August 20, 2020

Rationality From AI to Zombies

Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky is a huge tome that covers everything from heuristics to Bayes theorem. Its main goal is to give the reader a better/modern understanding of rationality and the tools one needs to have in their toolkit.

It can be found (as the original books and posts) here.

The book was quite the journey and over the coming months I plan to go back to the individual posts to put concepts in Obsidian and make notes here.

—

“A cognitive bias is a systematic error in how we think, as opposed to a random error or one that’s merely caused by our ignorance. Whereas statistical bias skews a sample so that it less closely resembles a larger population, cognitive biases skew our thinking so that it less accurately tracks the truth (or less reliably serves our other goals)… Like statistical biases, cognitive biases can distort our view of reality, they can’t always be fixed by just gathering more data, and their effects can add up over time. But when the miscalibrated measuring instrument you’re trying to fix is you, debiasing is a unique challenge.”

The goal of the text is teaching (tools of) rationality, talking about biases that we have is the first step/part of it.

With biases, you may still experience them, even if you know beforehand that you have them. On the other hand, you can also over correct. So it’s always difficult/challenging to assess correctly.

  • base neglect bias: ignoring how many of X (and Y) there are (e.g. a shy person is more likely a sales person than a librarian because there are more of the former)
  • sunk cost fallacy: not ignoring the costs that we made before at the moment of evaluation (of future costs/benefits)

“The map is not the territory.”

—

We don’t clearly adjust our spending/giving based on the scope. We have scope insensitivity.

“The usual finding is that exponential increases in scope create linear increases in willingness-to-pay—perhaps corresponding to the linear time for our eyes to glaze over the zeroes; this small amount of affect is added, not multiplied, with the prototype affect. This hypothesis is known as “valuation by prototype.””

“An alternative hypothesis is “purchase of moral satisfaction.” People spend enough money to create a warm glow in themselves, a sense of having done their duty.”

Or in other words, we care about people/animals, but really don’t see that 10X more saved is 10X better. A good lesson for effective altruism (communication). Focus on the prototype in communication, whilst still ruthlessly strive for the best solution.

(study linked)

—

We should have rationality dojos says Yudkowski. There are now some places devoted to this. But like my weightlifting, I like to learn from the best, practice much alone. And yes, I do recognize that you need to test things in the real world and talk to others. But I think that learning from Dawkins, Dennett, and Deutsch, isn’t that bad either.

—

“The availability heuristic is judging the frequency or probability of an event by the ease with which examples of the event come to mind.”

This is how terrorism and fear of flying (vs driving) works.

Related is absurdity bias, if something hasn’t happened (in a long time) we also can’t image it happening now.

—

https://www.lesswrong.com/s/5g5TkQTe9rmPS5vvM/p/jnZbHi873v9vcpGpZ

August 17, 2020

River Out of Eden

River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) gives an overview of our understanding of evolution. It explains deep concepts in understandable ways. Dawkins is a master in communication, and by using the ‘river out of Eden’ as an analogy, he presents evolution as a forwards flow of information. And although the book (and Dawkins in general) is a refutation of God-made creation(ism), it does the heavy lifting with explanation, not with conflict.

Preface

The ability to self-replicate is the (proximate?) cause for Darwinian selection, and the life we know on this world.

Chapter 1 – The Digital River

Real ancestors (vs myths/(religious) cults) hold the key to understanding life.

“Ancestors are rare, descendants are common.”

Fun fact, not one of our ancestors died in infancy.

All organisms contain successful genes. Genes that have what it takes to become ancestors (to reproduce, leave kids behind). Genes to survive and reproduce.

Good genes cause success. Not the other way around (behaviour/lifetime doesn’t influence genes).

Every generation is a filter, only the successful genes get through. Some animals are sterile (worker ants), but they contain the genes that can also be passed along (the environment ‘chooses’ who becomes a reproducer or sterile worker). Thus they assist ‘their genes’ through the transgenerational sieve.

Genes are also not influenced by sex. Their effects are blended, but the genes are digital (yes/no, not analoge (radio frequency)).

The river analogy can be seen as genes travelling together on a stream. Those that cooperate well together, say in a body of an animal, form different branches/rivers. Speciation is the term for two rivers splitting. They will not join again.

