I’ve been seeing several references on Facebook and email recently to this site or similar sites, which makes the claim that it is safer to ride a bicycle without a helmet. This is ridiculous nonsense to me, and I finally snapped and wrote a long email rant in response, and decided to post a version […]
Category: thoughts
Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
Amazon link I finally read this book, which has been on the to-read list since it came out because of its discussion of cognitive biases. I hadn’t been in a particular hurry to read it, especially since I’d listened to Kahneman’s Long Now talk which covered the main themes of the book. But I finally […]
How is your memory indexed?
My Facebook friends have heard me complain a few times that I have apparently exceeded my brain’s capacity to keep track of people. At Google, I have worked with hundreds of people, and it’s entirely embarrassing when one of them sees me at lunch or elsewhere on the Google campus and says “Hi Eric!” and […]
Expertise as exception handling
A few months ago, I wrote a post claiming that expertise was doing difficult tasks consistently and Rif challenged me on that. And I’ve been thinking about it over the past few months and have another model I’m going to throw out there: expertise as exception handling. One example of this is my experience as […]
Maximizing collisionability
Last night, Tony Hsieh of zappos.com spoke at the Long Now on the topic of Helping Revitalize a City. He described Downtown Project, which is the company he designed to create a thriving community (tech, art, fashion, family) in downtown Las Vegas. As he discussed the project, he brought up a great concept that I […]
Don’t act like a special snowflake
Disclaimer: This post is not about you. Please do not take offense. It is an exaggerated amalgam of people for the sake of making a point. Over the past several months, I have talked to a number of people looking for jobs or practicing company pitches. And what I see is people getting frustrated that […]
Inequality, Globalization and Technology
There has been a discussion about economic inequality on an email list I’m on. It started with a link to this CNN summary of “must reads” on inequality, and has continued over a few other threads the past couple months. I’ve written a few thoughts in those threads, and thought I would assemble them here […]
Consistency
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve gotten back into playing volleyball this summer at Google, and have been really enjoying it. The sand court on Google’s main campus is in regular use, and I’ll occasionally stop by and watch to pick up some pointers. One Wednesday at lunch, I was watching the really […]
Being a good teammate
As those of you who follow me on Facebook know, I have gotten back into playing volleyball this summer, specifically sand doubles volleyball. I have been playing with a variety of folks on the main Google court. We typically get 4 people together to play, and then rotate through teammates, so everybody plays with everybody […]
Big Data isn’t the answer
I was talking to somebody last week who had recently moved to San Francisco, and she randomly interjected Big Data into the conversation. She said she’d learned that’s what you do in SF – Big Data is a buzzword that can be used at any time on any topic. I found this amusing, because Big […]
