Interesting Stuff from the Internet
Videos here cover various topics in math or adjacent fields like physics and CS, all emphasizing visualizing the core ideas. The goal is to use animation to help elucidate and motivate otherwise tricky topics and simplify difficult problems with changes in perspective.
The Egg (galactanet.com) by Andy Weir - An excellent Short Story
Is Bacteria The Future Of Farming? (noemamag.com)
The article "Making ‘Food Out Of Thin Air’" explores the innovative approach of Solar Foods, a Finnish startup that produces protein from bacteria fermentation. Located in Vantaa, near Helsinki, the company's factory uses hydrogen, ammonium, oxygen, and carbon dioxide to grow a bacterium that produces a high-protein substance called Solein. This protein can be used as an ingredient in various foods, providing nutritional benefits and reducing the need for animal-based farming.
The process, inspired by a 1964 NASA proposal, aims to address global food insecurity and reduce the environmental impact of traditional agriculture. Solar Foods' CEO, Pasi Vainikka, and CTO, Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, envision a future where precision fermentation replaces inefficient farming practices, contributing to climate goals without disrupting cultural heritage.
The article highlights the challenges and potential of this technology, noting that while it is not a silver bullet, it represents a significant step toward sustainable food production. Solar Foods has raised substantial funding and plans to go public, aiming to scale up production and gain regulatory approval in various markets. The company's achievements demonstrate the potential for innovative solutions to address the pressing needs of our changing world.
Change in population between 2020 and 2023 by state [OC] : r/dataisbeautiful (reddit.com)
Photographing one of the most remote places on Earth (bbc.com)
The article "Photographing one of the most remote places on Earth" by Kevin Hall, published on BBC Travel, recounts the author's journey to Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland, one of the most isolated communities in the Western Hemisphere. The article provides insights into the unique lifestyle and challenges faced by the villagers, as well as the author's experiences during his photographic expedition. Ittoqqortoormiit is situated above the Arctic Circle and is 800 km from the nearest town. It is inaccessible by road and can only be reached by helicopter, boat, snowmobile, or a limited number of flights. The village, which will celebrate its centenary in 2025, has a population of 370 people, but it has been shrinking as young people migrate to cities. The inhabitants rely on traditional hunting methods and dog sleds for transportation. The article discusses how rising temperatures are affecting the sea ice, which is crucial for the Inuit's traditional hunting practices. This change is threatening the community's culture and way of life.
Snippets from the Newsletters/ Newspapers/ Books
SITALweek
a) “Mr. Market” Myth
I continue to see otherwise intelligent investors cling to the idea of a “Mr. Market”that drives stocks. There is no value in imagining agency of any type behind the stock market whether it be human, an animal spirit, or some other type of alien-like intelligence, given that valuations are set by the complex interactions between algorithms, AI, and the dwindling cohort of human investors, who are themselves largely mind controlled by algorithms and AI. While some people might be willing to agree that what I state here is true in the short-term, “voting machine” nature of the stock market, most investors will push back and say that, in the long term, the “weighing machine” still sets the value of an asset relative to its current and prospective free cash flows. I, however, believe the weighing machine is broken as well. I wrote more about this notion in early 2023 in Vanishing Edges:
Only one-third of active mutual fund managers beat their market benchmarks in Q1 of 2023, according to the WSJ. Bill Miller has often articulated three sources of advantage an investor can have over the broader market: informational, analytical, and behavioral. Miller provides more detail in this letter, but, briefly, I interpret the framework as follows: an information edge is knowing something before others; an analytical edge is having similar information but coming to a different conclusion; and a behavioral edge is acting differently than others despite a similar analysis of similar information. From my perspective, the opportunity for an informational advantage began declining with the onset of the Information Age in the 1980s. Today, thanks to the Internet and ubiquitous access to real-time data (not to mention podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.), I would posit that today there is essentially zero value in investors seeking an informational edge. Analytical strategies to beat the market rose to prominence in the mid part of the last century. I would point to the classic Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd (first published in 1934) as a hallmark for the use of analytical methods to gain an edge over the market. I suspect analytical advantages rose over time (perhaps even fed by the rising use of technology and availability of information), but