edanm

Karma: 467

edanm Apr 1, 2014, 7:43 AM
0 points
in reply to: ArisKatsaris’s comment on: April 2014 Media Thread
Just finished Brandon Sanderson’s book “Words of Radiance”. It is the 2nd book in a (projected) 10-book series, and came out last month.

I thought it was a wonderful book. It developed the story from “The Way of Kings”, some parts in obvious ways, but also in some new and unexpected ways. The world that Sanderson developed for this series is clearly huge, with many different actors and sub-stories going on.

Also, one sub-story in particular was very fun for me as an LW’er. I’m talking about: Gneninatvna, naq uvf VD punatvat rirel qnl (rot 13′ed).

Btw, I love Brandon Sanderson’s work. It combines very “realistic” magic systems with awesome characters, and an epic back-story. I highly recommend reading the Mistborn trilogy, I consider it the finest fantasy work around.

edanm Feb 7, 2014, 7:48 PM
1 point
on: Salary or startup? How do-gooders can gain more from risky careers
The biggest problem I have with this thinking is that it’s a false dichotomy—it’s not “Salary or startup” at all, and the fact that most young software professionals see those 2 as their only options saddens me.

There are plenty of other routes to go—freelancing, for one, which done well can give both higher earning potential, as well as more flexibility in terms of how much money you can earn. An effective altruist may well decide to work slightly longer hours for more money, something that isn’t as possible in a normal salaried position.

Another option is starting a consulting practice (e.g. what I do), again, I’m still early in this game but it may well offer a higher expected value. (Or not—I don’t have figures).

Another option is to start a small bootstrapped product company. If your aim is simply to maximise your personal cash in order to donate it, small non-VC product companies have a lot of merit—I think (again, no real proof and totally anecdotally) that their expected value is higher. And if you’re into maximising expected value irregardless of how, this may make sense, even if a small product may have less chance of “changing the world” (one of the reasons that it’s more likely to succeed).

I’m just saying, there are plenty of options besides being a salaried employee or taking VC money, and money of them seem to be better, on the whole, especially for young software professionals who could use to run a real business and gain valuable information on how running a business looks like.

edanm Feb 2, 2014, 3:48 PM
4 points
on: How can I spend money to improve my life?
General information-getting (most of this is general “stuff I recommend to anyone”, but some of it does require money):
- Get a Kindle. Easily worth its price, if you can afford it.
- Get books. Much easier to get buy them from Amazon than getting them from anywhere else.
- Make a subscription to Audible.com and start listening to Audiobooks. Incredible life improvement to be able to turn moments I’m otherwise not mentally occupied, with more time to read.
- Get stereo bluetooth headphones. These are headphones you can easily stick in a pocket, turn on quickly and start listening to your audiobook. Makes the experience of audiobooks MUCH better.
Some other obvious stuff:
- Turn money into time. Hire a cleaner/others to do chores you don’t want (laundry service that picks stuff up form your house? etc.)
- Hell, you can probably hire a chef or equivalent to cook great and healthy meals.
- Use taxis/other expensive but time-saving choices for travel.
Oh, and in general, live closer to your job. Incredibly important, easier to achieve with money.

I’ve just scratched the surface for now, but that’s off the top of my head.

edanm Feb 1, 2014, 7:00 AM
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open thread, January 25- February 1
1. People can change (e.g. update on beliefs, self-improve).
2. How to choose your actions—think about your goals, think what steps achieve them in the best way, act on those steps.
3. There is such a thing as objective truth.
Amazing how the basic pillars of rationality are things other people so often don’t agree with, even though they seem so dead obvious to me.

edanm Jan 25, 2014, 9:18 PM
0 points
in reply to: Manfred’s comment on: Open thread, January 25- February 1
IS this a good book to start with? I know it’s the standard “Bayes” intro around here, but is it good for someone with, let’s say, zero formal probability/statistics training?

edanm Jan 20, 2014, 7:37 PM
13 points
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: Why don’t more rationalists start startups?
I agree with VAuroch that this won’t help much, because in general taking the inside view is a bad idea.

