I think his point was that a lot of people are more interested in these things.
Tech just happens and is useful, it's not necessarily attractive as a thing to investigate in detail.
And as to your last point; well that demonstrates your in the subset of people interested in this stuff. There are a hell of a lot of people very interested in trains too.
I mean a big part of a -growth- CEOs literal job is to guess on what the future holds and effectively bet on it.
Big-co CEOs are naturally expected to share their bets - and they aren't going to couch it with a "oh well no one could know for sure but..", that would totally undermine their existence!
On top of that; sometimes just saying a thing can make it happen. So it's never not worth that shot...
This has always been true.
Your selecting a group of people (CEOs and VCs) who have always made and lost money on confidently predicting the future. See also wall street bankers and politicians.
There are winners and losers in any boom - this happened in Cloud, DotCom, computing and hell probably tractors, industrial revolution, etc
You can be vague and right about the future broadly. You can talk specifically about what your company is doing directionally on those lines. But, when I hear people talking in detail about how the future is going to work I just roll my eyes. Not because I disagree but just because nobody knows. and chances are it won't work that way.
Any elite selection process has high risk for not selecting the best people.
Either due to corruption or, even more likely, institutional biases.
Malcolm Gladwell has a few episodes of revisionist history that looks at some US universities who fall into this trap.
Even with all that said; the chances of a selection process for 17/18 year olds being able to correctly select the best future adults in their field is very low.
Another good example; the number of young geniuses or prodigies (whether maths, chess, acting etc.) who don't make anything of themselves.
Having interviewed maths applicants for Oxford, I don't think it's just corruption or biases - there are just more really bright students that you have places for and have to reject some people! We all tried really hard not be biased but I don't think there is any way to guarantee that you aren't somehow, however hard you try.
It's very hard to predict from a half hour interview precisely who will do well in future, and in fact some people might do better having gone to other universities. Oxford and Cambridge aren't the best choice for everybody - I'm sure being a bigger fish in a smaller pond suits some people better.
No judgement here. And you are right btw; we are biased constantly in everything we do, and it's a better person than you our me that can truly dodge it!
I read a study a while ago (sorry Google didn't find it again) that said a lot of exceptionally gifted people just don't apply to elite universities. Instead, the main characteristic of applicants tends to be that they are extremely driven.
Drive tends to not correlate well to long term success without talent as a companion. Therefore a lot of people at Cambridge (which I think was the example) tend to do no better than the average in later life (notably wasn't true for PPE grads obviously)
Did Malcolm Gladwell ever address the lack of scientific rigor in his work, or does he still roll with whatever narrative he thinks will entertain and sell?
Congrats Hannah. I'll pile on with my own anecdote; I've run an internal conference at work for several years and we always book an external speaker.
She remains my (close) second favourite[1], with a choose your own adventure talk about algorithms. It was genuinely great, and warm, and thoughtful (a lot of it was about the risks of algorithms, which is very relevant for us).
This was... 2021 so mid COVID (yep it was remote) and so just before she became really big. We've worked with a lot of external speakers since, many of them very good or very slick, but she was the only one that was clearly both brilliant at her topic(s) and also an exceptional communicator.
[1] For the record my favourite is Clifford Agius who is some guy I saw at a local conference who in his spare time from being a commercial pilot builds fully robotic arms for kids - he even lets them give the finger. Great guy and refused to charge us more than a few hundred quid.
As I understand it; the point is to ask for an SVG which would demonstrate a conceptual understanding of what is being asked for and that is an important test IMO.
What sufficiently hard, but useful, problem would you ask the model for?
Agreed. And more; the Macbooks are pretty much the same - some are god approximations, some are terrible, all of them are recognisably a MacBook. And if you start using it they can train on it.
The problem isn't the test, its that is a public test.
Simon has previously said he has a list of secret prompts (at least one of which he "burned" as a demonstration a while ago). That's what makes it a good test - his commentary on the public test is something of a proxy for non-public tests. This makes it a good benchmark.
Never understood the need to wear extremely uncomfortable and ill-fitting shoes just to throw a ball. Always seemed like a way to jack the price up.
Sure, professional bowlers use specialised shoes. Professional footballers and professional runners and cyclists and golfers and tennis players and skateboarders and ... do as well. But if you do any one of these activities at a low enough frequency and/or level that you're not buying your own specialised shoes, whatever sneakers you have will do just fine.
It's because the way the sole slides is an integral part of bowling the ball. You can't play "properly" without a proper sliding bowling shoe.
I was a little surprised when the local bowling centres stopped bothering to make everyone use the proper shoes. I get what you're saying about playing casually, but when I last went bowling with colleagues, and won comfortably, and others were asking for tips because they just can't roll the ball properly, but won't try proper shoes, they tried to wind me up by telling me I was "cheating" by using the proper shoes that are offered for anyone who wants one - I can't win :)
Appreciate the good answer. Out of curiosity, ofder of magnitude how much would a person need to be bowling to get good enough that choice of shoe matters?
If you mean bowling shoe vs non-bowling shoe (as opposed to exact brand/type of bowling shoe), then they matter a lot even for a complete beginner. In a normal throw you're going to have a bit of momentum moving up to the lane and then release. You need to slide on your feet when you do this. In this [1] video go frame by frame at 12 seconds (or any time he bowls), you'll see his left foot in particular slide several inches during his throw. It's more subtle, but there's also a significant slide with his right foot as it goes across.
If you did this in tennis shoes, or any shoe with proper soles, the friction would cause your feet to stick and it'd be simply impossible. Socks would be much better than normal shoes, but then you have the opposite problem of too little friction and it's difficult to maintain control. Bowling shoes aren't like running or something where a pro runner is going to have some absurdly expensive pro shoe that improves his time by a fraction of a percent. They're much closer to something like ice skates for ice skating.
And yeah that's a pro with perfect perform, but even a beginner who's not just walking up to the lane, stopping, and throwing, is going to have to deal with sliding. It's just part of the game.
> closer to something like ice skates for ice skating
That's a good way to put it.
Bowling is very rare for me these days, but because they used to require you to wear bowling shoes, I've become used to the slide and can't bowl without them. I have tried a few times in my normal shoes, and found it almost impossible not to go arse-over-tit when letting go of the ball.
Is Troup bowling without using the thumbhole? That was a no-no when I learned bowling, with conventional wisdom being it would put a ceiling on your performance.
Socks with no shoes are good enough for amateurs. Maybe even better than the worst bowling shoes. I'm not sure where the level of shoes matters is crossed, but socks gets that a lot farther than street shoes.
In the US they're just slippery enough to keep you from wrenching your ankle, the bowling lane knows they will have clean soles, and the soles won't damage the floor.
Tech just happens and is useful, it's not necessarily attractive as a thing to investigate in detail.
And as to your last point; well that demonstrates your in the subset of people interested in this stuff. There are a hell of a lot of people very interested in trains too.
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