Ben Casnocha: The Blog

Are We More Self-Absorbed Nowadays?

2008-07-17T14:35:31-07:00

In my old post called You Have to Make People Give a Shit, I wrote:

[In school] you know your classmates and professor are going to read your writing -- no matter what. It's their job. ... School, then, might breed a bad habit for aspiring writers and thinkers: the illusion that people will always read your entire essay just because it's you.

The so-called real world is super competitive. Nobody will read your stuff (well, other than your mom) just because it's you. The real-world reality is: No one cares what you think. It's up to you make people give a shit.

From the Joseph Epstein essay on Kinderarchy, he also discusses the dangerous levels of self-importance of an over-parented generation:

So often in my literature classes students told me what they "felt" about a novel, or a particular character in a novel. I tried, ever so gently, to tell them that no one cared what they felt; the trick was to discover not one's feelings but what the author had put into the book, its moral weight and its resultant power. In essay courses, many of these same students turned in papers upon which I wished to--but did not--write: "D-, Too much love in the home." I knew where they came by their sense of their own deep significance and that this sense was utterly false to any conceivable reality. Despite what their parents had been telling them from the very outset of their lives, they were not significant. Significance has to be earned, and it is earned only through achievement. Besides, one of the first things that people who really are significant seem to know is that, in the grander scheme, they are themselves really quite insignificant.

In other words, his students think that just because they have a thought it's important.

I want to pile on, a little bit. It's remarkable how many conversations in college are not conversations at all but rather the participants taking turns sharing their own opinion or experience, as opposed to probing on or advancing the prior point. For instance, the other week I had lunch with a college student. I raised the topic of education. I said that I'm not sure formal schooling is for everybody. She responded, "Well, see, I love school, and I'm thinking about graduate schools in these areas..." Off she went. Again. It was totally self-involved, and I'm afraid by now an unconscious, well-ingrained habit to immediately seize any opportunity to present a personal reflection and exploration.

Epstein focuses on youth, but it's not just adolescents who suffer from everything-I-think-is-important syndrome. Adults similarly afflicted mask it with a whiff of social grace. The other day I met a professional, successful woman who overvalues her own airtime. After her monologue she said, "Enough about me. Tell me about yourself, Ben, where are you from?" She interrupted my answer to begin yet another self-centered philosophical session, an act which revealed the emptiness of her socially polite question. We all encounter these types of people.

The question is, do we encounter them more often? Is anything new? Is all that Epstein says and that I echo above unique to the current moment? I have no idea if now is a more narcissistic age, but if it is, I can think of a couple reasons why.

Some argue technology is a culprit in the sense that new technology can help a person enact an echo chamber around them that magnifies their own views. Or that technology facilitates, for example, twice or thrice daily phone calls between teens and parents, a frequency which -- when aided by the over-parenting instincts of today's boomers -- nurtures self-obsession on the part of the teen. Or that blogs, such as the one I'm writing on right now (a noted irony!), enable a level of public disclosure that's unhealthy because it can create a micro-celebrity effect. And when was the last time you met a celebrity (micro or macro) who wasn't an egomaniac?

Some argue the rise of therapy culture contributes to the rise of self-centeredness. In 1980, Americans spent $2.4 billion on professional psychotherapy services; by 1997 the figure was an eye-popping $44.5 billion. It's no secret that much of these services involve talking about yourself (often, it seems, to a point of circular misery).

Those seeing therapists a bit more serious than mere "counselors" -- namely, therapists of the psychoanalytic Freudian tradition -- indulge in themselves even more, as they embark on a twisted quest to re-interpret childhood events and draw connections between the most bizarre of symbols that Freud concocted with zero scientific basis. (For a fascinating screed on therapists and particularly Freudian ones, see the book Therapy's Delusions: The Myth of the Unconscious and the Exploitation of Today's Walking Worried by Ethan Watters and Richard Ofshe.)

To be clear, I respect and value a strong sense of individuality and admire people who think they have ideas worth sharing. Self-knowledge and reflection and a rich interior life: I respect all these things as well. And I'm not a technology cynic or against all forms of therapy. I'm just wondering aloud whether we're witnessing increased levels of self-absorption nowadays, as Epstein suggests, and if so, why.