The separation can be a geographical separation (both adapting to different environments over thousands/millions of years).

The number of species is estimated at 30 million (in 1994, now 2-10 million estimated to live), and if 99% has already gone extinct before now, the total branches/rivers (including those dried up) is 3 billion.

The separation of species (e.g. dinosaurs and mammals) may look significant, but it’s not. It was just another small river, branching from another. Only over long-history-time it looks significant.

The great animal groups are more similar in building blocks than we thought before. The genetic code is a dictionary with 64 words (from 4 letters) mapped on 21 words from another language (amino acids (20) plus punctuation mark). The chance of that is 1 in a million (x5). Or in other words, all life originates from a single ancestor.

So if you put on your molecular lens, all animals (and plants) are quite closely related.

DNA is digital, nerve cells are a mix of digital and analogue. The pulse (yes/no, action potential) is digital. But the rate of pulses is analogue.

This complex set of genes (and the instructions they give) are held together in a body (e.g. a polar bear). The number of cells of a polar bear are about 9 million million. And the complexity doesn’t stop there, each cell has a complex interior structure of folded membranes too.

Enzymes are the catalysts in a cell. Which genes in a cell are turned on, is determined by the chemicals already present in a cell. Bootstrapping is the term Dawkins uses for explaining how these processes start/interact. (do read the book or a whole book on this topic to get a better understanding of this).

“[T]he genes that survive in the river will be the ones that are good at surviving in the average environment of the species, and perhaps the most important aspect of this average environment is the other genes of the species; the other genes with which a gene is likely to have to share a body; the other genes that swim through geological time in the same river.”

Chapter 2 – All Africa and Her Progenies

(cultural relativism bad)

“Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results [make testable predictions]. Myths and faiths are not and do not.“

If we go back far enough in time, we are all cousins. If you go back to Roman times, the people there are either all our ancestors or ancestors of none (their line died out). Go further back and we’re all connected to the first replicator.

The changes in DNA can be measured with a molecular-clock (hypothesis, still somewhat controversial). The clock rate between species (and possibly time periods in history) may be different.

To find our common ancestor, we can look at mitochondrial DNA (because that doesn’t get mixed during sex, only that of the mother is passed along). Two million years ago is the moment of our mitochondrial (female line) ancestor (or as late as 250.000 years ago), probably in Africa.

Mithochondria are the powerhouses of our cells. If we look at their origins, they were bacteria (2 billion years ago).

“… if all the mitochondria in a single human body were laid end to end, they would girdle the Earth not once but two thousand times.”

Chapter 3 – Do Good by Stealth

Creationists say something like “this is so beautifully designed, and it would be useless if it missed X (of X Y Z) function, God must have made this all in one go.” or as Dawkins puts it “… cannot have evolved by gradual stages, because the intermediate, half-formed stages could not have been good for anything.”

This chapter does away with those conceptions.

A proto-eye can already see (e.g. light and dark). Birds are fooled by red spots that their kin normally have. If you present a supernormal stimulus, they go crazy for it (as do humans, think adult movies).

Douglas Hofstadter (yes of Gödel Escher Bach) called the inflexible, mindless automatism that some (all?) animals exhibit (and bees in particular in this case) ‘sphexish’.

Many things we humans make also work when a part stops working (e.g. even a plane flies with one fewer engine). Something that breaks if it misses one part is called brittle (robust or antifragile could be the opposite?).

Eyes are useful in a gradient (analog) kind of way, you can vaguely see what is far away, and clearly see what is close. They have evolved between 40 and 60 times, with at least 9 different design principles.

Computer simulations show that an eye can be evolved (gradually) in about half a million years.

“Do good by stealth. A key feature of evolution is its gradualness.” It may sometimes go quickly (e.g. meteor strike), but is almost always gradual.

The rest of the chapter describes the evolution of the dance of bees and some very clever experiments to test this.

Chapter 4 – God’s Utility Function

“Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent.“

“Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”

As humans we (think) we have a purpose, a goal, a consciousness. We plan for the future, look ahead, look back. But nature lacks this, nature just is. Evolution doesn’t have a plan. Evolution doesn’t answer the ‘what is it for’ question.

