Short Takes 1
In the short-takes posts I write about some concepts, phrases, models, ideas, whatever related to my work and life. As these are likely to be known to many, the idea is to just document these together, rather than go into details of these. Will keep updating.
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DRY Don’t Repeat Yourself
This principle has been used and abused a lot. The idioms which sound catchy are retained more. For example, why doesn’t a stitch in time save ten? Also succinctly put idioms are more popular. For example, you don’t have to explain- as Wodehouse does- that ‘An apple a day, if well aimed, keeps the doctor away’. Anyway, Martin Fowler documents ‘Duplicated Code’ as a code smell. DRY suggests not repeating some information, code, logic, etc. This is good advice in general but to extract some ‘duplicated’ code/logic may result into coupling. And as the code evolves, it may become difficult to maintain. So, after taking advice from talks/ discussions, I think that it’s better to not repeat yourself within a bounded context. But if the same information is needed outside the boundaries, it’s fine to repeat it in respective contexts. It is better to evolve and maintain that way.
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Follow the money
If you understand what motivates people, then you understand a lot of what they do. I was once told to ask myself ‘why do I do what I do’. Follow the money (trail) was the advice given to Bob Woodword during Watergate as per the film. When it comes to IT, as someone tweeted, a shocking amount of irritating behavior can be explained by “this person is trying to demonstrate their value”. As my experience grew, I came to dislike a lot of agile/ process consultant folks. During a phase I wondered why would someone- who had good experience- propagate dogmas like DRY, 100% test coverage, you ‘must’ write tests first, etc. Then when I sort of understood the motivations I was able to put things into perspective. I used the wording ‘sort of’ in the previous sentence as I don’t think you can fully understand others. Anyway, this model- money here stands for motivation- can help us understand the why part behind a lot of things. Again, for balance, don’t read too much into it. People and their actions are sometimes rational and, some other times, irrational.
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Entropy
The concept of entropy is from the second law of thermodynamics. And it is equally applicable at other places. When thinking about a system, it is good to know that all systems tend towards disorder (high entropy thermal equilibrium). You need to do work to keep the system in order. This work needs to come from outside the system. Also related to the second law is Carnot’s principle, which says that there are inherent losses in a system. If you put in 100 units of work, you will see less than 100 units worth of output- never equal to or more than 100. This is why a car left on its own will acquire rust. You need to maintain it by putting in some work. And it feels like you put more work and get less bang for the buck. Same goes for software systems, projects, career. And same goes for health. And for relationships.
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80-20 rule Pareto Principle
20% of work takes 80% of efforts.
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Power Law
A variant causes seemingly disproportionate impact. Man reaching Mauritius caused extinction of the Dodo.
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Peter Principle
People performing a better role at a level get promoted to higher level where they are not as competent. This is generally accepted as true. But again this is to be taken not as a rule but more as a rule of thumb. Many people at higher levels are actually competent.
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Conway’s Law
Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. In my experience, this is always valid.
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Normal Distribution/ Bell Curve
Every normal distribution is a version of the standard normal distribution, with some standard deviation and mean. This is why, we will hire only the best candidates generally does not make sense. They can’t all be the best. Even if you hire the best, there will be some who are within bounds of certain sigma value and others beyond those bounds. Need to read more.
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Sunk Cost and Sunk cost fallacy
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Spontaneous order
Self organization appears to emerge out of seeming chaos.
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Tragedy of the commons
“Free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately reduces the resource through over-exploitation, temporarily or permanently. This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals or groups, each of whom is motivated to maximize use of the resource to the point in which they become reliant on it, while the costs of the exploitation are borne by all those to whom the resource is available.”
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The Pygmalion effect
A psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse performance.
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Naoko
“Let’s see now. What was Naoko talking about that day? Of course, the field well.”
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The Broken Windows Theory
It states that visible signs of crime, antisocial behavior, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. While it is a somewhat contested theory, I use this in my code and life. The extent of effects of ecosystem can be debated upon, but by and large with simplifications, we can say that our environment has effect on us. A laxly written piece of code may give rise to another such code that needs to interact with it. And by induction this can soon grow out of control. That does not mean you should spend disproportionate effort on fixing it (See Broken Window Fallacy). But you know a stitch in time… Similarly, I have come to believe that you should watch your thoughts. Whether true or not, assume that negativity and evil exist and not let them into your mind. We may not always end up making or even have opportunities to make conscious choices. So awareness/ mindfulness is the key I think. “Wake up, Neo… The Matrix has you…”
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Degradation
To quote from a tweet: “You fall to the level of bullshit you can’t detect.”
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Connected Emotions
“You can’t ‘selectively’ numb emotions.” From a TED talk.
