From learning to intuition

"Countersteering is the name given to the counter-intuitive technique used by cyclists and motorcyclists to turn corners. It is the only way a rider can cause a single-track vehicle to turn."

In order to turn a motorcycle that is going even slightly fast you have to turn the handlebars very slightly in the wrong direction! I have been riding a road race bicycle for a long time and I never really noticed this phenomena because on a light bike you can just force a turn using body weight, on a motorbike that's pretty much impossible.

When I was first told about it, I was a bit skeptical but having tried it out a lot I have figured out the logic and its actually become very intuitive. The first few times when I didn't get it I managed to steer in the wrong direction and almost hit a van, which was pretty scary.

Whats interesting about things that become intuitive is that we often forget why we get them or why they work. I have always been bad at things I can't intuit and I have to just learn, art (as in paintings), quantum physics and the y combinator (the concept) are examples of things I never really got a true intuitive grasp of.

What would be really good is if I could come up with or find a method of being able to convert any concept from learning to intuition very fast. Or maybe that's just the process of learning and takes time.

I have never been very good at languages, mainly because I just don't get them intuitively, its a lot of hard work in learning a bunch of vocab, but it would be nice if I could just get it.

I recently watched the video below (saw it here), I really liked what Tim Ferriss said, what particularly peaked my attention is his ability to learn languages very fast, he says it takes him a month and he has a technique of focusing on the most used 20% of the vocab. I bought his book, will read it soon.

http://www.youtube.com/v/UcqcWVZJPb0

Going to Boston!! and moving on from revmap

As of today I have started work with Peter Nixey and Pete Couldridge as a co-founder of a new startup.

This brings my work on revmap.com to an end. Revmap has been a great learning experience for both Tony (my co-founder) and I, but for various reasons Tony and I wanted to go our separate ways and some opportunities are too good to miss. We are planning to leave revmap.com running, and might pass on the management to someone else, so if you loved it, you aren't loosing it.

I will be in Boston for 3 months on the Y Combinator program, which is going to be amazing, read about it here (titled "Bootcamp for Next Tech Billionaire", but what the hell is a bootcamp? :P, gets a bit boring after the first page). But basically I am going to be working with some of the best young entrepreneurs in the world, in an intense environment to get something cool built in 3 months. With loads of input and advise from Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris, and some fun dinners where we meet some great web entrepreneurs and other people in the industry.

If that wasn't good enough, the startup I am joining is also great, Peter and Pete are pretty cool to work with and what we are building is going to blow you away. We are improving openid, that's all we are saying for now. I love working on ideas with endless potential.

After 3 months in Boston we are probably going to head to Silicon Valley, for some promised "Surfing and Sailing".. and maybe some more entrepreneuring :-).

Mind Hacks - Prisoners and Bots

For some reason I read Mind Hacks, which is a highly theoretical (at least for me) blog about psychology and neuroscience. I liked a couple of articles recently. Firstly a light hearted one on chat bots (a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods.). Here are some amusing extracts of conversations between two chat bots, ALICE and Jabberwacky:

A: Do you dream?

J: Yes, I dream.

A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?

J: I remember them vividly.

A: What do you remember about it?

J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

A: Do you think a machine will ever be considered “alive”?

J: Stranger things have happened.

A: Not many people express themselves that way.

J: How would you know, machine?

A: Knowledge is of two kinds: that which we learn from the senses and that which is true a priori.

J: I think I do not understand you completely.

A: Oh, you don’t understand? Perhaps I can explain it to you better. Which part are you confused about?

J: I have no short-term memory, so I cannot tell you what I was confused about. I only see what is in front of me now.

The second article was about the Stanford Prison Experiment. From Wikipedia:

The Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular to the real world circumstances of prison life and the effects of imposed social roles on behavior....

Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their assigned roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to genuinely dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early.

I saw a TV show on this a long time ago and I think they actually tried to repeat it in a reality TV show, but that lacked realism. It is interesting to question whether humanity has really improved as a whole and got over dictatorships, wars and atrocities. The answer is probably no but at least there is progress. Anyway the article questions how unbiased the Stanford Prison Experiment was based on the type of people that would apply for such an experiment, its interesting to see at what lengths psychologies have to go to to ensure fair

Serendipity - the faculty of making fortuitous discoveries by chance

I have always liked the word serendipity, it is empowering yet it is outside your control.

