Misc

Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.

Misc

Vitalik Buterin Interview

  • Interesting and wide ranging interview with the creator of Etherum.
  • “Vitalik Buterin is one of the most well-known and best-loved figures in the crypto/blockchain world — well-known because Ethereum, the blockchain platform he co-created (with Gavin Wood) has become the platform for the entire web3 world, and best-loved because he’s very clearly just a smart, friendly guy who just wants to build cool stuff and not rip anybody off.“
Misc

The Awkward Silence

  • A useful tool for any investor interviewing management.
  • “I learned this one from the psychoanalysts. Nobody likes an awkward silence. If a patient tells you something, and you are awkwardly silent, then the patient will rush to fill the awkward silence with whatever they can think of, which will probably be whatever they were holding back the first time they started talking. You won’t believe how well this one works until you try it. Just stay silent long enough, and the other person will tell you everything. It’s better than waterboarding.“
  • Source.
Misc

Funding Science

  • Did you know that one team of funders supported all but one of the 18 scientists who received the Nobel Prize in genetic molecular biology research, funding this revolution.
  • This was the Natural Science Division of the Rockefeller Foundation which operated during the 1930s – 1950s, under the leadership of Warren Weaver.
  • A must read history full of lessons for today’s science funders.
  • “Weaver saw himself, instead, as a “manager of science.” He led his small team of program officers in a highly opinionated grantmaking process that focused on the organizational and social environments of research institutions over the specifics of any individual project. And once his team selected a field to focus on, it funded people over specific ideas.“
Misc

Jane Street

  • Outstanding write up on Jane Street.
  • “at the end of Jane Street internships: interns get a stack of 100 poker chips and spend half a day getting asked brainteasers and then betting on their confidence in the answers … This would actually be a pretty fun way for a math-minded person to spend a few hours, if it weren’t so high-stakes: the winners get a job from which people routinely retire rich in their 30s, and the losers… don’t.“
Misc

Startup M&A

  • Few contrarian buyers out there, and for many startups there is plenty of cash in the bank.
  • “In 2021, there were more than 3,000 M&A deals globally involving a VC-backed company getting bought, according to Crunchbase. Halfway through the third quarter of this year, just under 1,600 startups have found a mate in the market.“
  • The picture is worse in the US.
  • Source: Crunchbase.
Misc

ETF Innovation

  • Some interesting things are going on in ETF land.
  • First the rise of single stock ETFs – offering anything from -1x to +1.5x.
  • NB these aren’t new in the UK but only recently launched in the US.
  • This idea is also spreading to bonds – with single bond ETFs becoming popular including single-year, bullet bond ETF trackers.
Misc

Venture Technology Clusters Over Time

  • Using a machine learning model Sparkline Capital were able to cluster firms in similar technologies and then look at how venture investment in these tech clusters evolved over time.
  • This leads to the following chart of cycles.
  • “In the dot-com bubble, venture capital firms threw money at internet companies. Next, Blackberry and iPhone ushered in the mobile age. Then, Facebook’s success sparked a wave of investment into social networks. Artificial intelligence grew steadily over the past decade, while blockchain burst on the scene a few years ago. Climate tech investment faded after an initial burst but is now seeing a resurgence.“
Misc

Communication Cost History

  • Meet one of the most dramatic changes in communication costs in history.
  • The introduction of the first modern postal system in Britain in 1840.
  • A 1839 Act of Parliament created the Uniform Penny Post – a single low postage rate and the first adhesive postage stamp, replacing a complex distance based system.
  • The results were monumental and, as this paper finds, also improved innovation.
  • Today, 73% of people in the UK consider post as essential or fairly important.
Misc

Or are things going to get a lot worse?

  • Here is a counter to a collection of positive charts posted a few weeks back.
  • The article takes a pessimistic position that, if nothing changes, we have already crossed the point where it is certain things will get worse.
  • Megafires, inflation, pandemic, heat – all could be signs of extinction.
  • Alarmist but nonetheless sober reading.
Misc

What if reading is bad?

  • You are reading text right now. It engulfs our lives.
  • “Between 1900 and 1990, the amount of time the average American spent reading and writing remained broadly consistent: somewhere between one and two hours a day.” 
  • With the advent of the internet and text messaging – this more than doubled to four to five hours.
  • It is estimated the average internet user sees 490,000 words per day (more than War and Peace!).
  • As this wonderful contrarian article argues – this might not, as many argue, be all good.
  • “Every time we read, we inevitably conceptualize the world, in perhaps an ever-increasingly abstract way. And it’s conceivable that we may reach a point where those abstracting effects go too far.“
  • Article sourced from The Browser – a brilliant resource.
Misc

Are things getting better?

  • This collection of charts tries to present some cheerful evidence that things in the US have gotten better.
  • For example, this chart shows that “people in every age group are less likely to die of heart disease, in any given year, than they were in 1990.”
  • Interestingly, the all-age death rate has improved more slowly. Why? Because we are living longer (pushing the proportion of the 70yrs+ bracket up).
  • The question, on whether humanity’s best days lie ahead, is fascinating.
  • One of the best discussions on this topic was this debate – between Pinker, Gladwell, Ridley, de Botton.
Misc

Probabilistic Words

  • People use words to describe probabilities all the time.
  • Yet this leads to a huge amount of confusion, especially in financial press.
  • In this great article, Mauboussin (two of them) lay out learnings from a survey they did on this topic.
  • Take this chart – the term “real possibility” was taken to mean anything from 20%-80% by 1,700 people surveyed – a huge range.
  • Lots of interesting ideas inside on how to “combat” this bias.
Misc

Gender and NYRB

  • Interesting chart via The Browser (a must subscribe) plotting each issue of the New York Review of Books (NYRB) by the gender mix of authors.
  • “What you are seeing is that there are only twelve issues out of 1228 (1%) to which women have contributed half or more of the articles. Nine of them have appeared within the past three years. Meanwhile there are about 196 issues (16%) to which not a single woman contributed an article.” 
  • Source (more stats inside).
Misc

Soros and Reflexivity

  • Many have heard of George Soros’ idea of reflexivity.
  • This idea is important especially as we look at the current market situation.
  • To understand it more deeply it is worth reading Soros’ own writing on the subject – especially this piece from the Journal of Economic Methodology (2014).
  • Here Soros lays out his full framework which is actually based on two propositions – reflexivity but also human fallibility – together the siamese twins that form “the human uncertainty principle”.
  • “My conceptual framework deserves attention not because it constitutes a new discovery, but because something as commonsensical as reflexivity has been so studiously ignored by economists.”
Misc

Ten Commandments by Bertrand Russell

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2. Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.

4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Farnam Street Blog.

Misc

Kalshi

  • Nice read from Bloomberg about Kalshi – the CFTC approved prediction market.
  • Especially interesting is the long journey to getting regulators on board in the US (after years or resistance).
  • “One day during their time at Y Combinator, Lopes Lara and Mansour say, they cold-called 60 lawyers they’d found on Google. Every one of them said to give up”.
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