But if you want a few examples of places you’ve gone wrong—both getting a good idea, and executing a business, any business, are much harder than you imagine. For example, you wrote:

“Failure to think specifically about benefits.” “The big issue here is the first bullet point. As spelled out by Eliezer’s article, people are horrible at thinking specifically about the benefits that their idea will bring customers. They’re horrible at moving down the ladder of abstraction. They think more along the lines of “we connect people” instead of “we let you talk to your friends”. Even YC applicants (probably the best startup accelerator in the world) suffer from this problem immensely. I think that this problem is the single biggest cause of failure for startups. (They say that 90% of startups fail? Well >99% of people can’t think concretely.) However, I think that it’s something that could be avoided with willpower, reading the LessWrong sequences, and taking some time to practice your new habit.”

Well, not thinking specifically is one issue, sure.

But the other, MUCH BIGGER issue, is that you might not know what people want. If you’re building something for consumers, there’s a problem in that most people don’t know what they themselves want (imagine describing Facebook to someone years before it existed).

If you’re selling to businesses, then you have to actually understand the business and the market. And understanding markets is incredibly difficult. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it’s hard even in the best case.

Remember—Some people fail at startups built to serve an industry, after working for 30 years in that industry. They still don’t manage to create a product that’s good enough.

As for the idea that just executing a business is so easy:

Let’s say you decided to build a restaurant. You know exactly, specifically what people want, so there’s no problem with finding a good idea, and you know how restaurants work. Talk to 10 restaurant owners and you’ll even have a much better understanding. Hell, you’re building a business that’s been done millions of times before. This is the polar opposite of a startup in terms of “idea risk”.

And yet, restaurants fail ALL THE TIME. Because the execution of any business is hard. Hiring is hard. Understanding your market, TRULY understanding it, is hard and takes years of experience. Understanding how to hire and manage people is hard. The thousands of little things you do every day, are all amazingly hard. Each one takes time, each one takes experience.

edanm Jan 20, 2014, 7:21 PM
5 points
in reply to: Curiouskid’s comment on: Why don’t more rationalists start startups?
Your post is exactly why “how many startups can I conceivably do” is an important question. If failed startups take on average 5 years to fail, which is a reasonable assumption for a semi-successful but ultimately failed startup, then doing 4 startups takes 20 years of your life. For most people, working 20 years at a startup and making relatively low wages is not feasible or desirable.

edanm Jan 20, 2014, 2:22 PM
30 points
on: Why don’t more rationalists start startups?
This is a topic I care a lot about, thank you for bringing it up

I’ve been an entrepreneur for 5 years. I started out like most Software Developers—by starting a startup. After a few years, I became convinced that this is NOT the best way to achieve the outcome you’re talking about (financial independence, aka ~5mil USD).

My basic problem with your post is simple, and others have pointed it out—you can make up all the numbers you want, but empirically, MOST startups fail. The usual figure given is 10% of startups fail, but this is a gross simplification, and I tend to think the number is much higher. More importantly, the number of years that it takes to fail can be long—the number of years before a successful exit is usually >5. Failures can happen earlier, but the worst-case scenario is to “fail at the last minute”.

To convince me that you’re going to achieve your goal within 10 years, you have to show that for some reason, you’ll do better than the statistics suggest.