Follow Up: National Service, Earnestness, Acting

2008-07-17T00:11:11-07:00

A few things I've written about have re-surfaced recently:

1. National Service. Here's my Marketplace commentary on the issue. Jonah Goldberg wrote a column for the L.A. Times blasting national service and then chats with Peter Beinart in this Bloggingheads video about the topic (among other things). The stunningly articulate Beinart, who I've long been impressed with, challenges Goldberg for conflating the more extreme opinion of compulsory national service with the more mainstream opinion advocating just incentive-based national service.

2. Earnestness. Here's my post questioning whether too much earnestness comes at the cost of a sense of humor. Maureen Dowd, who in general isn't half as funny as she thinks she is, today asks whether Barack Obama's "chilly earnestness" and humorlessness is a political weakness if it suggests an over-calculated quality. She notes that Bill Clinton has womanizing, John McCain has being an asshole, George Bush has the constant struggle with the English language -- all aspects of their characters people can parody. It reminds me of the point from the memoir Clinton & Me, written by a humor speechwriter in the Clinton White House, who said that most people's public persona are made up of a handful of obvious facts, and if you concede the obvious you gain back credibility while trading nothing.

3. Acting vs. Planning. Here's my post responding to Cal Newport that "just get started" is bad advice. Cal responds by drawing distinctions between "goals" and "experiments," "habits" and "achievements."

Book Notes: The New Asian Hemisphere

2008-07-15T13:00:00-07:00

It's the last day of the St. Gallen Symposium, and I'm gathering my bags ready to head back to Zurich. A young, dark skinned woman comes up to me.

"Are you American?" she asks.
"Yes," I reply.
"Then you need to read this book. It's by the dean of my school. We want it in the hands of as many Americans as possible." She thrusts the book in my hands and walks off.

The book was The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East by Kishore Mahbubani. I turned the book over and saw effusive blurbs by Larry Summers, Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Summers blurb caught my eye:

They called it the Industrial Revolution because for the first time in all of human history standards of living in a human life span -- changes of perhaps 50%. At current growth rates in Asia standards of living may rise 100 fold, 10,000 percent within a human life span. The rise of Asia and all that follows will be the dominant story in history books written 300 years from now, with the Cold War and rise of Islam as secondary stories. - Larry Summers

That's an interesting thought. I read the book and loved it. Here are my detailed notes.

There are many books on the rise of Asia, on globalization, etc. What makes this book different is its emphasis on how the West fails to understand Eastern perspectives on Western actions and attitudes. An oft-repeated stat in the book is that there are 5.6 billion people not in the West and only 900 million people in the West (broadly defined as US + Europe + a few other places), and that those 5.6 billion have their own view on politics and security and history. This shouldn't be too controversial a claim but Mahbubani nicely illustrates a range of examples that show Western elites hardly acknowledge this possibility. With a shift in economic and political power to the countries housing the 5.6 billion people, it's about time Americans and Europeans start understanding how the East conceives of itself and the world.

I have not seen much written about this book and I suspect this is due to the release of Fareed Zakaria's book which came out at the same time. Zakaria's covers similar ground but is fundamentally from an American perspective, whereas Mahbubani tries hard to contrast the usual American perspective with the point of view of the East.

Definition of Entrepreneurial Judgment

2008-07-14T13:28:00-07:00

Marc Andreesen's post about the psychology of entrepreneurial mis-judgment made the rounds awhile ago. I re-read it recently and want to highlight the following graf because of its eminent logic:

In my view, entrepreneurial judgment is the ability to tell the difference between a situation that's not working but persistence and iteration will ultimately prove it out, versus a situation that's not working and additional effort is a destructive waste of time and radical change is necessary.

I don't believe there are any good rules for being able to tell the difference between the two. Which is one of the main reasons starting a company is so hard.

Well put.

(And yes, I know Seth Godin wrote a whole book on this topic.)

Links from Around the Web

2008-07-10T15:32:07-07:00

Quick thoughts and links:

There's nothing like reading about a personal experience that supports an age-old aphorism like "Try one new thing every day." To me, tired wisdom such as "work hard" only resonates if there's a compelling personal example under it. My friends Paul Berberian and Seth Levine both recently blogged about doing something for the first time. For Paul, it was flying his plane through clouds for the first time. For Seth, it was kick-boxing with his wife. Have you accumulated an interesting and new experience this week?