then they too began to lose value as the machines took over and algorithmic and quantitative strategies rose in both prominence and share of assets, arbitraging away many seeming advantages. LLMs and AI will soon relegate whatever meager analytical edge remains to the refuse heap of ticker tape machines and other investing anachronisms. What then of the last source of advantage, behavioral? Miller’s framework has historically described a behavioral edge as taking advantage of the biases of other humans. That human-focused perspective becomes complicated as passive investing steers past 50% share, and daily market activity is increasingly a reflexive, hyper feedback loop between machines and machine-created information and algorithms. It’s one thing to have a theory of mind for other humans and then to try to take advantage of their biases, it’s quite another thing to have a theory of mind for AI when we don’t even fully know how emergent behavior works in LLMs. Even if we were to recognize that behavioral advantage has shifted from overcoming human bias to overcoming machine bias, soon AI and LLMs will be smart enough to eliminate Miller’s final edge...Investing has been one of the earliest professions to be heavily impacted by evolving technology, probably because stock trading is digital and largely information based (the more digital an industry, the more it is susceptible to technological disruption). We would apply the same lens to investment firms and investment strategies that we apply to any company or industry we analyze: the winners will be the most adaptable organizations that offer the most non-zero-sum outcomes. It’s not entirely clear what the path forward is for professional investors whose goal is to consistently beat the market, but it’s worthwhile to think deeply about the areas to which humans can still uniquely contribute and those that would benefit from adept implementation of AI.
b) Startups Power Down
As VCs chase shiny, new AI startups, they are leaving their old investments with a shorter runway. Carta, a provider of services for venture-backed companies, has seen the failure rate of its customers rise 7x from 2019(and 5x from 2021) to 254 in the first quarter of 2024. Of course, enlargement of the starting pool is one reason for the failure number uptick, with more startups funded during the pandemic capital bubble. BI also reports that family offices are increasingly investing in venture-backed companies directly in addition to routing their money through venture funds. As I wrote in Private Asset Malaise, there could be broader trends at play following a decades-long private asset price bubble.
The number of so-called 401(k) ‘millionaires’ rose to a new record high in the second quarter, according to a new data analysis released Wednesday by Fidelity Investments, which based its conclusions on 24 million 401(k) accounts across the 26,000 employer-sponsored plans that it administers.
As of June 30, nearly half a million 401(k) accounts (497,000) had balances of $1 million or more, up 2.5% from the prior quarter. The average balance hit $1,595,200, up from $1,581,00 at the end of March, according to Fidelity’s data.
The bad news: Among all Gen Xers with a 401(k), regardless of how long they’ve saved, the average balance was $182,100. And the median balance — which marks the point at which half of 401(k) balances are lower — was just $55,500, according to Fidelity.
Aldous Huxley on approaching life with lightness, even in the face of difficulty:
"It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it's the best advice ever given me... So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly."
In Fooled by Randomness, author and Black Swan-spotter Nassim Taleb points out that an investor in Russian or Chinese companies at the start of the 20th Century who suffered a complete wipeout would tell a rather different tale about ‘investing for the long term’ than the Americans who write all the investing books. France was a society as advanced as any on the planet, yet deliberate government policy choices ruined its stock market. The same could happen anywhere, even in the US.
Researchers from the University of Oxford predict that up to 40% of household chores will be automated within the next ten years.
Gish gallop - Wikipedia
The Gish gallop (/ˈɡɪʃ ˈɡæləp/) is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality.
In One Piece, a bunch of the characters have miraculous powers, and the main guy does too, but he also has the greatest superpower of all: his enthusiasm for his mission turns everyone around him into an ally in his quest.
“It’s amazing if you have a vision, but what’s your first step?” He said, noting that General Magic ultimately had a grand vision, but it couldn’t keep hubris in check.
“Take all of that energy you have, the idea that you can punch a hole in the universe…but keep the product relevant and have people around you that aren’t just cheerleaders.”
“The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.” ― David Ogilvy
“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.” ― David Ogilvy
“Never allow two people to do a job which one could do. George Washington observed, ‘Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by close application thereto, it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.” ― David Ogilvy