Only through Darwinian natural selection does evolution happen. There is no grand design or purpose. If we see that, it’s just an illusion left by the former.

Dawkins takes inspiration from Darwins Dangerous Idea (link if read). He uses the follow two terms:

  • Reverse engineering: making the assumption that there is an intelligent and economical reason for something being there (as outcome)
  • Utility function: that which is maximized

“By watching the behavior of individuals throughout their lives, you should be able to reverse engineer their utility functions.”

There can be multiple things (utilities) that an organism (or organization for that matter) is optimising for. In the end, for us living things, it comes down to DNA survival.

Dawkins then explains the sex ratio and why a 50:50 division is optimal.

Beauty (e.g. peacock’s tail) is also explained by this utility. It isn’t directly useful for getting food, but displays evolutionary strength and over evolution it is selected for. Beauty has no virtue in itself, but the genetic competition makes sure it exists.

Evolution doesn’t have a ‘cooperative restraint’ in it. We can’t all just say, let’s not spend so much resources on beauty (or growing taller as a tree). Heck, the outcomes of this race could even mean the extinction of your species (e.g. all the beautiful birds get eaten by predators).

About old age and dying, Dawkins repeats some things I know about genes that optimise for reproduction, may be harmful if you’re older. They will not be filtered out (because with them, you can still get kids when you’re young).

About happiness. “Genes don’t care about suffering, because they don’t care about anything.”

“If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.”

Chapter 5 – The Replication Bomb

We are probably somewhere in space-time that can be called an information or ‘replication bomb’. Because life consists of replicators. And these replicators can lead to exponential growth.

This growth can only go on for so long, until more resources are acquired.

Dawkins then explains the start of this process, where self-replication differs from crystals (something building on itself, but not self-replicating).

The halfs need to split and then both sides need to be able to grow the other side again. DNA has four ‘letters’ that make this possible.

The copying isn’t perfect and because of how molecules can be folded, there is open-ended variety next to heredity.

Dawkins then describes several thresholds that a planetary replication bomb could/should pass:

  1. Replicator Threshold: self-copying system, with occasional random mistakes in copying. This leads to a mixed population with competition for scares resources.
  2. Phenotype Threshold: replicators survive because of causal effects on phenotype (parts of animals/plants that genes can influence).
    1. He has written more about this in The Extended Phenotype
  3. Replicator Team Threshold: working together in cells (eukaryotic cells is those in our body, otherwise bacterial cells which are the forerunners of them).
    1. “Darwinian selection still chooses among rival genes, but the genes that are favored are those that prosper in the presence of other genes that are simultaneously being favored in one another’s presence.”
  4. Many-Cells Threshold: many cells working together to form a larger (emergent?) system (and that makes it different from crystals which is just molecules times X)
  5. High-Speed Information-Processing Threshold: neurons (at least on earth). This system needs sense organs, brains, and memory.
  6. Consciousness Threshold: humans, maybe other animals
  7. Language Threshold: networking system by which brains exchange information with sufficient intimacy to allow the development of a cooperative technology.
  8. Cooperative Technology Threshold: the meme, a river of culture
  9. Radio Threshold: sending out signals to outer space
  10. Space Travel Threshold: sending more than radio waves

Alright, that’s that.

August 17, 2020

Autism on Acid

This post originally appeared on Blossom Analysis.

—

Autism on Acid (How LSD Helped Me Understand, Navigate, Alter & Appreciate My Autistic Perceptions) is an amazingly personal book written by Aaron Paul Orsini and documents his transformational experience with a variety of LSD dosages and how they have helped him in his struggles with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The book can be best seen as a case-study and an invitation for more research to be done. That being said, it’s an incredible case study and one that under four hours (do get the audiobook Aaron narrates himself) will impact not only your mind, it will also touch your heart.

Summary & Review

Introduction

Aaron was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS) at the age of 23. Four years later, at the age of 27, he had his first Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) trip. This book documents his experience of living with ADS, discovering LSD, and learning to better manage his condition. Or in other words, it will explain the opening statement:

“[W]hen LSD met my ASD, I experienced incomparable relief for — and, in some sense, a near-total resolution of — my struggles with Autism Spectrum Disorder.”