Hail casual attire! The official Neck Tie Association recently closed...after a particularly telling sign: members showed up to their annual meeting without wearing a tie.

Awesome list of questions any sales exec should ask him/herself about revenue projection numbers.

Megan McArdle on the ridiculous notion spread through European poltiical circles that American neo-cons got Ireland to vote down the Lisbon treaty:
Canada and Europe, particularly, seem to be prone to the illusion that we spend all of our time thinking up ways to make them feel bad, when in truth we barely think about them at all. Probably we should, more. But it's hard to imagine a situation in which our first thought would be: "Let's make Irish voters reject the . . . what was the name of that treaty again?"
Felix Salmon with a wise line on what makes a person's writing/thinking valuable, via Walt Mossberg rarely saying anything new but re-stating known ideas in interesting ways:
This is a powerful idea, I think, and one which the best politicians understand intuitively: if you say something which everybody already knows, that doesn't automatically make you boring.
Bill Flagg identifies two popular business models for internet companies: the profit model or the popularity model. Should a web company charge for their service (aka Match.com) or become really popular (aka YouTube) and generate profit via ads and sponsorship from that scale?

An interesting assessment of David Foster Wallace's voice:
Wallace has the vocabulary. He has the energy. He has the big ideas. He has the attitude. Yet too often he sounds like a hyperarticulate Tin Man. Maybe this is concentrated version of how we all sound lately. Data-dazed. Cybernetic. Overstimulated. Maybe this is the voice of the true now. Or maybe genius, like language, can't do everything, and maybe the Wizard should give the guy a heart.
Tyler Cowen on how to overcome book fatigue: read books in a category you wouldn't normally touch.
The reality is this: the best popular book on geology, gardening, or basketball is very very good, whether or not you like or care about the topic. Try to find those books and read them.
A deliciously devastating take-down of Sex and the City movie in the New Yorker. One of the best movie reviews I've read.

On Earnestness

2008-07-09T13:00:00-07:00

"He's nice, but he's just too damn earnest. Where's the edge?" a friend asked me in discussion of somebody else.

In an old post I asked which traits have a backstop -- that is, for which personal characteristics is more of it always a good thing? For example, flexibility is a good character trait, but too much flexibility is bad. Persistence might be a trait that is valuable nonstop, but it's hard to think of any others.

Earnestness, to me, definitely has a backstop. I value earnestness to a point. But I cannot spend large chunks of time with someone who won't mix their style with irony, joking, or edginess in general. (I'm not exactly sure these social styles oppose earnestness -- earnestness is hard to define.)

Say you had a shitty day. You come home and I innocently ask, "How was your day?" The earnest response would be, "Oh Ben, I had a really tough day. My car broke down. And I got in a disagreement with a co-worker. And worst of all, the supermarket was out of my favorite type of drink. It was, indeed, a tough day." The more amusing response would be, "How was my day? Oh, I had a super day Ben. Just super. First my piece-of-shit car broke down in the middle of the freeway, then my co-worker and I argued about some feature that was in the works, and finally the supermarket didn't have my drink, which was icing on the cake."

Clearly, too much non-seriousness is hard to take. But in small doses, I find it endearing and funny. It's a balance.

In general, in terms of the personalities I'm attracted to, I like people who can make fun of themselves, who can deliver good rants if the time calls for it, who know how and when to say "fuck," who aren't afraid to say something that may not be politically correct, who aren't entirely predictable, who try to get to the bottom of things (in other words, they rarely say "Whatever..."), who are open to changing their mind, who through it all have a big heart and sense of humor.

That's my take. What's yours, on earnestness?

Annoying "Gotcha!" Conversation Stoppers

2008-07-08T13:00:00-07:00

Things people say in arguments that annoy me:

"You can't say that!" - Mr. Politically Correct. (A response: "I just fucking did. So respond.")

"Correlation does not equal causation!" - Mr. I Took Statistics 101. (A response: "True, but some correlation in the right way does show something.")

"In the end, you can't judge someone else's choices. You're not in their shoes." - Mr. Relativist. (A response: "True you can't judge 100% without 100% information, but don't you think that some choices are better than other, some values better than others, some truths more sensible than others?")

