
Coolest Things I Learned in 2019 - nefitty
https://www.perell.com/blog/2019/12/11/coolest-things-i-learned-in-2019
======
nlh
Loved this with ONE exception:

> “Twitter is the most amazing networking and learning network ever built.

> For someone whose pursuing their dream job, or chasing a group of mentors or
> peers, it’s remarkable. In any given field, 50-80% of the top experts in
> that field are on Twitter and they’re sharing ideas, and you can connect to
> them or follow them in your personal feed.

> If you get lucky enough and say something they find interesting, they might
> follow you, and the reason this becomes super interesting is that unlocks
> direct message, and now all of a sudden you can communicate directly or
> electronically with that individual. Very, very powerful.

Man, so many things about the statement make my skin crawl. The idea that you
should be "chasing" mentors or peers. The idea that you should be "lucky
enough" to say something "they find interesting" and then "they might follow
you".

Lucky you, you little worthless common person!

Talk about a subjugating attitude about the world. Bill Gurley seems to be
very excited about the idea that people are just hoping and pleading and
begging for more powerful people to notice them.

Sorry for the negativity. But this is just such an unproductive attitude and
perhaps the cause of a lot of what makes Twitter awful.

EDIT: Let me add a more positive take. I agree with the underlying _sentiment_
here -- that Twitter does provide folks with an opportunity to actually engage
with people they might not have otherwise had a chance to engage with
previously or in other contexts, and that is truly excellent. I'm just
reacting strongly to the way it was presented ("you should be so lucky as to
be noticed by someone more powerful than you.").

~~~
sincerely
I think the point is less that this is an ideal state of affairs and more that
this represents a huge opportunity for people who want to learn/network than a
pre-twitter world.

~~~
kick
I don't actually think it's better than this was pre-Twitter.

In the past, you could find more or less anyone in the phone book. Basically
every person who succeeded in tech without family connections pre-1990 got
their start by using this (Steve Jobs immediately comes to mind; he home-
dialed Bill Hewlett (yes, _that_ Bill Hewlett) as a child, asked for spare
parts, and got a job because of it).

For a while, you could also do this before people were scared to post their
mail addresses on the internet. Have a question for someone? Type
USERNAME@DOMAIN.COM into the box, and they'll answer in a few days!

That's more or less gone, though.

That manipulation is now the standard should be looked on with incredible
sadness rather than "Wow, what a huge opportunity!"

~~~
jdsully
Its really not that hard to find email addresses just using Google. I’ve
emailed a number of rich and famous people. Making yourself stand out is quite
another matter.

------
hkmurakami
Re: your tribe

"Jerry Seinfeld said in an interview last year that his favorite part of the
Emmy Awards was when the comedy writers went onstage to collect their prize.
“You see these gnome-like cretins, just kind of all misshapen. And I go, ‘This
is me. This is who I am. That’s my group.’ ” By your 40s, you don’t want to be
with the cool people; you want to be with your people."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/sunday/what-
you-l...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/sunday/what-you-learn-in-
your-40s.html)

~~~
randycupertino
That's how I felt when I ended up in oncology research. All these super smart,
driven, funny & interesting people who love going to work every day and try to
help patients while driving research forward.

After futzing around in other industries and doing bs work for waaaay too
long, I felt like the girl in the bee costume from the 1990s Blind Melon video
who at the end of the video finally comes across and parties it up with a
bunch of other bee-people:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58)

~~~
majos
That surprises me, since I had heard being an oncologist is a very hard job
because of all the bad news.

I guess doing the research rather than the practice is a key difference?

~~~
randycupertino
I'm not an oncologist (heh...), more just a data guy who works with the
researchers and helps them with genetic typing to build outputs with the tumor
sample analysis. Sounds fancy but sometimes I'm just even doing plain old IT
support (because I'm there in the labs and having to put in a ticket and wait
for hospital IT is a pita).