The problem with #1 is you have no real reason to think you’ll do better than anyone else. This is where a lot of people get lost—they hear this statement, they nod, but they think to themselves “but I’m [better/smarter/more rational] than everyone else.” But here’s the thing—even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean you’ll succeed where others failed. Why? One of several reasons:
1. Being better/smarter/more rational might simply NOT be important in startup success. It’s possible that luck is more important. It’s possible that other things are more important, and we simply don’t know what they are. A lot of things are possible. The best minds in the world still don’t consistently pick winners, why do you think that is?
2. Even if you ARE better/smarter/more rational than most people, and even if that trait IS important, the statistics of 90% failures includes a lot of people who are clearly, demonstrably better than you. It includes the VC’s son, who has unlimited funds and a lifetime of learning. It includes the serial entrepreneur building his 10th startup after 9 successes. It includes the co-founder of Facebook, who has a billion dollars in the bank, unlimited press, and obviously some amount of familiarity with building startups. These are some of the people WHO STILL FAIL 90% OF THE TIME. So even if you’re incredibly confident, do you honestly believe you’ll do better than THEM?
So where does that leave someone who wants to apply intelligence/rationality to making money (like me)?

Well, there are lot of routes to take. I hope I’ve at least given you food for thought as to why startups are not necessarily the best route. Personally, I still think becoming an entrepreneur is a net win, at least if you like the idea. What I personally did after my failed startup is build a Software Dev Shop, and started selling software services. This will (probably) not get me a big exit, but the expected value of my money in this is still higher than in a startup.

Another route to take is to build a bootstrapped company, which will fail/succeed on a smaller scale, but which has other benefits: it might fail/succeed faster, it might need less work to get to the FU money stage, etc.

When you’re rationally weighing your options, and aren’t stuck in “Startups are the obvious way to get rich” thinking, then you can start learning about the wider world of business which has plenty of other interesting opportunities.

edanm Jan 18, 2014, 8:22 AM
2 points
in reply to: Locaha’s comment on: Write down your basic realizations as a matter of habit. Share this file with the world.
That’s great, thanks for the info!

edanm Jan 17, 2014, 10:11 PM
7 points
in reply to: Locaha’s comment on: Write down your basic realizations as a matter of habit. Share this file with the world.
Can I take this opportunity to ask about HIIT? What kind of HIIT workout do you recommend? I ask because you’re putting it on the same plane as Anki, so it must be truly amazing.

edanm Jan 17, 2014, 11:27 AM
2 points
in reply to: jobe_smith’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
So, we’re what’s called a “Professional Services” firm. This term is usually used when talking about e.g. Accountants, Lawyers, etc, but is just as relevant for a Software Consultancy. I’ll go a little into the idea behind professional services firms in general, then get back to talking about us in particular.

There are many, many different types of Professional Services firms, but the basic business model is usually the same—you’re selling your time for money, and people pay because of your expertise and experience in the field.

But here’s where large firms make their real money: the firm gets projects based on the expertise and experience of the “managing partners”, and then a combination of the managing partners and juniors perform the actual work. For example, a law office will win a contract because of their experience and the expertise of its “Name Partners”, and they’ll charge let’s say $500 an hour for an hour of Partner time. But they’ll also charge $450 an hour for an Associate lawyer. The firm pays huge salaries for the name partners, so they’re basically not making any profit there. But they pay tiny salaried to the Associates, for a large profit.

This is called “leverage”. This is how a professional services firm grows and makes a profit—leveraging the skills and reputation of key, highly payed employees, to sell the work of lower-payed employees.

Most Professional Services firms can be placed on a moving scale as to how much expertise vs. leverage they have. An example of a highly skilled “firm”—a team of brain surgeons. They’re basically paid amazingly well, and have minimal leverage. An example of a consultancy with a lot of leverage—a company that builds websites for restaurants. Building a website for a restaurant is 90% repetitive work that can be given to junior employees, with senior employees focused on finding work and growing the reputation of the business.

So where do we fit in all this? In our case, as a rather small firm, we’re mostly on the “expertise” side of the equation. We have a few people in the company, and we’re all very experienced Software Devs. Companies hire us for consulting based on our experience, and for development because we get things done quickly and well.

Of course, the founders of our firm (myself and 2 partners) are much more experienced than most of our employees, and as we grow, that gap will continue to grow as we take on more junior programmers who need more training, but are underappreciated by the market and just need someone to give them an opportunity and teach them the ropes.

