Robin Sloan novel, due mid-2024

Typically pop-up window, modal, dialog-box. (more)

aka Iain M. Banks, author of the Culture Series

Fractal guru (more)

The Uncertainty Project is a constantly evolving, community-driven collection of research-backed models and tools that helps companies architect processes for effective decision making. Built by practitioners, for practitioners, this is meant to be a collection of building blocks; not a heavy, prescriptive framework. It enables individual managers, teams, as well as whole organizations to implement systematic decision making practices at varying levels of complexity. https://www.theuncertaintyproject.org/ (more)

Chris Butler is a chaotic good product manager, writer, and speaker. He has over 20 years of product management leadership at Microsoft, Waze, KAYAK, Facebook Reality Labs, and Cognizant. He is now the Lead Product Manager at Google's Core Machine Learning team where he PM's the PM experience and strategy. Co-founder of the Uncertainty Project. https://www.theuncertaintyproject.org/contributor/chris-butler (more)

Venkatesh Rao: Lands of Lorecraft. In the last couple of years, I’ve become aware of some genuinely fresh management thinking from an emerging cohort of thinkers on the margins of the landscape of traditional institutions. (more)

Aaron Swartz describes Judea Pearl's attempts to use AI techniques to evaluate causality, not just correlation, with Social Science Statistics. One of the reasons I find these areas to be fertile grounds to try out new ideas is that, unlike AI, tangible rewards can be reaped from solving relative small problems. Problems involving barely 4 to 5 variables, which we in AI regard as toy-problems, carry tremendous payoffs in public health and social science.

Uncertainty Project: Fielding Outcomes. When we make decisions in the face of uncertainty, we are making a “bet” on how the future will turn out. When the future arrives, we have a chance to take stock, to assess whether this outcome can teach us anything about how we make our decisions. (Thinking in Bets) (more)

Robin Sloan: Are AI language models in hell? The concluding item in this mini manifesto from Taylor Troesh, about “finishing projects together”, is lovely and enticing. It strikes me that the “never finished” nature of modern software is something Zygmunt Bauman might have observed and discussed, if he’d lived long enough to write a sequel to Liquid Modernity in, say, 2020. The feeling of maintaining a “live” “service” forever (we definitely need those scare quotes)rather than completing a coherent product … oof. (more)

Robin Sloan: Hit the lights. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s been a multimodal week. I’ve traveled aboard multiple ferries, several trains — including the new SMART line in Sonoma County, terrific — and, notably, my first robo-car, one of the whirring Waymos (more)

Robin Sloan: What would a wizard read? This new novel is my answer to that question (more)

Robin Sloan on Social Media After Twitter. Well, I think it’s a healthy thing. I think all these platforms have held on for a little too long. (more)

Robin Sloan: A summer wind. Last week, I joined hosts V. V. Ganshanathan and Whitney Terrell on their Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast to talk about “social media after Twitter”. (2023-08-02 RobinSloanOnSocialMediaAfterTwitter) (more)

Robin Sloan: Lit up like a sparkler. There’s a way in which the modern media environment — maybe all media envroments ever — pushes against “I don’t know”. (more)

Uncertainty Project on Causal Decision Diagrams (CDD). (more)

Robin Sloan: You could extinguish a star. As a reader, I’m skeptical of attempts to pin sensory experience to the page. The “better” the descriptive language, it seems to me, the more it actually obscures the experience (more)

Robin Sloan: The Conspiracy Museum. REMARKS AS PREPARED BY WILLIAM K. SING, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM OF AMERICAN CONSPIRACY, FOR DELIVERY ON TUESDAY APRIL 16, 2041 (more)

Uncertainty Project: Exploring Causality and Complexity in Strategy. The idea of causality matters greatly, though, since as we apply our agency (as individuals, as organizations, and businesses) to take action, we base our choices on where we believe we can cause good things to happen. (more)

Uncertainty Project: Improving strategic decision making in 2024. 3 Challenges for improving strategic decision making in 2024... (more)