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Inheriting wishes
Shogun TV Series episode 4. Toda Mariko says about her husband’s death, “I will inherit his wishes.” Wow.
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The Cobra Effect
is related to Goodhart’s law and Unintended Consequences
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The Paradox of Choice
says that you would be happier with your choice when you have a comparatively smaller number of options to choose from. While options are necessary, increasing the number of options beyond a certain threshold yields unsatisfactory results. I haven’t read the book. But I think it makes sense. It is said to be applicable for consumer products, dating, etc. A typical career advice says that you should choose a career path that will open a few options to choose from. Try out a few of these and when you find your interest inclining towards one of those options, commit to that. Longer talk by the author of the book. Again, things like this are not pure science so your mileage may vary.
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Differences between British and American comedy
Stephen Fry on differences between British and American comedy. Of course, it’s not always this black and white. But, in general, it seems to make sense. Also, once an American TV series succeeds, they seem to think of it in terms of cash cow and want to repeat the success ‘formula’ till it’s boring. Occasionally, I may like a season of Gilmore Girls. Also, consider GG or Mrs. Maisel by the same creator. I just don’t understand where do they summon this enthusiasm from. (Unless it’s from market demand.) I’d prefer Fleabag kind of awkward and cringeworthy comedy based on loss/ tragedy to wisecracks of GG. The lines like it’s God, isn’t it? make you want to cry all the time.
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Contact
Contact is probably my most favorite sci-fi movie. And the scene of contact is quite thrilling. (Also, I like ‘they should have sent a poet’. Of course, there are a lot of great scenes: young Ellie running upstairs to fetch medicine bottle, the opening scene of the movie from noisy to quiet, etc.) While the movie deviates from the book quite a bit and does not include some parts, I liked both. Carl Sagan was involved with the movie. Euclid’s theorem about infinitude of prime numbers is quite profound with simple proof(s).
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Availability Bias/ heuristic
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Survivorship Bias
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Dunning–Kruger effect
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Impostor Syndrome
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Greater good and lesser evil principle
‘Greater good’ is from Spinoza’s quote/ maxim in the linked article. But the principle is primarily known as lesser evil principle. A lot of choices turn out to be not as bad-vs-good but instead as bad-vs-worse. (Of course, definitions of good or bad are subjective, situation dependent, relative, etc.) And most of the times we are so used to this that we don’t even really notice that the choice we made might have been lesser but evil nonetheless. Because of complex and dynamic nature of systems, we learn to live with our choices. Life would be hell if we couldn’t. This is more pronounced in case of widely participated systems like bi/ multi party politics. But the principle holds equally true in other areas like technology, etc. There is no ideal technology. So the best a programmer can do is to be a pragmatic one.
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Newfound podcast acquired.fm
Over the last 2-3 months I listened to many episodes of the acquired podcast. Notable ones: Taylor Swift, LVMH, Starbucks, Microsoft, Hermès, Porsche, Lockheed Martin. All of these have been noteworthy ones. Apart from Microsoft, I did not know much about any of the other brands and phenomena. I was aware about Taylor Swift and that she’s a phenomenon. But I hadn’t listened to a single complete Taylor Swift song before. And, I am ashamed to say, I still haven’t… Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. But maybe someone can educate me and tell me where to begin. I have listened to Microsoft first part more than once and am waiting for the next parts to be released. Again, all of these episodes were interesting. How could a Lockheed Martin story not be interesting? And Hermès story has Grace Kelly in it. So… After listening to these stories, I now have huge respect for Hermès (though I think their model succeeds because of the brand value), and I know that LVMH kind of corporate games may be too much for me.
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Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
is an important model to understand motivations and drivers of human behavior. As per the wikipedia entry, while he never created pyramid to represent the hierarchy,
Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging and love", "social needs" or "esteem", "self-actualization" and "transcendence" to describe the pattern through which human needs and motivations generally move. This means that, according to the theory, for motivation to arise at the next stage, each prior stage must be satisfied by an individual.Put in a concrete example, if your wife is not getting laid, you cannot have intellectually stimulating discussions with her. If that sounded a bit weird, we should acknowledge that this is a generalized framework. Individuals may differ. As the wikipedia entry says (Criticism section),academically, Maslow's idea is heavily contested... the exact hierarchy proposed by Maslow is called into question. -
Bike Shedding
Law of triviality People within an organization commonly give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. For example, a committee whose job is to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spends the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bicycle shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important and a far more difficult and complex task.
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Linda Problem
Even after becoming aware of this fallacy, I have fallen prey to it many times and have also seen other people doing so. This is not surprising- even Stephen J. Gould… The difference is this: After I became aware of my bias, I immediately corrected myself. On the contrary, when I notice my friends making these kinds of mistakes and I explain this fallacy with Linda example, some of them are still not able to accept that it applies to their situations and choices. Maybe (as wikipedia mentions) the wording/ framing of the Linda problem could be a thing.
