6 ms·

This is amazing. I think the quantified self movement is going to be huge. With more personal tracking gadgets (fitbit, jawbone, nike fuel), measurements are go

by siavosh 15y ago

This is amazing. I think the quantified self movement is going to be huge. With more personal tracking gadgets (fitbit, jawbone, nike fuel), measurements are going to become more and more seamless, passive, and complete. Not only will you get historical insights into your blind habits, but you can finally have an objective feedback loop on your behavior, and make necessary adjustments. But one of the biggest challenges is going to be privacy...

gwern 15y ago
It is pretty amazing, but in a way, Wolfram is also demonstrating how not to do Quantified Self: the point is not stamp-collecting, but data-collecting + experimentation + analysis. Right now, Wolfram has maybe #1 and #3, but he doesn't have any of #2, and he doesn't seem to really appreciate this: > And as I think about it all, I suppose my greatest regret is that I did not start collecting more data earlier. Hopefully he can change that. For example, his observation about the 7% use of the backspace key is an obvious one. If he eliminated backspace entirely, he could speed up typing by as much as that much - nontrivial given how much time he apparently spends on email! An experiment would be using some typing tutor program for a few months and seeing whether the keylogging notes a decrease in backspace.
- siavosh 15y ago
  Good point. When I saw his email volume, I wondered how I would feel looking about at an entire decade and seeing how much time I spent on emails. I'd probably feel a lot of regret. But like you're saying the point of QS shouldn't be regret (or novelty), but identifying a 'problem' and fixing it asap.
  - nl 15y ago
    I wondered how I would feel looking about at an entire decade and seeing how much time I spent on emails. I'd probably feel a lot of regret. Why should you feel regret? There is nothing more human than communicating with other people!
- ryanlchan 15y ago
  Every time I see a quantified self visualization like this or the Feltron reports, I can't help but feel that these are incredibly interesting exercises with very little real value. The knowledge of how many key strokes you have in a day or the number of sodas you've drank in a year is little more than mental masturbation without figuring out what real, actionable insights you can act on.
- Drbble 15y ago
  A prediction engine (aka adaptive shorthand, or similar) would give even better ROI than manual practice in standard typing. Why are predictive keyboards so popular on phones but not desktops and laptops?
  - gwern 15y ago
    Do they actually work for coder-style usage? Would I actually be faster in Emacs if I was constantly looking to see what my keyboard had been redefined to this time?
    - Drbble 15y ago
      Intellisense/autocomplete in Eclipse and Vim is the one are of desktop computing where I do get assistance, and it works great. It's not autocorrect, but it's two characters and then tab of crtl-space or whatever and tab or arrow key to the word of my choice.
_delirium 15y ago
I've been doing it in bits for a few years, mostly because I'm a sucker for interesting-looking graphs of data, but imo it's a mixed blessing. I've definitely found interesting trends, but measuring is also something I'm actively conscious of, and, as is often the case, it's hard to measure things without the very fact of measurement changing them. I find myself struggling to avoid falling into the trap of doing or avoiding-to-do things specifically so that they'll show up in the analytics in a certain way that looks nice, which feels like a weird "teaching to the test" but applied to my actual life. Some things I've since stopped tracking because I really disliked the meta-ness of it all.
dgallagher 15y ago
Privacy will be one challenge, but I think seamlessness (as you mentioned) is currently the bigger challenge. I'm a runner, so diet is important. For 9 months I tracked everything I ate. Weighed portions, counted calories, logged everything. The data was insightful. I learned that I need to eat 3,300 calories a day to maintain my weight, with a range of +/- 300 calories. After 9 months I stopped tracking things because it became time-consuming. Partly was because I learned what it "felt" like to be full, but mostly because tracking it all was really annoying. If all of that could be automated somehow, I'd love to have a spreadsheet of data which I could graph and chart. "At 8:16am, you drank 7.8oz of Orange Juice, totalling 108 calories." Cool, my O.J. container and glass measured that automatically, and uploaded it to my database! But right now doing it is extremely manual. All of Wolfram's amazing data comes from some sort of automated system he setup once and never worried about. A pedometer. A script chewing through 20 years of archived emails. That form of automation doesn't exist for many types of data people would like to collect, such as food intake, or blood sugar testing for diabetics. Inventing these non-invasive automated sensors is key for society-wide personal data collecting. Otherwise most data gathering will be sentenced to the dedicated few, rather than the busy many.
- freehunter 15y ago
  My grandparents are diabetic, and I've long imagined an implant that could measure blood sugar levels and report it back when they sit down at the computer or pick up a device. NFC is used in subdermal implants today, it could be done. My grandfather has a pacemaker, perhaps it could be a combined function. The problem would be getting blood samples without actually causing damage to vessels, but I am no medical researcher so I don't know all the hurdles. I agree with you that measuring is the most intensive task of tracking personal statistics. I can enter how many servings I had of what in any fitness tracker website, but what if I had 1.3 servings? What if I had .2 servings (just a taste)? How do you estimate that without measuring it first? And if you're measuring everything on a scale, where has the fun gone in life? What's the difference between medium intensity running vs high or low? If I biked at 15mph it might be medium, but what if I kept that 15mph steady up steep hills? Or what if I kept 15mph down a hill without pedaling? We're built for rough estimates and are amazingly adept at convincing ourselves we're right. I have enough difficulty with time tracking at work either breaking my productivity or cutting into my limited "me" time, and that's just a petty little thing. I usually end up estimating at the end of the week then fixing discrepancies that always come up.
AznHisoka 15y ago
Motivation is also another big challenge. Very few people care about their long-term health, and thus very few will care about tracking their health stats.