Chapter 1 – Me Before LSD

Emotional awareness and emphatic access are two traits that people with ASD have trouble experiencing (to a varying degree, it’s a spectrum). Social interactions aren’t natural and fun, they are more often draining and confusing. Aaron recounts how he specifically experienced the world from this perspective. For him, social information and seamless interaction were out of reach.

“I am in no way joking when I say that before LSD, I felt more closely related to a robot or robotic learning algorithm than I did to a human being.”

For more background, you can find the DSM-V (psychologists/psychiatrists handbook of sorts) definition of ASD here.

Chapter 2 – Autism on Acid

The diagnosis of ASD came very late and Aaron battled with depressive symptoms for a long time before his diagnosis helped him better understand himself. But it wasn’t enough, and after the death of a close friend, Aaron retreated and bought a train ticket west.

His first trip was with a tab of LSD of around 150-250 micrograms. The trip gave him access to a world he had never experienced before. A world in which he could make connections. Instead of talking to a person, he was talking with a person. He could, for the first time, understand the nuance and detail of social interactions.

“In the initial hours of the experience, as the LSD began to take effect, I felt more and more connected… with the trees and breeze and sunlight around me. I experienced a deep moment of engagement. Yes. A moment of connection, with nature, with thoughts of my parents, my family, friends, and the whole of the human family and the broader web of life. And yes I know it sounds cliche to say but I was awash in a sense of deep, deep love for so many aspects of life.”

Aaron does a very good job of also describing the (legal) risks of taking an illegal drug, and discourages anyone from doing the same.

Chapter 3 – After the First Dose

This newfound access to emotions wasn’t just amazing, it also opening him up to challenging and intense emotions. But as he learned more about himself, he discovered the nuance of emotions.

“It was as if LSD had unclogged a lifetime of emotional constipation, and there I was, sifting through my mound of unprocessed mental sh*t. But the odd part about this was that, with the assistance of LSD, It was as if LSD had unclogged a lifetime of emotional constipation, and there I was, sifting through my mound of unprocessed mental sh*t. But the odd part about this was that, with the assistance of LSD, this type of inner emotional work seemed not very burdensome.this type of inner emotional work seemed not very burdensome.”

Chapter 4 – Integration

The LSD experienced needed to be integrated into his daily life and Aaron recounts how the ASD lens is much different from average. And that until his 27th year, socializing was on the bottom of his priority list.

“The closest I can come to describing what it’s like to have an ASD-affected brain would be to compare it to relying on a mailroom clerk who receives all of the envelopes in the mail but only ever seems to have no clue as to which envelopes ought to be opened first.”

Chapter 5 – Acceptance

Through his experience with LSD, Aaron was able to accept himself, to become his own best friend. In this chapter, and in later chapters, he recognizes that the ASD lens is just one of the ways of seeing the world, and a way that he does still values. One lens is not better than the other, they are just different perspectives.

“By alternating between the lenses of ASD and LSD, I gained an intimate understanding of not only a new way of seeing, but also, critically, a wholly new and novel perspective on the ways that I had always seen. I became aware of the ways in which I was aware, and unaware, of various aspects of the ever-available stimulus. In this way, I became capable of seeing my own biases, and conditioned patterns of belief, and so many other aspects of self that had become so familiar and ingrained that they had likewise become more or less invisible to me in my day-to-day perception.”

Aaron makes the great analogy to people who are deaf. A cochlear implant is awesome, but it’s also great to be able to turn it off when you’re riding the subway.

Chapter 6 – Immersion Therapy

One of the reasons for writing the book is to inspire researchers and therapists. Aaron’s experience may serve as a template of sorts that they can try and validate or update with a larger sample size.

Through experimentation, Aaron has found that 20-50 micrograms works best as ‘LSD-Assisted Immersion Therapy’. This is more than a microdose (sub-perceptual, usually 5-10 µg) and less than a full/psychedelic/macro dose (>100 µg). This dosage helped him most with social learning and development, without being too distracting/psychedelic.

