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Compounding Knowledge

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Re: Compounding Knowledge

#131

Post by p1necone »

noahmoss wrote: post #94
personlurking wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new way to "google" something might become the next gig market. "The next gig economy will be on-demand knowledge" (2019) https://qz.com/work/1527544/the-next-gig-economy-will-be-on-...

This seems to be written by the CEO of a company that provides the exact service the article describes. That doesn't necessarily invalidate it, but I'd read it more as a business pitch than an honest, unbiased opinion.

You're being generous. Thinly veiled as a blog post advertising is such a common thing and so so transparent. I wouldn't treat this any differently than a banner ad on a website.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#132

Post by james_s_tayler »

vp8989 wrote: post #16
keiferski wrote: post #10

This concept is essentially the reason why “being able to quickly google the answers to questions” is inferior to “learning, knowing and remembering the answer.” The former treats a piece of information as an independent, context-free item, while the latter allows you to “digest” the information and understand the answer at a deeper level, to the point where it changes the types of questions you ask. Unfortunately ou…

There is also, practically, a massive gulf between: 1) Being vaguely aware that something exists and knowing you can Google for it. 2) Having such a deep, intuitive understanding of said thing that you can actually use knowledge of that thing to solve complex problems.

Totally. Everyone that says "I hate maths" would shit their pants at how much they loved math if it didn't hurt their feelings and they could see it's raw power.

It's not deep part of your mental model if you have to Google for it. Though sometimes just having an awareness of something so that you can recognize this is a situation where it's useful and now is when you should Google for it is useful.

Learning shit deeply is such a game changer. There is no substitute.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#133

Post by dv_dt »

jboneal wrote: post #74
iambateman wrote: post #30

Buffet’s approach to life is interesting for the same reason an Olympic gymnast is interesting. He has specialized to an extreme and is taking advantage of the rewards of that specialization and natural talent in a unique way. It’s easy for me to feel shame that I don’t read 8 hours per day, as Warren and Charlie do. Buffett is a phenomenal investor but by all accounts, rather odd. He eats like crap, doesn’t exercise…

Controversial take: Buffett is actually not a great investor in the way people think. Via the float in his insurance companies, he receives a 0% infinite maturity loan to plow into the market. That financial leverage gives him the ability to beat the market year after year - not his own stockpicking prowess. If you were to start with $1B, then get an extra $2B that you never had to pay back, you too would do quite we…

It's leverage, but like any leverage (even low cost leverage) it could as easily of sank the parent insurance company if he lost that money in bad investments.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#134

Post by jodrellblank »

foobiekr wrote: post #104
ohaideredevs wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He has specialized to an extreme and is taking advantage of the rewards of that specialization and natural talent in a unique way." Gates is another one of those people where most forget that his grandfather was a multi-millionaire, his mother was a director at IBM, and he had access to one of the first computers in the world. I.e. he is not an example of a self-made person, so anything he says is not really applica…

How basic is required to qualify as self-made in a meaningful sense? I’m not talking about “Should he have grounded up sand and made his own chips and boards?” stuff, I mean lots of people have similar circumstances to Gates and made nothing of themselves. As it happens the high school I went to, as a kid from a mostly lower middle class family with severe issues being able to pay attention in school in the eighties,…

You're claiming that 100 people in his position, would not do as well.

Therefore he was different. If it was simply a matter of self-made difference, all his peers could do that too. Which means whatever it is, is something he was born with.

Why does he get credit for being born different? Does he get credit for being male as well?

Either it's something any of his peers could do, and he's not special, so why praise him, or it's something nobody else could do, so he was born with it, and why praise him?

It’s been 25+ years and basically none of them did anything with their lives

Did any of them have the situation to be the provider of the dominant OS of the dominant computer platform of the last 30 years? Why do you think that isn't enough to account for "far, far better" all on its own?