by siavosh 15y ago

gwern 15y ago

It is pretty amazing, but in a way, Wolfram is also demonstrating how not to do Quantified Self: the point is not stamp-collecting, but data-collecting + experimentation + analysis. Right now, Wolfram has maybe #1 and #3, but he doesn't have any of #2, and he doesn't seem to really appreciate this: > And as I think about it all, I suppose my greatest regret is that I did not start collecting more data earlier. Hopefully he can change that. For example, his observation about the 7% use of the backspace key is an obvious one. If he eliminated backspace entirely, he could speed up typing by as much as that much - nontrivial given how much time he apparently spends on email! An experiment would be using some typing tutor program for a few months and seeing whether the keylogging notes a decrease in backspace.

siavosh 15y ago
Good point. When I saw his email volume, I wondered how I would feel looking about at an entire decade and seeing how much time I spent on emails. I'd probably feel a lot of regret. But like you're saying the point of QS shouldn't be regret (or novelty), but identifying a 'problem' and fixing it asap.
- nl 15y ago
  I wondered how I would feel looking about at an entire decade and seeing how much time I spent on emails. I'd probably feel a lot of regret. Why should you feel regret? There is nothing more human than communicating with other people!
ryanlchan 15y ago
Every time I see a quantified self visualization like this or the Feltron reports, I can't help but feel that these are incredibly interesting exercises with very little real value. The knowledge of how many key strokes you have in a day or the number of sodas you've drank in a year is little more than mental masturbation without figuring out what real, actionable insights you can act on.
Drbble 15y ago
A prediction engine (aka adaptive shorthand, or similar) would give even better ROI than manual practice in standard typing. Why are predictive keyboards so popular on phones but not desktops and laptops?
- gwern 15y ago
  Do they actually work for coder-style usage? Would I actually be faster in Emacs if I was constantly looking to see what my keyboard had been redefined to this time?
  - Drbble 15y ago
    Intellisense/autocomplete in Eclipse and Vim is the one are of desktop computing where I do get assistance, and it works great. It's not autocorrect, but it's two characters and then tab of crtl-space or whatever and tab or arrow key to the word of my choice.

_delirium 15y ago

I've been doing it in bits for a few years, mostly because I'm a sucker for interesting-looking graphs of data, but imo it's a mixed blessing. I've definitely found interesting trends, but measuring is also something I'm actively conscious of, and, as is often the case, it's hard to measure things without the very fact of measurement changing them. I find myself struggling to avoid falling into the trap of doing or avoiding-to-do things specifically so that they'll show up in the analytics in a certain way that looks nice, which feels like a weird "teaching to the test" but applied to my actual life. Some things I've since stopped tracking because I really disliked the meta-ness of it all.

dgallagher 15y ago

Privacy will be one challenge, but I think seamlessness (as you mentioned) is currently the bigger challenge. I'm a runner, so diet is important. For 9 months I tracked everything I ate. Weighed portions, counted calories, logged everything. The data was insightful. I learned that I need to eat 3,300 calories a day to maintain my weight, with a range of +/- 300 calories. After 9 months I stopped tracking things because it became time-consuming. Partly was because I learned what it "felt" like to be full, but mostly because tracking it all was really annoying. If all of that could be automated somehow, I'd love to have a spreadsheet of data which I could graph and chart. "At 8:16am, you drank 7.8oz of Orange Juice, totalling 108 calories." Cool, my O.J. container and glass measured that automatically, and uploaded it to my database! But right now doing it is extremely manual. All of Wolfram's amazing data comes from some sort of automated system he setup once and never worried about. A pedometer. A script chewing through 20 years of archived emails. That form of automation doesn't exist for many types of data people would like to collect, such as food intake, or blood sugar testing for diabetics. Inventing these non-invasive automated sensors is key for society-wide personal data collecting. Otherwise most data gathering will be sentenced to the dedicated few, rather than the busy many.

freehunter 15y ago
My grandparents are diabetic, and I've long imagined an implant that could measure blood sugar levels and report it back when they sit down at the computer or pick up a device. NFC is used in subdermal implants today, it could be done. My grandfather has a pacemaker, perhaps it could be a combined function. The problem would be getting blood samples without actually causing damage to vessels, but I am no medical researcher so I don't know all the hurdles. I agree with you that measuring is the most intensive task of tracking personal statistics. I can enter how many servings I had of what in any fitness tracker website, but what if I had 1.3 servings? What if I had .2 servings (just a taste)? How do you estimate that without measuring it first? And if you're measuring everything on a scale, where has the fun gone in life? What's the difference between medium intensity running vs high or low? If I biked at 15mph it might be medium, but what if I kept that 15mph steady up steep hills? Or what if I kept 15mph down a hill without pedaling? We're built for rough estimates and are amazingly adept at convincing ourselves we're right. I have enough difficulty with time tracking at work either breaking my productivity or cutting into my limited "me" time, and that's just a petty little thing. I usually end up estimating at the end of the week then fixing discrepancies that always come up.

AznHisoka 15y ago

Motivation is also another big challenge. Very few people care about their long-term health, and thus very few will care about tracking their health stats.