"But here's a counter-example!" - Mr. I-Think-One-Anecdote-to-the-Contrary-Disproves-a-General-Theory. (A response: "That's the exception that proves the rule.")

Listening to Customers is Harder Than It Seems

2008-07-07T13:05:00-07:00

Maintaining a core value of "listening to our customers" is trendy among companies big and small. But it's harder than it seems. Albert Wenger absolutely nails it in this post about why listening to customers is hard, hard, hard. Key excerpt below, bold font my own. I want to highlight point #2 -- it is often the case that customers do not know what they want, or actually don't want what they say they want.

First, which customers should you listen to? Is it the early adopters or should you try to identify what you believe to be “mainstream” customers? This turns out to be very hard to answer. If you don’t keep the early adopters at least somewhat happy you may never make it to the mainstream. Or it could be that there is no real mainstream for your product, so looking for it might make you neglect the early adopters you already have. Conversely, if you only cater to early adopters you might build something that fills their generally more advanced needs but is too complicated for the mainstream.

Second, how should you listen to customers? Is it what they are saying about the product/site/service or what they are doing? Here too are conflicting pieces of advice. On one hand is the theory that for every one customer complaining about a particular problem there is a silent group of 100 or more having the same problem but not bothering to complain. On the other is the view that verbal complaints and even more so feature requests tend to be what users “think” they want as opposed to what they actually ~~want~~ need (thanks to tweetip for pointing this out). The latter can only be learned, the theory goes, by observing their actual use. Often what customers say and what they do conflicts.

Third, how should you reconcile listening to your customers with your strategy? This is often the hardest part. You have a strategy that you believe in. It’s difficult enough to not outright ignore any customer feedback that’s not on strategy. After all, you don’t want to be a flag waving in the wind and shifting with every breeze. But how can you tell that apart from your customers telling you that your strategy is actually wrong? What if you are trying to solve too hard a problem, when the customers really need something much simpler?

On point #1, I think you have to develop for the early adopters and just accept that you will probably over-develop and need to modify the product for the mainstream. This is a frustrating cost but an unavoidable one since capturing the early adopters, winning their support, and leveraging their testimonial into mainstream accounts is critical. In my experience many mainstream customers fancy themselves early adopters and hence won't discount the early adopter's testimonial as much as they should (in the sense that a product working in an early adopter won't necessarily work in a mainstream inasmuch as the needs and cultures are different) allowing the company to really leverage an early adopter's success to potential clients who actually look and act different.

Attack on Every Pitch - AOEP

2008-07-04T13:00:00-07:00

A friend who works at a division 1 baseball program told me a lot of the staffers sign off emails with "AOEP" which stands for Attack on Every Pitch. It's a pitcher's mantra. It doesn't mean the pitcher has to throw strikes every pitch -- a pitcher can still attack a hitter's weakness by throwing out of the zone. It simply means that each pitch should have a purpose.

This one is easily adapted to business / life. I like it. Attack on every pitch.

Monster Hike in Costa Rica and Resilience

2008-07-03T21:12:38-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post, your loyal blogger is on the road, and isn't sitting with his legs kicked up on a Costa Rican beach reading books under a tree (ok - well maybe a little of that). He also loves the outdoors and as such tries to be "active."

My friend Stan and I hiked up to the volcano crater of Rincon de la Vieja National Park (45 mins NE of Liberia, CR). It was one of the more challenging physical experiences I've endured. It wasn't the time -- it took seven hours round trip -- but the immense steepness and poorly constructed trails that made it utterly grueling. Think stairmaster in mud.

The three following pictures illuminate how the hike went. Here I am at the outset of our hike, smiling, happy, and ready to go. The volcano is that big mountain in the background. Fyi, my collar is only popped to protect against sun burn -- wouldn't want to be confused with an east coast prep school kid!

Then after a grueling three hours up a muddy and mind-blowingly steep mountain, the picture looks much different:

When we finally reached the crater area, we walked along trail leading to the huge pit of steam and sulfur. It must be a close sibling of the moon, because if this isn't a moonscape, I don't know what is:

Stan and I joked that we were both "deeply humbled" by Mother Nature. Our trek was worth it. I'm a big believer in the importance of resilience and believe one's "Resilience Quotient" (RQ) is transferable. That is, the experience of enduring hardship but ultimately finishing the job can help in other parts of life. Stan and I didn't turn back, we finished the hike, and now have a great story and photos.