I do work with a lot of oncologists and while like any industry there are a
few big egos and jerks the majority of them are simply amazing people. I've
seen patient's families screaming and yelling at our PIs (literally spitting
on their faces) and the Drs. stay calm, cool and professional. It's hard to be
the ones delivering bad news but they do a great job.

Most of the MDs I work with are both researchers and regular oncologist
physicians. They participate in clinical trials and have labs where they
investigate new treatments and drugs, but they also provide standard of care
treatments for patients who aren't eligible or choose not to participate in
trials.

------
aazaa
> On September 24th, 1980, a man wearing cowboy boots and carrying two brown
> suitcases entered Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. One suitcase held
> $777,000 in cash; the other was empty. After converting the money into
> chips, the man approached a craps table on the casino floor and put
> everything on the backline. This meant he was betting against the woman
> rolling the dice. If she lost, he’d double his money. If she won, he’d lose
> everything. Scarcely aware of the amount riding on her dice, the woman
> rolled three times: 6, 9, 7.

> “Pay the backline,” said the dealer. And just like that, the man won over
> $1.5 million. He calmly filled the empty suitcase with his winnings, exited
> Binion’s into the desert afternoon, and drove off. It was the largest amount
> ever bet on a dice roll in America.

The one about the Phantom Gambler had a discussion earlier here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342794)

------
m0zg
>> Cyclists in the Tour de France used to smoke to increase blood flow

You quite often see people in e.g. Zurich (and I suspect in other European
cities as well - smoking seems to be much more socially acceptable there)
smoking while riding a bicycle. I was kind of baffled by that the first time I
saw it, but when you think about it, it's not too weird.

In the US you ride a bicycle to get some exercise in, to stay healthy. I don't
think I've ever seen anyone smoking while on a bicycle here. In Europe they
ride bicycles to get around, so smoking a cig while riding a bike doesn't seem
like anything out of the ordinary to them.

------
shreyshrey
Really cool.

The thing i have learned this year is -"Deductive logic doesn't always work in
complex systems - especially when it involves large number of people"

~~~
firethief
More generally: formal methods are only as good as your model

------
gitgud
> _Wicked Learning Environments_

This anecdote about the NYC doctor who was praised for being able to predict
Typhoid, but was actually just spreading the disease to all his patients is a
scary reflection of some businesses.

Reminds me of tech companies from HBO's Silicon Valley, to them they're _"
Making the world a better place..."_ but in reality they could be harming
everyone without even knowing it...

------
jdsully
> At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people
> significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by
> suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might
> have in mind.

Whatever you do, DO NOT apply this advice to your significant other. Perhaps a
better man than me can do it effectively but I can say from experience the
results are always disastrous.

~~~
sitkack
As someone who has been on the receiving end of this (from a loved one), your
advice is sound.

~~~
mistermann
True, this matches my experience perfectly, but perhaps the/some ways do exist
but haven't been found, or will never be found, because it's too risky to try
on an individual basis?

~~~
travisjungroth
I think I’ve done it and been successful. I think two things are important. It
has to come during a time when they’re already talking about their plans. And,
it has to obviously come from a place that you think they’re underselling
themselves ( _not_ that you want to get more from them).

“Maybe I should get a job as a data analyst.”