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The Monty Hall problem
As I mentioned in the first paragraph on this page, the entries here are likely to be widely known. But just in case you didn’t know about the Monty Hall problem, it is good to know that the solution is very counterintuitive. For many of us. So there is nothing particularly wrong with you if you found it counterintuitive. At least nothing that can be brought quickly to surface by the Monty Hall problem.
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Constrained Risk
Probably in the fields of management, finance, markets, etc. this term has some overloaded meaning. I was looking for the name of the concept behind why people eat chillies even though it causes pain. I remember some documentary on why people do that. You know brain senses/ sends signals, etc. Is there a name for it? If you have read some posts here, you probably know that I place high importance on names of concepts. Possibly disproportionately high, but it works for me. Anyway I found this on wikipedia entry for chili paper:
eating chilies is an example of a "constrained risk" like riding a roller coaster, in which extreme sensations like pain and fear can be enjoyed because individuals know that these sensations are not actually harmful.And yet I don’t dare watching Ambika Mod and Woodall’s tear jerker series One Day again. What does it mean? -
Clockwise
Do you know why clocks go clockwise? Why were the very first clocks like that? They could have gone- what is currently known as anticlockwise- as well. Well, someone said clockwise ‘direction’- instead of sense- on twitter and while I found it mildly irritating, I did not take the ‘someone is wrong on the internet’ path. I read a few wikipedia entries. Clocks traditionally follow this sense of rotation because… better read on wikipedia.
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The right to say no
I guess the right to say no is a somewhat overrated and sometimes a reactionary thing to cling on to. Maybe it is more of an idea related to individualism. (Plus maybe to things like self-love, paradox-of-choice?) In many situations it has a great value. It does/ may give you a feeling of being in control. But in a sense, it can be a double edged sword and may cause you to lose control of a larger context. Does that make sense? Maybe it’s good if it is based on facts. In emotional/ reactionary settings, not sure. Even some of those situations would be better dealt with by its use (ex. pro-life/choice). But all? Not sure at this stage. Depends, I guess.
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Luxury
My understanding of some concepts from listening to Hermes and LVMH episodes of acquired.fm podcast. I mentioned the podcast and these episodes in one of the above points. But I listened to the lvmh episode again today. Most of the description below is from that episode… with some quotes copied. We use various products primarily for the utility they provide. Some products carry a premium because of differentiating features they provide over some other products. This is where an iPhone Pro becomes different from an iPhone. Some products are fashionable. A fashionable product may not necessarily be a premium or luxury product. A luxury product is one which extracts a premium without adding any additional/ differential utility. It primarily signals that the user has taste and can afford to spend money. Large scale availability of a premium product may be good for a company but similar high-availability of a luxury product may kill it. If everyone can buy a pre-war Rolls Royce… Premium means pay more, get more in functional benefits. Luxury is elsewhere. It signals the capacity of the buyer to transcend needs, functions, or objective benefits. This is how luxury brands are different from premium or super premium brands. Beyond the experience, luxury brands bring creative power, heritage, and social distinction. The most compelling argument around why luxury needs to exist is that it is a deeply human thing to signal your standing in the world. Everybody signals it in different ways. Sometimes only people in the tribe can understand why it’s so valuable and luxurious. For example, with something like the Hermes Birkin bag, where it’s not marked with the brand logo. Also, what durability really refers to in case of luxury vs that in case of premium is that the durability of luxury’s status is Lindy. It has been worth something for a long time, so it will be worth something for a long time. Luxury is the intersection of art and commerce. It is literally creating something that is so close to art, except it has to have some function.
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Preference falsification and preference cascade.
Preference falsification is the act of misrepresenting a preference under perceived public pressure. It involves the selection of a publicly expressed preference that differs from the underlying privately held preference. A preference cascade occurs when numerous individuals, around the same time, realize that they are not “the only one” who thinks the way they do. Before the moment arrives there is an established orthodoxy. These things are more visible in social media. (Certainly, they are some of reasons behind the rise of social media.) And while the examples which you can think of quickly may be negative (politics, etc.), these concepts can be seen in some good areas as well. For example, Darwin-Wallace come to mind in natural selection, evolutionary biology space.
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Bringing Intentionality to habits
Amit to Ajay on an Everything Is Everything episode: “I want to ask you about a habit you built and you’re glad you built it.” Ajay says, “I have managed to organize everything in life around one main purpose which is to get more hours per day to read.”