OK - back to reading on the beach.

Best Paragraph I Read Today (on LA)

2008-07-03T13:00:00-07:00

From Salman Rushdie in his novel Shalimar the Clown (review forthcoming). In poetic fashion it captures some essence of LA, and near the end of the graf speaks to why I think it's a city better to live in than visit.

He praised the city, commended it precisely for the qualities that were commonly held to be its greatest faults. That the city had no focal point, he professed hugely to admire. The idea of the center was in his view outdated, oligarchic, an arrogant anachronism. To believe in such a thing was to consign most of life to the periphery, to marginalize and in doing so to devalue. The de-centered promiscuous sprawl of this giant invertebrate blog, this jellyfish of concrete and light, made it the true democratic city of the future. As India [name of daughter] navigated the hollow freeways her father lauded the city's bizarre anatomy, which was fed and nourished by many such congealed and flowing arteries but needed no heart to drive its mighty flux. That it was a desert in disguise caused him to celebrate the genius of human beings, their ability to populate the earth with their imagings, to bring water to the wilderness and bustle to the void; that the desert had its revenge on the complexions of its conquerors, drying them, ingraining lines and furrows, provided these triumphant mortals with the salutary lesson that no victory was absolute, that the struggle between earthlings and the earth could never be decided in favor of either combatant, but swung back and forth through all eternity. That it was a hidden city, a city of strangers, appealed to him most of all. In the Forbidden City of the Chinese emperors, only royalty had the privilege of remaining occult. In this brilliant burg, however, secrecy was freely available to all comers. The modern obsession with intimacy, with the revelation of the self to the other, was not to Max's taste. An open city was a naked whore, lying invitingly back and turning every trick; whereas this veiled and difficult place, this erotic capital of the obscure stratagem, knew precisely how to arouse and heighten our metropolitan desires.

Related Posts:

The Global Tongue of the World: Panglish

2008-07-03T10:11:42-07:00

I've been in Costa Rica the past two weeks, so language (Spanish and English) is on my mind. Wired has an interesting, short piece on how Chinese is affecting the English spoken around the world. Here's Slate's helpful one paragraph summary:

The "likely consequence" of growing numbers of Chinese learning English without "enough quality spoken practice" means that "more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese." Already, nonnative speakers far outnumber native speakers, and in the next decade, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of those who use the language. English is "on a path toward a global tongue—what's coming to be known as Panglish." And, "[s]oon, when Americans travel abroad, one of the languages they'll have to learn may be their own."

Japanese and Korean Editions of My Start-Up Life

2008-07-02T09:55:52-07:00

The Japanese and Korean editions of My Start-Up Life are available for sale. Here's the link to the Korean edition. Here's the link to the Japanese edition on Amazon.com Japan. Below are the covers of each. Apparently the Japanese edition has several manga drawings of me and of other scenes, which is pretty amusing.

Is "Just Get Started" Bad Advice?

2008-07-01T13:06:00-07:00

My friend Cal Newport is a great guy who stimulates my brain. In his latest post, I'm guessing he has yours truly in mind when he writes:

Attend any talk given by an entrepreneur and you’ll hear some variation of the following:

The most important thing you can do is to get started!

This advice has percolated from its origin in business self-help to the wider productivity blogging community. You’ve heard it before: Do you want to become a writer? Start writing! Do you want to become fit? Join a gym today! Do you want to become a big-time blogger? Start posting ASAP! If you don’t start, you’re weak! You’re afraid of success!

Cal goes on to say that he's mainly arguing against the attitude where "every twinge of momentary enthusiasm is translated into action that consumes a non-trivial amount of time and attention." Cal says that instead of just leaping into action mode, we ought to contemplate our choices, analyze the situation, and "develop rigorous thresholds that any pursuit must overcome" before acting.