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#135

Post by saberience »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #45

“Hard to become an expert. Easy to be an expert.” I spent many years learning how to do cloud architecture. Now I can briefly look at AWS documentation for new services out of the corner of my eye and know all I need to for the next 6 months. Yet the other day I opened a book on Java, which I haven’t studied since college, and literally had no idea what in the world I was reading.

I’m curious as to how/why you could have spent years learning cloud architecture, it’s not that complicated surely. My company is recently transitioning to GCP and I’m architecting big data solutions. I started doing this in November or so and well, it’s not rocket science, in fact, it’s considerably easier than building systems ten years ago was.

I’d hazard a guess that you’re not learning particularly efficiently if it took you years to learn this. In my opinion, any smart engineer could learn cloud architecture in a month or two if they’re studying two/three hours per day in their own time.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#136

Post by chii »

lbatx wrote: post #110
sanderjd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think by "actually not a great investor in the way people think", what you're saying is that he isn't a particularly outstanding stock picker . To the extent that that's the way in which people think he's a great investor, it's because lots of (most?) people think investing is just stock picking. But what makes him a great investor is exactly what you outlined. He found a great strategy - insurance float for levera…

That would be weird, but "he's not a great investor" is taken out of context from "he's not a great investor in the way people think". The way it would be said is "he's not a great investor in the way people think [stock picking], he's a great investor because he found this other strategy that works well." What about he's "not a great investor in the way people think" leads you to believe "he's not a great investor"?

The average person is less likely to understand all the nuances of investing - and probably knows investing as stock picking.

Therefore, when they were told about Buffett, they automatically assume he's good at stock picking.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#137

Post by mswen »

Central points:

> focus time and effort on knowledge and skills that endure

> read more seriously

> think for yourself don't just take the opinions of others

> focus in a particular domain so that pattern recognition develops

> persist over time so that real knowledge has opportunity to compound

What kinds of knowledge actually compound? Are there specific kinds of knowledge that deliver value now, make it easier to acquire knowledge later, make new knowledge more valuable because of rich context, or give us new models and paradigms for thinking?

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#138

Post by anitil »

mattferderer wrote: post #86
jboneal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controversial take: Buffett is actually not a great investor in the way people think. Via the float in his insurance companies, he receives a 0% infinite maturity loan to plow into the market. That financial leverage gives him the ability to beat the market year after year - not his own stockpicking prowess. If you were to start with $1B, then get an extra $2B that you never had to pay back, you too would do quite we…

I was unaware of this additional advantage he has. Reading up on floats it seems they are the money his insurance companies receive from premiums that has yet to get paid out in claims. Essentially a reserve that can be invested. Since they have a large scale of customers, this float ends up being rather high. I'm wondering how much trouble an insurance company of smaller scale would get into if they used their float…

Insurers typically don't insure for correlated risk (natural disasters, war etc) because no insurer actually has the reserves to pay it out.

Which is why water damage from a burst pipe will likely be insured but water damage from a flood is unlikely to be insured, even though from a homeowner's perspective they are effectively the same damage.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#140

Post by kelnos »

mattferderer wrote: post #86
jboneal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controversial take: Buffett is actually not a great investor in the way people think. Via the float in his insurance companies, he receives a 0% infinite maturity loan to plow into the market. That financial leverage gives him the ability to beat the market year after year - not his own stockpicking prowess. If you were to start with $1B, then get an extra $2B that you never had to pay back, you too would do quite we…

I was unaware of this additional advantage he has. Reading up on floats it seems they are the money his insurance companies receive from premiums that has yet to get paid out in claims. Essentially a reserve that can be invested. Since they have a large scale of customers, this float ends up being rather high. I'm wondering how much trouble an insurance company of smaller scale would get into if they used their float…

In addition to what sibling posters have said, insurers usually have their own insurance (called "reinsurance") that helps cover them in the event their claims exceed their cash on hand.

I would imagine, though, that reinsurers will price their premiums based on risk as well; e.g. if they know that one of their customers is parking too much of their float into risky investments, they might charge higher premiums.

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