“Really? I think you have everything you need to be a data scientist.”

~~~
mistermann
Exactly, various techniques such as this can be successful, and it seems
reasonable that there are numerous others. But how might we discover them?

------
aaron695
> "Imagine a tool was invented to help a researcher to improve by just 1%.

> The gain would hardly be noticeable in a single individual. But if the 10
> million scientists in the world all benefited from the tool, the inventor
> would increase the rate of scientific progress by roughly the same amount as
> adding 100,000 new scientists."

This used to be called Chinese maths, not sure what it's called now.

In total there are 10 million researchers so it'd have to be pretty generic.

And unless it's a bottleneck it'd have no effect. Reducing transport times by
1% just means people go home early.

Helping the 90% of researchers who are dead wood wouldn't help either.

The internet and computers are examples of successful tools so it is possible.
The replication crises is an example of a problem that could be looked at.

But targeted tools seems like a better attack.

And this all assumes science is where we are lagging, compared to the
commercial application of science (which the internet and computers have also
helped)

------
axaxs
Out of curiosity, I signed up for this guy's mailing list earlier in the year,
the first I can remember doing on purpose in many years. I am pleasantly
surprised at the weekly content and general openness of the author, and would
absolutely recommend it to everyone.

------
senderista
> In any given field, 50-80% of the top experts in that field are on Twitter

 _spit take_

------
travisporter
Loved the read, with the exception of the anti-vaxxer/climate change denial
mantra: “The majority is always wrong. The minority is rarely right.” — Henrik
Ibsen

------
mark_l_watson
Excellent, I signed up for his weekly newsletter.

As much as I nerded out seeing the latest Star Wars movie yesterday, and the
half dozen good movies a week my wife and I watch on streaming media, my
favorite way to be entertained by people’s writing, with really good
conversations coming in a close second.

------
usaphp
> Four new dollar stores will open in the U.S. every single day of 2019.
> That's a new dollar store every six hours. There are more dollar stores than
> there are Walmarts, McDonald’s and CVS stores combined

I wonder what is causing that, in the times of Amazon, how do these stores
survive?

~~~
randycupertino
We live in a ritzy town on the SF Peninsula where hhi is routinely 400k and
up, and our dollar store is constantly mobbed. Sometimes it's so mobbed that
it actually backs up traffic on El Camino Real because so many people are
waiting to pull into the parking lot.

I think a lot of shoppers rely on it for basics like toiletries and other
items you'd get from Target or Walmart. The markups on Amazon for these items
are actually pretty outrageous. Amazon, imo is not cheap - and also way too
high of a risk of getting a fake and knockoff product. At least in a brick and
mortar store you can be confident in the supply chain and know you're not
getting some sketchy reseller from China.

We bought some decorations for our wedding there and they were perfectly
adequate. No lesser quality than anything we would have gotten from amazon or
a party store, imo.

~~~
solarkraft
> At least in a brick and mortar store you can be confident in the supply
> chain and know you're not getting some sketchy reseller from China.

Isn't this _exactly_ what makes them so cheap?

~~~
randycupertino
I'm no expert, but I don't think so. I'm pretty sure Dollar Stores get their
inventory from almost expired products that didn't sell via traditional retail
channels, same with overorders or discontinued products. It's coming from real
companies and is not knockoffs, but it's more the same style stuff that
doesn't sell in Target etc.

Whereas in Amazon I've gotten faked products- instead of Jeffree Star lipstick
is "Deffree Star" etc. Or just completely accurate looking banana powder but
it smells off and doesn't work correctly - after investigating on reddit some
other people had gotten the same knockoff- turns out it was just baby powder
died yellow.

Since getting so many fakes on Amazon, we stopped buying anything from there
that goes on your body or in your body. It sucks, tbh. I'd rather pay a way
higher markup and be guaranteed the product is legitimate than be rolling the
dice with who knows what from China.

------
mrfusion
Regarding one of his last ideas. For those above 35 what technologies seem
against the order of things?

~~~
marcosdumay
Putting everything on other people's properties, renting stuff that you'll use
long term, and yes, as kbutler said, disclosing everything in public by
default.

Those are not technologies, but I doubt it was exactly the tech that the last
generations were complaining about. Anyway, there is one piece of tech: the
all hearing helpers we get on telephones and alexa style devices.

------
jiri
Missing NOT. Or NAND

------
teddyh
> _Douglas Abrams’ Rules of Technology_

That’s “Douglas Adams”.

~~~
inopinatus
Or even _Douglas Adams 's_, if I may be so bold, or rather, oblique.

The apostrophe protection society has retired, but some of us still cleave to
the old ways.

