ebola: risk management, decision analysis, and science

risk management - at a minimum - is a function of probability and severity of outcome.  when it comes down to the actual algorithm, we're probably looking at dozens of variables.

but let's look at probability and severity.

let's take a certain news source's "minimal risk to Americans."

a 7 gene virus with up to 90% lethality.  pretty scary, but what does the WHO know.

now let's see how another major u.s. news source refers to the disease: "one of the most deadly diseases in the world."

odd. minimal risk x one of the most deadly should generally yield a high level of caution.  throw in no vaccine and no treatment and it gets a bit hairier.

maybe juggling nukes has a minimal risk of setting one off, and i hear they're a little deadly.  don't see anyone playing with those odds.  the problem with odds as low as 0.0000001% is that when you multiply it across populations of hundreds of millions or billions, it yields actual occurrences greater than 1.  unfortunately, i don't see the odds of a muck up being that low.

the problem with short term math is that a few hundred deaths are acceptable.  several thousand too.  people die every day.  the problem is that the trade off is simply commerce.  we're just price tags.  but only until banks realize that everyone dying = massive defaults.  idiots.

if the top risk manager, virologist, statistician, and computational epidemiologist in the world can come to an agreement, i'll hear it.  because it takes a highly specialized virologist who is extremely well versed in probabilities and epidemiology to issue a qualified opinion, no more.  the rest is noise, including this.

every time a news agency issues assurances, they should pass around a gun with a single round chambered and play roulette with themselves.  save for these guys: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ebola-questions-20141007-story.html#page=1

navigating a grocery store

i'm a little weird, we can agree to that.

but in my quasi-ideal world, there's an app that lists where everything in a grocery store is.  amazonfresh is a bit more ideal, but i like to get things myself.  google glass integration, and i know where i'm headed.

back to reality, here and now.

i've decided to use the same algorithms i use when driving to navigate through grocery stores.  i don't do well with crowded aisles, slow checkout lanes, poor efficiency, etc.

so depending on the time of day, the day of the week, i make my usual assumptions.  about who's in the store, what they're there to buy, etc.

mentally map out what i need to get, zip through aisles that shouldn't be occupied, or minimally so, grab what i need to in sequence, and head straight to self checkout.

ideally, everything would be nfc tagged and i could just set my basket down, run some sort of biometric scan - or this - and out we go.

next stop, john lert.

farting in a bell jar

27 hours into transit, i had an epiphany at 39,000 miles above average low and high tides.  bored out of my mind and tired of sitting, i started staring out into space, literally, computing atmospheric escape velocities in my head.

i realized that even with some atmospheric escape and other exchanges, earth is fairly self-contained, a bubble if you will.  so i wondered why, if we live in a bubble, people would be so reckless of what we do in this bubble.

and i think it's because we don't see most of it.  we produce an average of 4.3 lbs of waste a day, and it's carried away dozens or hundreds of miles away.

we turn on our taps and water instantly gushes out.

we flush our toilets and our poo swiftly swirls out of sight and smell.

we consume an average of 4.7 lbs of food a day with hardly a clue as to where most of it comes from.

but imagine living inside a small bell jar.  you would probably be fairly mindful of the food you grew, the waste you created, how you process the waste, the proximity of your waste from your food, the quality and quantity of your water, and your overall resources.  i bet you'd devise some sort of sustainable system because you have nowhere else to go.

and i sure as heck bet you'd be really cautious of farting.  so why aren't you as mindful about the waste you create?  sure, we live in a slightly larger bell jar, but we sure as hell have nowhere else to go unless i missed some monumental discovery in my last hour of slumber.

maybe

I'm very much a variates and analytics kind of guy. Decision science excites me, among a hundred other topics. I operate under the premise that everything can be optimized with the right data.

At any crossroad, I make extensive decision trees and it seems that people can generally see the gears turning in my head. It becomes problematic when I decide to include dozens if variables because the permutations become immense. So my quick answer becomes maybe, much to your frustration.

So after reading this epic article - http://markmanson.net/fuck-yes/ - I've decided that if I can't give a resounding yes in the first 5 seconds, we default to the negative.

conserve

i have qualms about my amazon prime membership.