“It was a variable dose range that seemed to work well for me; a range that would decrease my fear and increase my perceptivity but still allow me to re-root and more readily integrate insights into aspects of selfhood in real-time.”

He followed the 3-day (1 on, 2 off) protocol as proposed by James Fadiman (The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide). The rest of the chapter also describes the usefulness of other dosages (macro, micro), how to prepare it, and the preparation he undertook.

Aaron describes the LSD-Assisted Immersion Therapy as a place in which he could discover and change his conditioning maps, his routines and (unhelpful) (mental) routines.

“This process of use-testing and editing my conditioned behavioral responses allowed me to (1) recognize patterns of behavior, (2) consider potential root causes of the behavior (3) consider potential modifications to said behavior, and (4) test and integrate the behavior change IN THE MOMENT.”

Chapter 7 – What Now?

This chapter can be best described as a call-to-action, a thank you to LSD, and encouragement for more research to be done.

“LSD let me see & comprehend complicated social behaviors. LSD let me feel feelings and deeply sense the feelings of other living beings. From a single dose I woke up, from a numb and deafened black and white life, obscured by memorized maps. I fell in love with the dynamic full-color, heart-tingling, sensational, birational, expressive world of human beings being social. So – pretty please – with an fMRI image on top, please consider rescheduling so we can more readily research LSD.” (printed in a very large font)

Chapter 8 – LSD Research, Then & Now

The research on LSD and ASD is still very limited. Aaron has made available all his (up-to-date) notes and links on this website. Much of the research is from the 1960s, and good new studies have yet to be done. In the book, Aaron quotes four papers:

Chapter 9 – An Open Letter to Science

The final chapter highlights the resurgence of research being done with psychedelics. Aaron cheers this on (and donates the proceeding of the book to MAPS and Heffter).

“If I had a wish, I would wish that neuroimaging studies could continue to provide insight into what exactly happens during the psychedelic experience. I would wish that such studies could continue to reveal not only the neurological underpinnings of both psychedelic and autistic experiences, but also, in turn, the neurological underpinnings of the broader human experience. Because I strongly believe that by studying psychedelics and autism, we advance our perspective on the formation of perspectives, period. And I for one find that to be an exciting prospect indeed.”

Buy Autism on Acid

Next to the normal places, you can also get the (audio)book directly from the website. You can also collaborate/give feedback on this google doc.

August 4, 2020

Hell Yeah or No

Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers is a great little book with life advice from a man who has figured out some good things about life. The thinking is clear, concise, and evergreen. Definitely a book to re-read/listen to (parts of) again every year or so.

First/key idea in this blog post. And great supplement here.

“Use this rule if you’re often over-committed or too scattered. If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no”. When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say “no.” When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to really throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say “HELL YEAH!” Every event you get invited to. Every request to start a new project. If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about it, say “no.” We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.”

And another great idea is one about being now or future focussed.

—

Also see this review (selected experts) by Josh Spector.

July 27, 2020

Measure What Matters

Measure What Matters by John Doerr is the management book around goal setting as a company. From legendary investor John Doerr and influenced by Bill Campell (executive coach), and full of examples from Google and the like.

The core of the book should also be possible to be applied to oneself. So let’s dive in.

Too much to read? Watch John Doerr’s TED Talk about OKRs (11min)

OKRs

“Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.”

Objective: what is to be achieved

  • significant, concrete, action-oriented, and (ideally) inspirational
  • e.g. organize the world’s information
  • e.g. make psychedelics more accessible

Key Results: how we get to the objective

  • specific and time-bound (month/quarter), aggressive yet realistic
  • measurable and verifiable
  • e.g. grow revenue of Youtube by 30% this quarter
  • e.g. make an overview of all psychedelics companies this quarter

Goals can be harmful, people can only work towards them and ignore opportunities and ‘goal-hack’. But don’t be mistaken, goals are necessary (insert Yogi Berra quote 😉 ).

Goals create alignment, clarity, and job satisfaction.

