
Power laws as a thinking tool - KentBeck
https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/putting-power-law-thinking-to-work/1092326674133529
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stdbrouw
It's an open secret in the news industry that while all of those longform
articles, parallaxin' interactives and news apps do get great traffic, that
traffic is nothing in comparison to that totally random and not even very good
quick hit that went viral yesterday.

Personally, I also agree that you shouldn't worry too much about polishing
content and instead just get it out there. That's what's so lovely about the
blog of statistician Andrew Gelman for example [1], he just writes what comes
to mind and his readers love it because they care more about his insights than
about whether or not he's presenting an eloquently argued, watertight
argument. It reminds me of the old days of blogging, and I think many of us
miss those days.

That said, Kent Beck displays some really sloppy thinking here. "I have no
clue about what the actual numbers are, and even though I could get them and
run some analysis on them to determine the effects of quality vs. quantity,
instead I'm just going to philosophize about how I think the world works, and
justify my ramblings by saying that it's a POWER LAW, and power laws, that's
like nature, dude, you can't fight it."

[1] [http://andrewgelman.com/](http://andrewgelman.com/)

~~~
lasso1
Here is some critical comments about the universal nature of power laws in
science (in Science):
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/335/6069/665.full](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/335/6069/665.full)

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logicrook
Here the TL;DR is the following: because the popularity of your blogposts will
follow a power law distribution (in which you believe), if you want to be
popular you just need to put out more content instead of trying to improve the
quality.

An analogy: the popularity of painters follow a power law (or say we believe
it). So to be popular, you don't need to be good, but to put out more
paintings. Then if you look at the most popular artists, they shouldn't be the
most talented, but the most prolific...

And then there are the arguments against the "power law everywhere" meme, that
can be found in Mitzenmacher for example.

~~~
rpercy
"if you want to be popular you just need to put out more content instead of
trying to improve the quality."

Not quite. What he said was: to be popular, improve quality until it stops
making a difference (flatten the slope). Then make sure you put out enough
content.

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ricksplat
I can see how this fits with Facebook's "move fast and break things"
philosophy. _Quantity over Quality_ , and I'm okay with that if you're in a
nice sandboxed environment where you're not accountable for your mistakes. In
the case of Facebook, or indeed any vertically integrated environment this
works fine but in a great many other environments you need to be more careful
about mistakes. I agree that the approach of applying a strict quality control
pipeline to creative output is over-applied in the industry as a whole - which
Facebook have had some success with challenging - but in a great many other
areas it is still absolutely necessary (advances in cloud platforms and devops
perhaps notwithstanding). In many cases we have a lesser degree of control
over software once it leaves the office, and it is a great pain for us to fix
(more costly, more embarassing) once it is in the wild.

Similarly as a more general principle, or as more specifically applied to blog
posts - I like other more "ordinary" people am held accountable for the the
words that come out of my mouth, and for the material I put up on my blog.
Since I'm not a lionized "agent of influence" the words I write will be more
critically appraised; could easily be misunderstood, or taken out of context.

That said, and I have to admit to only reading a handful of his posts, the
quality of Kent's output could just be naturally "that good" that he doesn't
need to worry about these kinds of things. Which could well be one of the
characteristics that has got him where he is. But I have to question this
approach as applied more generally, to be emulated by mere mortals.

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pointernil
I'd like to add a perspective to the posts questioning the "power law" and
it's consequences in this area.

"Gesinnungs Ethik" VS "Verantwortungs-Ethik" (very roughly 'unquestioned
attitude' vs 'accountability' Ethics)

for me this blog-post is a fine example of technocratic "Gesinnungs Ethik":
the power law is a law of nature, the popular get (easier) more popular, the
rich get (easier) richer... that's by law of nature, you can, actually you
_have_ to submit to it otherwise your efforts are wasted. That's the way it
is. (Other examples are: the market, the rational agent, management principles
etc)

Sure, there are processes in nature following the power laws where it is
really futile for us humans to intervene or ignore it.

AND

there are other areas where this presented futility most probably is NOT true.

That's where "Verantwortungs-Ethik" comes into play, yes an "antagonist" to
the other one: do we want accept the consequences of following/applying this
law? Is this driving the development of an area into the right direction? If
you are accountable for the large scale consequences f.e., would you follow
this law? It's a less passive, "well, that's the way things are", attitude and
a more conscious and active attitude, where putting out a lot of posts just in
case and for the sake of the one lucky viral attention-grab in a "big data
experiment" manner is not ignoring the overall effect on the whole, where
there is accountability for collateral damage.

It does not make sense to apply "Verantwortungs-Ethik" to gravity laws. ;) In
most social contexts, and in contexts we ourselves construct, we are free to
do so. And I think, we should more intensively.

~~~
KentBeck
Thank you for making this distinction. I was trying to say, "Here's how I make
(surprising) better predictions about the world as it is." I wasn't saying
anything about how things _should_ be.

For those who don't like the consequences of power laws, I have two questions:
* What _should_ the distribution be, statistically? * What mechanism will you
use to create that distribution?

Finally, your point about externalities is very well taken. If what I am doing
is not sustainable if everyone did it, then I should think hard about whether
I am doing the right thing (says the energy guzzling American).

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hammock
There are some good comments here that get at the false dilemma. The
observation that your blog posts will fall on a power law curve is only
valuable _a posteriori. After_ writing a blog post, if it doesn't do well you
can chalk it up to power law.

 _A priori_ (meaning at the moment you sit down to write your next blog post),
it's entirely useless, and maybe detrimental. At this moment it's more like
the 10,000 hours of practice theory. It's not 10,000 hours of random
application that will get you success. It's 10,000 hours of deliberate
practice, directed skill-building behavior directed towards marginal
improvements.

Will your portfolio of blog posts live on a power law curve? Yes. Does that
mean you don't have to put any effort in? No. What it means is do your best
every time, but don't expect success every time.

In a basement laboratory somewhere there are 1,000 monkeys typing (and
generating a power law curve) and after a few centuries they still haven't
written any Shakespeare.

Locally your own oeuvre will follow a power law. Globally your work, when
compared to the work of others, will follow a power law. It's fractal in that
way. However, if your work is shit it's still going to be hard to break
through.

Side note, what OP doesn't realize about blue pill-red pill is that red pill
is based entirely on a priori principles while blue pill is the opposite.

~~~
KentBeck
There is a big difference between "I'm polishing this because it will have a
higher viral coefficient", or "I'm polishing this because I am learning by
polishing", or even "I'm polishing this because it feels good to polish" on
the one hand and "I'm polishing this because I'm afraid of the feedback I'm
going to get on it once it's in the wild" on the other. My polishing falls
more often in the latter camp so I look for ways to counteract my bias. If
your polishing really really makes a difference, then heavens to betsy be my
guest.

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KentBeck
tl;dr You can make content so bad that it won't spread, but you can't make it
so good that it is certain to spread. Virality grows at the confluence of
skill, timing, and luck. Be aware when you've hit the point of diminishing
returns on quality and publish.

