In last week’s Uncertainty Wednesday, I introduced the expected value EV of a random variable X. We saw that EV(X) is not a measure of uncertainty. The hypothetical investments I had described all had the same expected value of 0. It is trivial, given a random variable with EV(X) = μ to construct X’ so that EV(X’) = 0. That’s in fact how I constructed the first investment. I started with $0 with 99% probability and $100 with 1% probability, which has an EV of EV = 0.99 * 0 + 0.01 * 100 = 1 an...

In last week’s Uncertainty Wednesday, I introduced the expected value EV of a random variable X. We saw that EV(X) is not a measure of uncertainty. The hypothetical investments I had described all had the same expected value of 0. It is trivial, given a random variable with EV(X) = μ to construct X’ so that EV(X’) = 0. That’s in fact how I constructed the first investment. I started with $0 with 99% probability and $100 with 1% probability, which has an EV of EV = 0.99 * 0 + 0.01 * 100 = 1 an...

I am spending this 4th of July in Germany, having visited my parents and friends from growing-up near Nuremberg for the last few days. It is late here now and I am seeing all the Happy 4th wishes from the US in my Twitter timeline. That made me think about what I feel like celebrating on this day. And as I wrote last year, it is not so much independence we need in the modern world, but rather interdependence. There is, however, something very much worth celebrating and that is the memorable l...

I am spending this 4th of July in Germany, having visited my parents and friends from growing-up near Nuremberg for the last few days. It is late here now and I am seeing all the Happy 4th wishes from the US in my Twitter timeline. That made me think about what I feel like celebrating on this day. And as I wrote last year, it is not so much independence we need in the modern world, but rather interdependence. There is, however, something very much worth celebrating and that is the memorable l...

Susan and I have been longtime supporters of the wonderful ChangeX platform: ChangeX helps spread social innovation across communities. This week ChangeX introduced a new model for donors, which they are calling Impact as a Service (IaaS). This is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to Infrastructure as a Service (also IaaS). It is spot on though as the two share important characteristics:IaaS, reduces or even eliminates the overhead of manual setup activities, allowing all participants to f...

Susan and I have been longtime supporters of the wonderful ChangeX platform: ChangeX helps spread social innovation across communities. This week ChangeX introduced a new model for donors, which they are calling Impact as a Service (IaaS). This is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to Infrastructure as a Service (also IaaS). It is spot on though as the two share important characteristics:IaaS, reduces or even eliminates the overhead of manual setup activities, allowing all participants to f...

In today’s Uncertainty Wednesday we start to explore the properties of random variables. The first one we will look at is the so-called “expected value” or EV for short. The EV is simply the probability weighted average of a random variable X, i.e. EV = ∑P(x)*x sum is for all possible values x that X can have Note: for now we will continue to work with so called discrete random variables which have distinct values of x and where for each value of x P(x) > 0 (as opposed to continuous random va...

In today’s Uncertainty Wednesday we start to explore the properties of random variables. The first one we will look at is the so-called “expected value” or EV for short. The EV is simply the probability weighted average of a random variable X, i.e. EV = ∑P(x)*x sum is for all possible values x that X can have Note: for now we will continue to work with so called discrete random variables which have distinct values of x and where for each value of x P(x) > 0 (as opposed to continuous random va...

I love reading science fiction for two reasons: first, because of what I learn about the possible future and second, because of what it says about the present. For instance, I read a lot of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and they correctly predicted the current rise of China, global Megacorps and crypto currencies (and we are making headway on AR and VR). I have just finished works by Neal Stephenson and Cixin Liu that give me a lot of pause about the present. I recommend them highly, but ...

I love reading science fiction for two reasons: first, because of what I learn about the possible future and second, because of what it says about the present. For instance, I read a lot of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and they correctly predicted the current rise of China, global Megacorps and crypto currencies (and we are making headway on AR and VR). I have just finished works by Neal Stephenson and Cixin Liu that give me a lot of pause about the present. I recommend them highly, but ...

There are a lot of outright lies (at worst) / profound misunderstandings (at best) on all sides circulating around health insurance at the moment. Today’s post is about the most fundamental one: the relationship between health insurance and redistribution and what it means for social consensus. Redistribution is a toxic word in US political discourse, but one I want to reclaim. So let’s be up front: Much of what we do as a society is about redistribution. For instance, public roads and public...

There are a lot of outright lies (at worst) / profound misunderstandings (at best) on all sides circulating around health insurance at the moment. Today’s post is about the most fundamental one: the relationship between health insurance and redistribution and what it means for social consensus. Redistribution is a toxic word in US political discourse, but one I want to reclaim. So let’s be up front: Much of what we do as a society is about redistribution. For instance, public roads and public...

Just a quick reminder on where we currently are in Uncertainty Wednesdays: I had introduced the idea of measuring uncertainty, then we defined what a probability distribution is and learned about entropy, which is a measure of uncertainty that is solely based on the probabilities of different states. We examined entropy for a simple distribution, and learned about the relationship of entropy to communication. Now consider again our super simple world with two states A and B. Suppose that P(A)...

Just a quick reminder on where we currently are in Uncertainty Wednesdays: I had introduced the idea of measuring uncertainty, then we defined what a probability distribution is and learned about entropy, which is a measure of uncertainty that is solely based on the probabilities of different states. We examined entropy for a simple distribution, and learned about the relationship of entropy to communication. Now consider again our super simple world with two states A and B. Suppose that P(A)...

Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a post titled “I Want a New Platform” which led to our investment in MongoDB. At the time the company was called 10gen and had developed a Platform as a Service: a Javascript application server with a built in database. It turned out that we were ahead of the times (this was before Google App Engine and before Node). People wanted infrastructure as a service and AWS grew by leaps and bounds. 10gen found little adoption until the team decided to mothball the applic...

Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a post titled “I Want a New Platform” which led to our investment in MongoDB. At the time the company was called 10gen and had developed a Platform as a Service: a Javascript application server with a built in database. It turned out that we were ahead of the times (this was before Google App Engine and before Node). People wanted infrastructure as a service and AWS grew by leaps and bounds. 10gen found little adoption until the team decided to mothball the applic...

One of the important topics that I have not yet addressed in World After Capital is the role of the Nation State. So I am gathering up some of my thoughts in a post first. I believe it is critical that we get past the dominance of the nation state as the key organizing principle in the world. That doesn’t mean doing away with nation states (at least not overnight), but gradually de-emphasizing their importance. Here are my arguments for why we need to de-emphasize the Nation State: 1. Nation ...

One of the important topics that I have not yet addressed in World After Capital is the role of the Nation State. So I am gathering up some of my thoughts in a post first. I believe it is critical that we get past the dominance of the nation state as the key organizing principle in the world. That doesn’t mean doing away with nation states (at least not overnight), but gradually de-emphasizing their importance. Here are my arguments for why we need to de-emphasize the Nation State: 1. Nation ...

The last two Uncertainty Wednesdays we have looked at entropy as a measure of uncertainty. Today I want to tie that back to the original communications context in which Shannon introduced it. We can use our really simple model of a world with two states and two signal values to do this. We have analyzed an example where the signal was a test. Now think of the signal as actually being an electric impulse sent down a wire by a local observer. The observer gets to see perfectly which state of th...

The last two Uncertainty Wednesdays we have looked at entropy as a measure of uncertainty. Today I want to tie that back to the original communications context in which Shannon introduced it. We can use our really simple model of a world with two states and two signal values to do this. We have analyzed an example where the signal was a test. Now think of the signal as actually being an electric impulse sent down a wire by a local observer. The observer gets to see perfectly which state of th...