The rest of the book dives deeper into the ‘superpowers’ of OKRs:

  • Focus and Commitment to Priorities
  • Align and Connect for Teamwork
  • Track for Accountability
  • Stretch for Amazing

and the applications and implications

  • Conversation, Feedback, Recognition
  • Continuous Improvement
  • The Importance of Culture

OKR Hygiene

  • Less is more
    • it signals what to say yes to and no to
    • three to five OKRs per cycle
  • Set goals from the bottom up
  • No dictating
  • Stay flexible
    • modify or abandon mid-cycle if needed
  • Dare to fail
    • aim higher than where you are now
    • ‘train harder than last time’
  • A tool, not a weapon
    • OKRs and bonuses are best kept separate
  • Be patient; be resolute
    • it takes some time to get used to them

Focus and Commitment to Priorities

chapters 4, 5, and 6

“What is most important for the next three (or six, or twelve) months?”

Many people can’t name the priorities of their companies (or themselves for that matter).

  • You will need to repeat the OKRs until you (leadership) become tired of repeating it, then people will know them

“… nothing moves us forward like a deadline.”

Quarterly OKRs are advised.

You need to pair OKRs to measure both effect and counter-effect. This means quality and quantity. Or speed and robustness. Only measuring one can lead to goal-hacking.

OKRs also mean that you don’t work on other things. These are the projects that need to get done, you can only work on another project if you update your OKRs.

“The art of management lies in the capacity to select from the many activities of seemingly comparable significance the one or two or three that provide leverage well beyond the others and concentrate on them.”

“Put more wood behind fewer arrows.”

Chapters 5 and 6 are examples from two companies that implemented OKRs.

“Instead of reacting to external events on the fly, we’re acting purposefully on our plans for each quarter.”

Align and Connect for Teamwork

chapters 7, 8, and 9

OKRs lead to alignment because you know what everyone/the company is working on (and only 7 percent of employees fully understand the goal of a company).

Chapter 7 has an example of OKRs for a football team, some good, some bad.

OKRs should work towards the greater goal, but also can/should come from bottom-up. At that level, people know best what to do to achieve the goals. Doerr says 50-50 is a good mix.

OKRs may be internal (do X) or external (get Y revenue). Depending on the phase of a company and how much you know of the environment, you can finetune this.

One good (alignment) question to ask is: Will this thing work towards our North Star?

Track for Accountability

chapters 10 and 11

OKRs can be tracked, and revised or adapted as circumstances dictate.

Cloud-based software could help with:

  • Making goals visible to everyone
  • Drive engagement
  • Promote internal networking
  • Save time, money, frustration

Track the goals for yourself (weekly, monthly, or whatever frequency works best). Preference of Doerr is weekly.

Then you can choose the following:

  • continue
  • update
  • start (new one)
  • stop (do let everyone who is dependent on this OKR know)

Scoring (at Google) is done as follows. A bit objective with subjective ‘did I put in the effort’ mixed in:

  • 0.7 to 1.0 = green
  • 0.4 to 0.6 = yellow (progress, but not there)
  • 0.0 to 0.3 = red (fail)

Always reflect on the progress made, as also to inform making new OKRs.

Possible questions:

  • Did I accomplish all of my objectives?
    • If so, what contributed to my success?
    • If not, what obstacles did I encounter?
  • If I were to rewrite a goal achieved in full, what would I change?
  • What have I learned that might alter my approach to the next cycle’s OKRs?

After this feedback, take a breath to savour your progress.

Stretch for Amazing

chapters 12, 13, and 14

“If companies don’t continue to innovate, they’re going to die – and I didn’t say iterate, I said innovate.” – Bill Campbell

Google divides their OKRs into two buckets

  1. Committed goals: related to metrics, aim is to get a 1.0
  2. Stretch/aspirational goals: bigger-picture, aim to get 0.7
    1. Google fails 40% of these

Stretch goals should be fine-tuned to an organisation. You should have some, but not all. And they shouldn’t be ‘fly to Mars next year’, but ‘build a working rocket next year’ (difficult, but remotely possible).

(fun fact: it was Susan Wojciki’s garage where Google started, she was employee nr 16 and YouTube’s 10x’er)

OKRs can also be seen as the ‘big rocks’ (Stephen Covey). Do those first, then add smaller and smaller pebbles and sand (to fill a jar).

