ago

Reading between the lines, it sounds like what you should do is make it as easy as possible to pivot early in your research process... Lowering the temperature and increasing the activation energy over time as you find the black swan. Concretely: * Socialize that you plan to frequently reevaluate and that don't get too attached to an idea * Don't spend time automating while you're just testing ideas out * When you do automate, make sure it's there so the cost of switching to a new idea is as close to 0 as possible.

sooheon 6y ago

It's an essay against the common pattern of "architecting expensive highways to the destination" (teleological) as opposed to "cheap meandering towards payoffs" (convexity, optionality). > Things have costs. Being open to pivoting has a cost. Of course no cost pivoting is a no-brainer, like the numberless graphs. But in the real world with costs what do you do? The first is to avoid voluntary teleological ("I know where we're going and how we're going to get there, and here's the itemized budget for the next 3 years") costs.