2-day shipping is a luxury.  i'm fairly impatient so i like to get things quickly.  i'll certainly trek over to the store and pay the premium to have it in my hands sooner.

but it's not about membership cost.  the problem is moral hazard.

there's no additional cost to me ordering 10 items all separately through amazon prime.  but there's a significant increase in waste.  packaging, shipping costs, wages, fuel, etc.

just because we can afford things, doesn't mean we should waste them.

Dear humans,

You live in structures that took thousands of years to get right, and that's still improving every day.  You drive vehicles that have patents dating back no more than two centuries, comprised of about 1,800 pieces of fabricated materials - and with a new substance created every 2.6 seconds, you can bet those parts will all be changing.  Your lives depend on devices that hit the market no more than a decade ago.  On average, you spend 8 hours in front of a screen plugged into processing units, hardware, and an internet, all hardly 50 years old.  Then you follow it up with 5 hours in front of a fabricated box with fabricated shows subsidized by ads - also completely fabricated - of fabricated goods.  Even cakes which after hundreds of years, we've figured out how to cut properly, or better.

Everything is a fabricated system, improving by the minute.

We have the fit, the pedantic, the beautiful, the industrious, and the entrepreneurs.  Each have fabricated their own systems.  The brainless - sorry, fit - created absolutely random games and leagues, systems of athletics, rules, rankings, and so on.  The pedantic continue to perpetuate academia.  New disciplines, more papers, research, degrees upon degrees, meritocracy.  The beautiful and popular wait tables in LA and act and model in their spare time.  The industrious work like dogs, doesn't matter where you put them.  Then there's the entrepreneurs.  They'll fabricate their own rules and break all the other ones.  They'll figure it out.  They'll fabricate industries to which academia will respond by molding people in a way they think fits.  Fabricated systems, fabricated industries, fabricated technologies, fabricated economies, etc.

Rather than whittle branches into spears and go out and collect shrubbery, we've decided to create a system that's easier for us.  Systems based on meritocracy and aptitude, finesse, or hustle.  Figure it out and play - you were born pooping and sucking at life so I believe in you - or find an alternative.

But guess what; this system continues to evolve at an alarming rate akin to Moore's law in some proportion to the adoption and permeation of technology.

Your kids will undermine everything you know.  Your 3 year-old knows how to use your iPad better than you do.  They will code better than you do.  They will drop out of top schools, sit around in hoodies, and build entire empires sitting in front of a computer screen.

Notice how none of this requires finesse and a spear.

Evolution.  It's a function of technology, but you can choose to ignore it.  But don't be alarmed when you're completely sidelined and useless.

So continue to sit back and b*tch and moan.  I'm sure technology will wait for you.  I'm sure time will somehow slow down while you figure it out.  I'm sure the planet will stop blowing through space at 66,000 miles an hour while you get your bearings.  Maybe you can ask gravity to pause for a moment while you're at it.

If you can't stop for innovation, it will not kindly stop for you.  Survival of the adaptive.

because i could not stop for innovation

because i could not stop for change

he kindly ran over me

the tesla held but just the innovative

musk and jobs' holograms.

we drove hastily - time was a wastin'

and i had put away

my labor and my leisure too,

for his demands

we passed the school, where children strove

at recess – in the ring

we passed the charging stations –

we passed the setting sun –

or rather – he passed us –

the processors teraflopping away

for only a ten core, my chip

my bus, only 32-bit

our lyft hardly paused for a lytro we had

and all light it captured

and a gopro front-mounted

for all action abound

since then 'tis minutes - and yet

all technology has changed

feels just yesterday, tesla motors'

patents were hidden away.

freedoms

imho, it's cheapest to pay for things with money, life, time, and freedom, in that order.

needless to say, burghers of calais is a favorite and i have the utmost respect for those who sacrifice in reverse for that which we have.

filed under: opinions, what they're for

opinions are for you and me to have different beliefs.  it's a space for us to respect and have intellectual discussions about these differences.

but this is in and of itself an opinion, which, of course, we're all entitled to.

life epiphany #29573

happiness comes from within.

don't look upon others for it.

is there a space

where i expect nothing from anyone and everyone expects nothing from me?

is it that exact moment when we sit down for a beer together, shoot the breeze, and don't give a shit about anything?

or does it only exist in solace in the wilderness?

if you want to know

what kind of person you are, just look at the wake you leave behind

a note on crises

i won't lie, i'm a big fan of crisis management.  i have a high threshold to be fully engaged and excited.  variables, logistics, the works.  it's a better alternative to daytrading, sometimes.  it requires creative solutions usually in an extremely limited time frame.  i put on my stoic face and it's game time.