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Acquired’s IPL podcast episode
I recently listened to acquired.fm’s podcast episode on Indian Premier League(IPL) Cricket. Considering that Cricket must be somewhat unknown/ new to these guys, they have done a great job. I am happy that a thing like IPL could be thought out and executed in India. Yet you cannot escape crony capitalism, business vs market focus, this is how it’s done in India, etc. I have always believed IPL to be a very well designed product. Considering the target audience, I could think of very few improvements to IPL. After listening to the podcast episode, some other improvements also came to mind. Anyway, however well designed, I stopped watching IPL after first couple of years. And the prime reason behind it is that IPL has become too much batting focused (to please the crowds, no doubt). And BBL, WBBL, WPL, the hundred and international T20 matches also look more or less biased towards batters. I hate it. Some bowlers still shine through. I don’t know much about IPL but in Women’s T20 leagues- WPL, WBBL- I am amazed by how Sophie Ecclestone, Ashleigh Gardner always seem to dominate. And Renuka Singh Thakur bowling the batters out cleanly makes me happy. Talking about women’s cricket, Meg Lanning is one of the best captains (men or women) I have seen. Ellyse Perry has athleticism of Nadal and screen presence of Clint Eastwood. The batter with best ground strokes, IMO, was Mithali (but I have seen so less of her and this might be a little biased/ nostalgic.) Also, while appealing to/ arguing with umpires for LBW, wide-ball, etc. she still looks like a smallish schoolgirl, but when she was a child Amelia Kerr had Sophie Devine as her baby sitter. How sweet is that! Coming back to not watching IPL, I just cannot stand someone like Yusuf Pathan mindlessly hitting a bowler like Dale Steyn. To some extent it might be elitist mindset. But I doubt that. I have seen Robin Singh hit Warne with equal disrespect. I have seen Akram, Pollock, Bolt and Waqar being hit. But in case of IPL, it seems more of entertainment than cricket. Probably as a side effect, I started liking Test Cricket more. I always liked one day matches. But now I like Tests more than One Day matches. Lastly, a taste of Wodehouse plum-pudding (Wodehouse was named Pelham… and later called Plum) should you need it after reading this longish-short-take: ‘After all, golf is only a game’, said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don’t realize what they’re saying.
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Loosely Held/ Passive Interests and Gardening
Among our various loosely held interests some are closer to our hearts than others. By loosely held interests I mean the things which interest us but those to which we don’t actively allocate much of our time and other resources. Is there a better terminology for it? We all have such interests. While we spend our resources actively and sometimes going out of our way to pursue our hobbies, we don’t do so for passive interests. In that sense, OTT content consumption is neither a hobby nor a passive/ loosely held interest for many of us- it is just stuff we do. For me, some loosely held interests are: woodworking, gardening. I admire and am in awe of wood-worked (hardwood, mainly) things. But when I see the kind of work it involves, I become aware of my limitations however beautiful the end result might be. And I have not spent any time, money on woodworking. Then the question becomes what’s the use of or should we even have loosely held passive interests. I don’t know the answer. But I look at those as potential hobbies. Gardening is another such passive interest of mine. Gardening is not a pure science nor an abstract art. So there will be debates like whether the Miyawaki method of afforestation is good. I have changed my mind back and forth about the native species thing a few times and no longer bother much about it. Gardening when I do it is mostly fruit trees and sometimes flowering plants. I am making a blanket statement here but everybody likes flowers just like everybody likes music. It is an evolutionary thing. Anyway, planting trees has been an interest. But a strange thing is that whenever I did it (tree plantation) in groups (large or even small with 2-3 people), I’ve positively hated it. I don’t understand why that is so. But possibly because of the ceremonious nature it acquires in a group. Here are some links that have proved to be fruitful for me: Peter Kanaris visits a tropical forest. Here is another such visit with the same host/ guide who doesn’t mind eating the fruits in front of visitors and hear them beg for a taste. Then there is a fruit explorer channel. On a different track, due to commercial- supply chain- viability, there is a pressure to make fruits larger, symmetric, have longer shelf life, an attractive color and uniform skin, have fewer seeds, and worst of all have more water weight. As a result, quality, taste may not be good. So I like to try various/ different fruits and varieties. I do not necessarily like all on longer term basis. But the experience can be as good as listening to a foreign song for the first time. Good fruits are sometimes hard to get. But it’s worth the effort to find good fruits as these fruits make your taste buds come so alive it’s like having a circus in your mouth. Here is a good catalog of tropical trees from a good nursery. Of course, sometimes you need to consume these things with a pinch of salt. So even though the veliyath garden site that I linked to says 2-3 year time for fruiting from seed for many varieties, it’s probably a sales oriented description. In my experience, many large, tropical fruit trees take longer, say 5-7 years to fruit from a seed. Various grafting/ air-layering techniques may help you speed up the process and/ or select preferred varieties.