So there’s an answer about the basic business model of a Professional Services firm in general. I didn’t go into any of the specific of a Software shop in particular, but there’s a lot to say about that as well, e.g., there are 100′s of niches of Software dev shops—are you targetting large companies or small? Startups? Tech-savvy customers? People who want software projects? Putting people on-site at a customer’s company? Each one of these niches is very, very different, and it’s a fascinating topic for me at least, since 2 years ago before starting this company, I would never have realised how different all these niches truly are, or even that they exist.

edanm Jan 17, 2014, 11:10 AM
3 points
in reply to: djm’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
This really depends on the field. My experiences are probably only relevant to about 1% of software projects out there—there’s a lot of software in the world.

That said, in terms of Cloud vs. Local—definitely not. Most large (and small!) companies we’ve worked with use AWS. We also highly recommend Heroku/AWS to all our customers as the easiest and least expensive way to get started on building a custom application.

Of course, there are a lot of places where cloud still doesn’t make sense. We have one client who has custom software deployed in hospitals, where all of the infrastructure is of course local to their site, not in any kind of cloud. But for the majority of people who don’t have such a use case, everyone understands that cloud makes everything easier.

edanm Jan 12, 2014, 1:05 PM
2 points
on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
Sure. I run a Software Dev Shop called Purple Bit, based in Tel Aviv. We specialise in building Python/Angular.js webapps, and have done consulting for a bunch of different companies, from startups to large businesses.

I’m very interested in business, especially Startups and Product Development. Many of my closest friends are running startups, I used to run a startup, and I work with and advise various startups, both technically and business-wise.

AMA, although I won’t/can’t necessarily answer everything.

edanm Jan 4, 2014, 10:16 PM
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2014
Can you give an example of the type of code you’re thinking about?

edanm Jan 4, 2014, 10:09 PM
2 points
in reply to: ChrisHallquist’s comment on: What is the Main/Discussion distinction, and what should it be?
Hard to say if I’m atypical (Typical Mind Fallacy and all). But I doub tit.

Again, I wasn’t really looking. But the fact that this is a thriving forum certainly didn’t jump out at me form random visits to the site, including the main page.

Is there any reason LW doesn’t just have a Reddit/HN style homepage?

edanm Jan 2, 2014, 9:36 AM
4 points
on: What is the Main/Discussion distinction, and what should it be?
So, I think the bigger problem is not the main/discussion split. It’s that, when coming to the site, one doesn’t even understand that this is a forum!

I don’t know if this is by design, but I was a LessWrong reader for more than a year (!) before I ventured over to the discussion section, and this was largely because I didn’t see the link. I realised people were posting things because of the changing articles on the home page, but the same posts kept appearing so I figured there wasn’t that much material.

It was only after meeting a few fellow LW’ers at a meetup that I realised there was a real community.

I don’t know if I’m typical. It’s possible I just wasn’t really looking, it’s possible I didn’t care enough. But I am a pretty technologically savvy user (programmer for 18 years), and I’ve been around HN/Stack Overflow/Reddit for a long time, so if it isn’t clear to me that there is a whole world of discussion here, then I’m sure it’s not clear to most people. If this is by design, cool. If not, then there’s a big problem here.

edanm Jan 1, 2014, 2:53 PM
3 points
on: 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Answered. A day late—hope it’s still counted, only saw this now.

edanm Dec 30, 2013, 11:56 AM
31 points
on: Why CFAR?
I just donated $100, in large part because of the detailed writeup and because of the many people writing here how much they donated. So thanks everyone!

edanm 16 Dec 2013 9:16 UTC
0 points
on: Meetup : Meetup: Less Wrong Israel Meetup (Tel Aviv) with special guest Tomer Kagan
Excellent, can’t wait to see everyone there!

edanm 21 Nov 2013 9:01 UTC
0 points
on: Meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup (Tel Aviv): Quantum Computing
Excellent!

Waiting to see everyone there.