it's also something i look for in most people i want to work with because life is full of crises, and few the same.

but what is a crisis?  how do they happen?  imho, they shouldn't happen, but life's full of surprises.  sometimes there's no way of forecasting them, but rarely so.  it takes a convergence of errors - which amounts to a very specific permutation - for a crisis to happen: a shortage of resources, unintended outcomes, poor risk management, and so on.  and from the risk management side, disregard.

so while i have no issue dealing with crises, it annoys me when they are foreseeable and are a result of lackadaisical morons.  and there's a fairly high threshold for an incident to be a crisis.  of course, you're welcome to drop the bar as low as you want, but you're making a mountain of a molehill.

adversity: in for the long haul

when things get shitty, i never leave; i take the lead.  i view any form of challenge/adversity as character-building.

so it's usually essential that teams i work with have faced adversity and came out on top over and over again.  this makes it far more likely that people won't bail when the going gets tough.

on being: selfish

i probably already have a rant about this, but at some point, i considered cutting all the selfish folk out of my life.

it's irritating and frustrating to be around people who only look out for themselves, to be among a constantly bickering and competing cohort.  but truth be told, it's a necessity.  we all need to be a little bit selfish, because nobody else has our best interests in mind - maybe with the rare exception of where our best interest may coincide with their best interest.  selfishness and competition - not at the dire cost of others - are healthy.  it makes us stronger, fitter - better suited for darwinian survival.

but something always trumps selfishness: collaboration.

the purpose of life

is simply to exist.  anything beyond that is simply a bonus.

to laugh, to love, to breathe, to see, to think, to cry, to hurt, to learn, to fail, to teach, to create, to taste, to fear, to enjoy, to hear, to win, to lose.

the difference

between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs:

one of them will figure it out

What if...

- yes, another one - we think of people as atoms and we chart them on a periodic table stratified according to organizational behavioral traits?

these so called atoms have so called electronegativities (i.e. personalities) and other traits that we could analytically forecast reactivity with other atoms.

suddenly, team optimization and lower divorce rates.

more lessons from catan

i just lost a game because the other player was horrible at risk assessment.

i thought it was just a fluke so i went to check out his stats.  11% win rate.

not a fluke.  the guy is consistent in his poor risk management.

i immediately added him to my block list.

the lesson is that you never want a weak link on your team or even as an opponent.  why add liabilities to your team?

leef

as one of my goals for this year is to be more candid at the risk of being blunt, anyone (in the tech startup space) who thought my digital receipt startup was just about digital receipts is dumb potentially beyond the extent of thinking that mcdonalds is simply a fast food franchise.

it was meant to be a billion dollar marketing analytics company.

think about it, consumer purchasing data.

ad conversion rates based on browsing hardly tops 5%.

now compare facebook likes vs. browsing history (cookie data) vs. purchase history.

we know #2 is worth well into the 12 figures (yes, that's billions, and hundreds of them) and #1 is rapidly proving its worth.

so who's doing #3?  your move.

paint by imagination

for someone as ocd as i am, i don't know that i've ever properly followed a recipe.

i've been cooking since i was about 6...so for about 23 years now.  i used to just walk into the kitchen and throw stuff together and cook.

the palate is like a blank canvas for me, and as you might experiment with color mixing, i mix flavors in my mind and then in the kitchen.

innovate.

frailty

i trickled away ten minutes of my life today trying to catch a fly - alive, that is. don't get me wrong, squashing it with a swatter crossed my mind. ok, fine, it seemed like a perfect solution to the nuisance. there's just this relief and satisfaction taking an aerodynamically meshed swatter, even with the ensuing microcarnage on the window. especially when you've been chasing it around. ohhh the thrill of killing flies.

but as much as all the shit we've created on this planet - and destroyed - there's something even mary shelley couldn't create on paper. life.

we couldn't breathe life into even an ant if we tried. ever notice how a fly goes to the window? i haven't a clue what a fly does or thinks, but life is life.

life lesson #792643

people are innately selfish, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

things i'm afraid of

1) chromosomal nondisjunction
2) parasites (namely neurocysticercosis)
3) being trapped inside my sleeping bag
4) having someone become my life and losing them (exhibit a)
5) agonizing death lasting more than 90 seconds