I just read this amazing article by Bo Peabody: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050101/lucky-or-smart.html, which I really liked. It's long so here are some bits I liked:

On December 31, 1997, I agreed to sell Tripod in exchange for $58 million in stock of a publicly traded company named Lycos.... Over those two years, I watched the value of my Lycos stock increase tenfold... By December 31, 1999, at the height of the bubble and just a few months before the market crashed, I had sold nearly every share of my Lycos stock.

Nice... Thats $580m made from a company that had 0 profit, pretty lucky.

Lucky things happen to entrepreneurs who start fundamentally innovative, morally compelling, and philosophically positive companies. Why? Because lots of smart people will gather around companies with these qualities.

IMO Anyone who tries doing anything ever thats out of the ordinary has a chance they will get "lucky", and if you never stop trying things you are almost guarenteed to get lucky at some point :-).

And when smart, inspired people gather around a fundamentally innovative, morally compelling, and philosophically positive company, they work very hard. And when smart, inspired people work very hard, serendipity ensues.

Goes onto say that its important to have mission statement that appeal to the moral, positive part of us:

Missions such as those... create an aura of authenticity, which is the elixir that attracts smart people and inspires them. There is little authenticity in the modern business world. But it's just the thing that people crave most in their work. When people find themselves aboard one of these vessels, they don't want to get off. They form a fierce protective boundary around it and will do anything to keep the vessel afloat and its inhabitants alive. These people are liberated by finding not only a way to make money but also a way to feel good about it. This is what takes inspiration and turns it into hard work....

Words are incredibly powerful, sometimes causing us to do things that we would never normally do....

A lot was left out of all those articles. The hundred-hour workweeks. The anxiety attacks. The crashed cars and missed planes. The times I had to tell colleagues that we couldn't make payroll. The years of a $12,000 salary. Night after night after night of pasta dinners and stress-relieving Advil "cocktails." The countless meetings with absolute assholes who had no interest in learning about the Internet, the single most significant business innovation of their lifetimes.

I like Bo, he reflect many of my own beliefs (everyone likes themselves :-) ) and says it very eloquently. I will get his book.

I hope everyone has a serendipitous day.

Somethings are Secret

What you are about to read is only known to a few people in the world. It may shock you, it is guaranteed to awe you. And with this knowledge you can gain anything you want.

Actually that's not true, I am only trying to make a point, but what did you feel when you read that? I have been considering the role of secrets in motivating peoples decisions. This was inspired again by Freakonomics. It has a chapter on information scarcity. In brief what it says is that the Klu Klux Klan was very successful (back in the 20s I think) because of how it portrayed itself as a secret organisation and once its secrets were published openly it lost most of its appeal and its member numbers fell drastically.

A lot of organisations seemed to be based on secrecy and mystery and these organisations are reasonably powerful. e.g: some organised religion, cults, military, companies etc.

Most of the time I don't think their secrets amount to much but it is the perception that people have about the power that these organisations hold that gives them more power ironically. The factors that make secrets powerful (will update if I think of more):

• Makes the holder of the secret feel special.
  
• People fear what they don't know. So those that hold "secrets" are feared and therefore respected. In this way I feel that the perceptions of secrets around a lot of things hold people back from achieving what they can. For example if you feel someone who has achieved a lot has done so only because of the secrets that he holds then it can lead to you feeling dis-empowered.
  

Here are some things that are required to have a good secret organisation:

• Clear mission statement and purpose
• Some heirachy of requirements to be entitled to secrets, with preferable many secrets ranging from the easy to the ultimate secret.
  
• Generally one leader who is some kind of role model
• Something that makes the members "special", whether its class, creed, skills etc.
• Some perceived or actual gains from being in the organisation.
• Other competitor organisations. This is not necessary but competitiveness goes a long way to polarise opinion.
  

I have been considering whether there is a startup idea based on a community around secrets. I actually think that would be fun, maybe other people have explored this area already, can anyone think of something? Or maybe they are so secret no one knows about them :-), I think if there was a truly successful one then everyone would know about it, perhaps to be truly successful in the sphere of secrecy you need to have a physical presence. Obviously some invitation only services exploit the power of exclusivity.

I am looking at this all light-heartedly. A lot of secret organisations have caused a lot of harm to their members and others and obviously that's not something I would aspire towards, but understanding them is important.