I agree to an extent that the very real benefits of planning and not acting can be lost among the "pro-action" hoopla. But the hoopla exists for a reason: many people talk about things they'd like to do but never get around to actually doing them. Cal, a doctoral student who has no problem executing on goals, naturally favors a more academic approach to the inaction problem (analyze, list options, pick best option, track success) rather than an experimental approach (jump into things as soon as possible, figure out if it's worth it, back out if it's not, etc). For some though, I think his wait-and-analyze approach might exacerbate paralysis -- all smart people can create more detailed Excel spreadsheets instead of actually picking up the phone and take tangible steps in the desired direction.

In the end, the worthiness of the "just get started" advice depends on the task. Some tasks give feedback faster if undertaken right away in a small dose as opposed to analyzing it from afar. Take Cal's examples: If you want to become a writer, sure you can talk to writers and study the profession, but is there a better way to understand whether writing girds your loins than actually putting pen to paper? If you want to become a big-time blogger, is there a better way to understand the blogosphere than to start a blog yourself? If fitness is your goal, what's better than spending an hour a day in the gym for two weeks and seeing how you feel?

Starting a company is a much larger type of task and therefore more deserving of the kind of restraint Cal outlines. For the record, if someone tells me, "I want to start a company," I do say, "Get started!" But get started doesn't mean taking out a $100,000 loan from Fat Vinnie, quitting your day job, and betting the family farm on your venture. Rather it means doing some preliminary research, maybe developing a prototype by night, and developing mini-experiments that can quickly give you a sense of the viability of the idea. Low risk actions.

Cal also says this on successful people:

They have built an exhaustive understanding of the relevant world, why some succeed and others don’t, and exactly what type of action is required. This takes time. Often it requires a long period of saturation, in which the person returns again and again to the world, meeting people and reading about it and trying little experiments to get a feel for its reality. This period will be at least a month. It might last years.

I'm frankly a little skeptical and would be interested in some specific examples. Did this saturation happen on the job or beforehand? Did they build an exhaustive understanding of the relevant world from afar, before getting started, or during? Most of the success stories I've been exposed to have been accidental and the person ended in place that was unexpected -- for example, starting a business and then it becoming something totally different in the process of building it. Methodological, comprehensive saturation to the industry before jumping in? Not really.

Bottom Line: There are plenty of cases where not acting and analyzing options is preferable to jumping right in and getting started. It depends on the task (smaller tasks are good for immediate action) and the person (do you learn quickly from experimental feedback?).

Not Getting Boxed In as a Do-Gooder

2008-06-30T13:00:00-07:00

In Switzerland I met a bright, ambitious young man who has spent a couple years in consulting and is now trying to figure out what to do next. He's intrigued by the non-profit sector and social entrepreneurship. But he's concerned that excessive non-profit time on his resume, while he's still young and trying to establish credibility, will make it seem soft; in other words, he's afraid of being pigeon-holed as a do-gooder.

It's a fair concern and relates to what seems like a massive challenge in the non-profit world: how to recruit the best and brightest young people into a sector that generally pays less and (exceptions notwithstanding) is filled with lower caliber people than in the private sector.

Teach for America has done a brilliant job at generating some caché around its jobs. My understanding is this is due to their ultimate effectiveness in the classroom (but since this is not enough by itself) it's also due to their selectivity and how they brand this selectivity. However they do it, they have made it sexy for its young workforce to say they are a teacher for TFA at a cocktail party.

I can't think of another non-profit which in so short a period of time has established itself as an elite, selective organization which will only hire the best.

All companies would do good to learn from TFA's remarkable positioning / branding job.

Those Late Night Dorm Conversations!

2008-06-27T13:00:00-07:00

I am in awe of the romanticization of higher education in America, mainly by its alumni who are probably rationalizing an extraordinary sunk cost of money and time but also from the media (especially those pesky soft focus, all-anecdotes higher ed stories put out monthly by the New York Times which pander to its well-to-do readers with teenage sons and daughters). We hear that going to a fine college in America represents the opportunity for unblemished intellectual pursuit. The one opportunity to pursue the life of the mind with no other distractions or obligations!

Or: The late night dorm conversations about the meaning of life! This -- late night dorm conversations -- may be the most overrated thing ever. Slightly inebriated 18, 19, 20, or 21 year-olds (that includes me!) musing on the Big Questions with no preparation or structure is an absolute train-wreck. Yet these situations continue to get mythologized as formative intellectual or social moments that are not to be missed.

