psychology – Max's Two Cents

Monthly Newsletter: Issue 5

August 2, 2018March 9, 2023AI, Amazon, communication, growth, marketing, marketplace, metrics, psychology, social impact, startups, technology1 Comment

Hi, this is an issue of my monthly newsletter. I’ve picked a few interesting articles on technology, startups, growth, marketing and other topics for you.

I hope you enjoy the read with your morning cup of coffee. Let me know what you think! ~Max

Technology and Startups

The State of Artificial Intelligence in 2018: A Good Old Fashioned Report.
Learning Dexterity (3-min video). Open AI trained a robot to manipulate physical objects. Plus, the NYT article on the same subject.
How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs? A person who is 40 is 2.1x as likely to found a successful startup as a person who is 25. The average founder who had a successful exit through an IPO or an acquisition is 46.7 years old. (Kellogg)
Amazon’s Facial Recognition Wrongly Identifies 28 Lawmakers, A.C.L.U. Says. ACLU used Amazon face recognition software, trained the model on a mugshot database and applied it to pictures of US congressmen. This led to some false positives — 28 members of Congress were identified as people who were arrested. The high false positive rate was mostly due to the low confidence threshold (80%) and the biased training set but the point that this technology can be misused is well taken. (NYT)

Growth and Marketing

19 Tactics to Solve the Chicken-or-Egg Problem and Grow Your Marketplace. A short read and practical advice.
Intercom on growth. The new book by Intercom that provides a high-level overview of all key growth drivers — from acquisition to retention. (Intercom)
On writing for deprecation. How to announce feature deprecation: be clear, be compassionate, communicate early and provide a path forward. (Slack)
DAU/MAU is an important metric to measure engagement, but here’s where it fails. Andrew Chen on when to focus on daily/monthly active users and when not to.

Book Notes: Waking Up by Sam Harris

August 12, 2015July 29, 2021books, brain, cognition, cognitive science, meditation, mindfulness, neuroplasticity, neuroscience, notes, personal development, psychology, science, wisdomLeave a comment

I just wanted to share some excerpts from Waking Up by Sam Harris that I listened to a couple of months ago. It is a great book that covers so many topics: mindfulness, meditation, neuroscience, cognition, emotions and others. It is worth reading in its entirety and I am personally planning to re-read it. So here are some notes:

“Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world.”

“There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them.”

“My mind begins to seem like a video game: I can either play it intelligently, learning more in each round, or I can be killed in the same spot by the same monster, again and again.”

“How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages—but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out.”

Quotes, pictures, music

April 7, 2013March 9, 2023happiness, my photos, personal development, philosophy, psychology, quotesLeave a comment

Some thoughts I took notes on during last months. Some pictures I took during last years. Some good music.

“When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.”
– Milarepa

“You all laugh at me because I’m different, I laugh at you because you’re all the same.”
– Mikhail Bulgakov

Book Notes: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman

January 23, 2012March 9, 2023books, humor, learning, psychology, quotes, science1 Comment

Feynman is one of the brightest physicists of the 20th century who also happened to be a talented lecturer and an author of a book which is fun to read. Here are some excerpts from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” that I found interesting:

Surely, You're Joking, Mr. Feynman - book review & quotes

On freedom:

So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel heed by a need to maintain your position In the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.

Isn’t it a modern luxury that very few of us can afford?

On pointless communication

When it came time to evaluate the conference at the end, the others told how much they got out of it, how successful it was, and so on. When they asked me, I said, “This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There’s a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!

On mindfulness and watching your thoughts become dreams:

I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don’t notice that they’re not logically connected until you ask yourself, “What made me think of that?” and you try to work your way back, and often you can’t remember what the hell did make you think of that!

So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they’re completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.

After four weeks of sleeping all the time, I wrote my theme, and explained the observations I had made. At the end of the theme I pointed out that all of these observations were made while I was watching myself fall asleep, and I don’t really know what it’s like to fall asleep when I’m not watching myself. I concluded the theme with a little verse I made up, which pointed out this problem of introspection:

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Two Books About Brain And Neuroscience

November 9, 2010March 9, 2023books, brain, career, cognition, cognitive science, creativity, health, leadership, learning, management, neuroplasticity, neuroscience, productivity, psychology, TED, videoLeave a comment

Not a long time ago I wrote a post about My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. And during last couple of months I listened to two more books: Brain Rules by John Medina and Your Brain at Work by David Rock. Unlike Jill, they don’t tell their own stories but try to give real life recommendations based on neuroscience research.

John focuses on general principles rules of brain functioning which he covers relatively briefly. David on the other hand provides more of a deep dive in various situations that we face daily, mostly at work but views them through the prism of our brain and its biochemistry. Social concepts, such as status, reward and others are explained through things like oxytocin, dopamine & epinephrine.

Those who find such topics interesting can find my notes below. Plus, a couple of great videos of authors’ talks and one fun Slideshare presentation.

1. Brain Rules by John Medina

I used the actual “brain rules” by John from his website as the basis for my notes and briefly tried to explain main idea of each one.

John Medina

EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.

John recommends various kind of physical activity, especially aerobic one, including long walks. He states that if participants of business meetings walked on treadmills with 1.8 mile/hr speed, they would come up with much more creative ideas, not to mention increased memory and overall well-being. By the way, John takes his own medicine. It took him 15 minutes to adapt to replying to emails while walking.