Conversation, Feedback, Recognition

chapters 15 and 16

“A manager’s first role is the personal one. It’s the relationship with people, the development of mutual confidence … the creation of a community.” – Peter Drucker

This is in response to not everything being able to be captured by numbers, by OKRs.

The idea is that OKRs get coupled to continuous performance management in the form of:

  • Conversations: manager and contributor
  • Feedback: bidirectional and between peers
  • Recognition: expression of appreciation

What is noted again is to decouple OKRs from compensation (otherwise the goals will be too low/high/goal-hacked). Feedback from the team and context is more important for compensation. (see graph p182)

Conversations

The conversations are driven by the subordinate. It’s about goal setting/adjusting, update on progress (what works/doesn’t work), coaching both ways, career growth, mini-performance review.

Feedback

Specific feedback to gauge if you’re doing well, what others need from you, etc. Also, feedback on the company.

Recognition

Continuous, peer-based, objective, sharing stories, tied to company goals and strategies.

Continuous Improvement

chapter 17

Story about Zume, but alas OKRs didn’t help them in the end.

The Importance of Culture

chapters 18, 19, and 20

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – saying/John Doerr.

Culture is the parts that include someone that champions the goals (OKRs) and others that help others and motivate (CFRs).

This part is a bit more vague, but it comes down to having a culture where people are going in the same direction, OKRs can help with getting that so.

“If you want to cut a man’s hair, is it better if he is in the room?” – Senegalese saying

“Ideas are easy; execution is everything.” – John Doerr

OKRs checklist

Objective

  • Concrete
  • Significant
  • Action-oriented
  • Inspirational
  • 3-5 Objectives

Key Results

  • Specific
  • Time-bound
  • Aggressive but attainable
    • Either aim for complete (1.0)
    • Or aim out there with 10x projects (0.7)
  • Qualitative and quantitative (prevent goal-hacking)
  • 2-5 Key Results per Objective

Review

  • Weekly or per month
  • Change goals if ‘ladder is on the wrong building’
  • Rate (at end) from 1.0 (complete/full effort), <0.7 (progress), <0.4 (fail)
  • What contributed to the success?
  • What obstacles were there?
    • How should it be rewritten?
  • What changes for the next cycle?
  • Take a break

July 23, 2020

Broken Stars

Broken Stars is an anthology of short stories by different Chinese writers. They are collected by Ken Liu (an awesome writer in his own right). I can’t say that I enjoyed every story as much, but there are some really innovative ones in there.

I don’t have the best mental map of Chinese history (but do know some things), so a lot of the subtle hints when using historic rulers/periods do get lost on me.

And I think I like sci-fi that plays with concepts (e.g. time) more than those that incorporate too much historic or today’s concepts.

The stories are:

  • Goodnight, Melancholy (Turing is featured heavily, makes me think of Machines Like Me)
  • Moonlight
  • Broken Stars
  • Submarines
  • Salinger and the Koreans
  • Under a Dangling Sky
  • What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear (heavy, good)
  • The New Year Train (good moral/end-note)*
  • The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales (interesting, very good sci-fi and medieval mix)
  • The Snow of Jingyang
  • The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge
  • The First Emperor’s Games
  • Reflection (good idea about seeing time flow backward)
  • The Brain Box
  • Coming of the Light
  • A History of Future Illnesses

*”I’ts simple when you put it like that right? What doesn’t make sense to me is this: lots of times, when the starting point and the destination are fixed – say, birth and death – why do most people rush towards the end?“

July 1, 2020

Network Effect

Network Effect by Martha Wells is the fifth installment in the Murderbot Diaries series. It was a bit longer than probably necessary and I wasn’t totally focussed, so it wasn’t as engaging as with the earlier editions.

See a fuller review here.

June 28, 2020

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas by Dan Kennedy is one of the marketing books that one supposedly should have read. I found it somewhat informative, but mostly because I projected my own experience and ideas on what is being said.

It does a good job of presenting different ideas, but a lot of them are of that time (mail order business). That doesn’t mean that some of the lessons or inspiration isn’t valid.

One good nugget from the book is the lesson that starting with an idea, and making that come to fruition, may be harder than selling something (in a specific area) that is already successful somewhere else.