Based on my own experiences and those of my friends (who attend every college you've heard of and many good colleges you likely haven't heard of), I think people vastly overstate the existence of an unadulterated intellectual life for undergraduates in the academy. Look to the plagues of multiculturalism and political correctness (anti-intellectual currents if there ever were ones) or simply the fact that drinking / drugs, obsession with grades, and power plays in pursuit of golden internships are the primary points of interest for most 20 year-olds at even the best institutions.

This doesn't mean college is worthless. In fact, I think college offers many benefits to undergrads, such as the networking opportunities or just the fun factor of four years of summer camp. But a truly enriching intellectual experience of the sort that's often "remembered" by alumni or celebrated by the media -- those early moments where a worldview started to form, a love for books that was cultivated -- this seems less likely, unless you're a student at Reed, University of Chicago, Swarthmore, and perhaps a couple other places whose cultures do seem to take the life of the mind seriously. In general, I think a minority of students at good colleges leave infected with a love for ideas and a majority leave with knowledge that they will probably have to un-learn later in life.

I'd rather have our colleges either be more explicitly vocational -- ie, be in the business of transferring practical career skills and not talk themselves silly with phrases like "teaching our students how to think" -- or actually cut the bullshit / distractions and emphasize liberal arts for liberal arts' sake alone. Floating somewhere in the middle, as most liberal arts schools do now, appeals on the surface for those like me who don't want the suffocating seriousness of a University of Chicago nor the mechanics skills of a vocational institute, but ultimately the ever-elusive 'happy medium" as currently practiced doesn't offer enough of either to seem worthwhile.

Those Dove "Real Women" Ads Were Re-Touched

2008-06-26T13:00:00-07:00

Remember those Dove "real women" ads that showed non-models posing in their underwear? They were popular ads precisely because they did not feature stereotypically hot women. A clever approach.

In this thoroughly interesting article on the world of Photoshopping photos, there's this nugget:

...Retouchers tend to practice semi-clandestinely. “It is known that everybody does it, but they protest,” Dangin [one of the leading re-touchers] said recently. “The people who complain about retouching are the first to say, ‘Get this thing off my arm.’ ” I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women” in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

Wow.

And for those writing nuts out there, here's the obligatory "one paragraph physical description of the main character in the story" from the above-linked New Yorker story:

Dangin is on the short side, with a scruffy mustache and finger-in-the-socket frizz. He maintains the hours of a Presidential candidate; lately, he is a little tubbier than he would like. He was wearing, as is his custom, an all-navy outfit: New Balance sneakers, ratty cords, woollen sweater with holes in the armpits. He is not immune to the charms of things—he owns an Aston Martin, along with houses in Manhattan, Amagansett, and St. Bart’s—but, for someone who can pick apart a face in a matter of seconds (he once, apologetically, described his eyes as “high-speed scanners”), he is remarkably free of vanity. “I’m not a stud,” he told me one day. “I don’t have the six-pack chocolate bars, I have a belly. Would I want to look like that? Yes. Am I ever going to achieve that? No. Am I happy? Yes.” He has an earthy streak and a digressive manner of thought, but he issues orders commandingly.

Decent. Here's an old post on physical descriptions that do or do not work.

The Art of the Job Offer

2008-06-25T13:00:00-07:00

My friend Auren Hoffman has an awesome post advising organizations how to make a job offer. Anyone who's in the business of hiring should read this. His starting premise is that "fit" matters with employees and therefore companies should try their hardest to communicate the company culture and allow the potential hire to decide whether such fit exists. Hence you don't want to oversell; rather, you want to encourage the potential hire to opt-out if he has any doubts. Excerpts below. My favorite is the last one: make an offer slightly below market (to ensure that he really loves the company and isn't just motivated by pay) and then give raises to pay him above market.

First, don’t use the offer as an opportunity to sell the candidate. Try to be honest and open with each candidate. Tell them your goal for all employees is for them to love their jobs and that they should not take the job if they have doubts. You've only been able evaluate the person for a dozen hours – but the candidate has known herself all her life. She will be a much better judge if she fits the culture.

Next, be completely honest about the culture. At Rapleaf, we take at least 15 minutes to spell out, in detail, the company culture. Tell them your organization's quirks and what is expected of employees. Some of the many things that are particular to Rapleaf that we tell all candidates:

We’re frugal. We’ll wait until we’re very profitable before we pay for fancy dinners.