I’ve made some more notes in Obsidian.

June 22, 2020

To Fathom Hell or Soar Angelic

This review was first published on Blossom Analysis.

To Fathom Hell or Soar Angelic is a fictional book about starting a psychedelics research project/revolution, written by Ben Sessa.

Is there hope in psychedelic medicine? Can we dream bigger than just numbing patients (and doctors)? That is the underlying question in this fictional book by Dr. Ben Sessa. After reading the book you may take home some hope, some tingling of the possibility that MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, and other psychedelics could help people become whole again. But if nothing else, you will get to know two, somewhat broken, men (the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) who start a psychedelic revolution.

Review

“To fathom hell or soar angelic just take a pinch of psychedelic” – Humphry Osmond

Using a fictional book to describe a brave new world where psychedelics make a new introduction is an unique way of exploring this possibility. The book hovers between the esoteric and science-driven, between dream catchers and psychotherapy.

The world that is sketched could be best positioned at around the turn of the century, a moment in time where very little research had been done on psychedelics (since shutting it all down at the end of the 60’s). The way it’s revived, in a barn and with plenty of reference to The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary et al., was quite interesting.

The book, and the research mentioned, may best be seen as a proof of concept, an introduction to psychedelic therapy (it features several sessions with MDMA, LSD, psilocybin). The double-blind, placebo-controlled experiments are left for a future moment to transpire.

The critique of the ‘normal’ system is evident in Sessa’s description of current psychotherapy. He paints it as a system in which patients come back for years, don’t solve their underlying problems, and get dosed with SSRIs that don’t do much if anything. Oh, and the protagonist is fantasizing about killing his patients (don’t worry, it doesn’t turn into Hannibal). The alternative, psychedelic (psycho)therapy, is offered as a way out of this loop.

From my perspective, the alternative is presented without enough evidence and rigor (the double-blind studies that are left for the reader to imagine happening sometime in the future). After seeing positive results, the two psychiatrists are heralded as heroes in a presentation for their colleagues. It’s a fantasy that many in the psychedelics field may have, but unfortunately many have been burned too much before to have that level of hope (although it is likely to be justified in this case).

At the end of the book, things get turned up to 11. The second psychiatrist (Joseph Langley) is dying and in a flurry of science-y sounding words, they run tests and strange things happen. One is left to ponder what this means or why it’s related to psychedelic science, but I was none the wiser.

Other Works by Ben Sessa

Ben Sessa has also written The Psychedelics Renaissance, summarizing where we stand with research and sticking much more to facts this time.

June 11, 2020

Manifesting Minds

Originally published on Blossom Analysis

Manifesting Minds is an anthology of articles from the MAPS Bulletin and is edited by Rick Doblin and Brad Burge. It contains the highlights of articles written until 2014, which are grouped per theme. The book does a great job of offering different perspectives, but for specific information one can best search on their website itself.

Quick Take

The essays are divided into eight categories. They are the following:

  1. Arts and Creativity
  2. Coming of Age
  3. Science and Medicine
  4. Therapy
  5. Sexuality
  6. Spirituality
  7. Ecology
  8. Technology

The essays range from articles written about the topic, to interviews and recollections of experiences. One learns about doing 2C-B with your children, doing (macro) doses of psychedelics and their relationship to extreme sports, and the connection between meditation and psychedelics.

Amongst the many authors are the luminaries like Ann Shulgin, Ram Dass, Aldous Huxley, but also lesser-known voices and perspectives like that of one of the MDMA trial participants.

As mentioned in the intro, the book provides some insights, but one could also find these by searching the MAPS Bulletin website.

One quote that stood out to me is the following in the interview with Aldous Huxley, speaking about a psychedelic experience:

“You remember something extraordinary having happened. And to some extent you can relive the experience, particularly the transformation of the outside world. You get hints of this, you see the world in this transfigured way now and then-not to the same pitch of intensity, but something of the kind. It does help you look at the world in a new way. And you come to understand very clearly the way that certain specially gifted people have seen the world. You are actually introduced into the kind of world that Van Goh lived in, or the kind of world that Blake lived in.”

Show more