We give each other a good dose of constructive criticism. We happily give and take criticism. We want to better ourselves and the others around us.

We do not value our own ideas more than those ideas generated by our teammates.

We work long hours. We believe great things are accomplished 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration.

We believe the perfect is the enemy of the good. This means we focus on getting things done, not on building the most perfect system. We strongly believe in rapid iteration.

Really talk through the culture during the offer. If you want your employees to work long hours, you better tell them that is expected before they accept the offer. Conversely, if you believe strongly in a 40-hour workweek, tell the candidate because many people are looking to change the world and they want to work with people who really make the company mission a priority.

The essential take-away is not to sugar-coat the experience. Be completely honest.

Then, tell the candidate your concerns about them. Tell them what you like about them and what they will need to improve upon to be a productive employee. And tell them not to take the job if they don’t think they can make those improvements. This is the toughest thing for a hiring manager to do but it is important because it really sets the expectations.

Fourth, don't give candidates a long time to make a decision. Two days is fair. If they don’t know they want to work for you in two days, then they should probably turn down your job offer.

And give a salary that is a bit below market. You want to make sure candidates REALLY want to work at your company. Then you should make sure you take care of your employees and give them frequent raises so they end up being paid above market. This way you get the both worlds – employees who are really excited about the company and who are happy that they are appreciated by management (because of the frequent raises).

Hong Kong Status Report ~10 Years Later

2008-06-24T13:00:00-07:00

Below is an adapted version of a paper I wrote a few months ago, citations stripped out. It's a check-in on how Hong Kong is doing politically and economically since the Handover in '97. The short answer seems to be: just fine. Economic growth is bustling, political freedoms are more or less respected by Beijing. More detail below. BTW - Hong Kong is one of my favorite cities in the world.

On July 1, 1997 Britain ceded control of its colony Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China, ending 155 years of British rule. When the transfer agreement was made after the Treaty of Nanking, ‘97 seemed like a lifetime away, and Hong Kong did not have much economic significance. As the date drew nearer, however, Hong Kong had established itself as a financial hub in Asia, with a vibrant cosmopolitan culture, democratic processes, and an independent, more modern identity than mainland China. The “Handover,” as it is called, from Britain to China, therefore proved all the more intriguing because an important economic partner of the West was leaving its safe grasp and becoming a unit of a far less developed communist government.

•••

British Rule of Hong Kong

When the British took control of Hong Kong it was poor and uninhabited. While it had some useful natural features ⎯ such a deep lake area surrounded by hills, which eventually became the famed Hong Kong port ⎯ at the time none of this was developed, and there was much debate within British government about whether they should even invest in their new colony or not. Left to their own devices, the inhabitants of Hong Kong fostered an atmosphere not unlike the “wild west” sense in the early days of America.

When Britain began attending to its Asian colony, it did so without much concern for local tradition or custom. There was little effort on the part of British officials to learn Chinese. British governors made laws with no input from locals. One scholar of Hong Kong characterized early British rule as “oppressive” but something that could “offer opportunities.” Those opportunities, of course, came in the resources a modern, Western powerhouse could make available to a small island in underdeveloped Asia.

Indeed, were it not for British resources (and some might say its culture) Hong Kong would have not become, by the end of British rule, the world’s seventh largest holder of foreign reserves, third largest exporter of clothing, and second highest per capita GDP in Asia. Hong Kong, with its British backing, established a beacon of stability in Asia, and was bridge to Western markets. Expats flocked and contributed to a genuinely cosmopolitan culture that made it appealing for businesspeople to conduct trans-national deals.

As Hong Kong grew in economic stature, its political system matured to resemble not only Britain in its freedoms but also Switzerland in its pro-business attitude toward policy. Taxes and tariffs were kept low. The country was ranked one of the easiest places in which to start a business. From a democracy perspective, local representation was still limited (a small group of Hong Kong businessmen voted in a legislature of sorts) and universal suffrage non-existent. British governors ruled. But locals didn’t seem to care much, so long as their pocketbooks were full and freedoms of speech protected. The Chinese in Hong Kong grew accustomed to colonial rule, and as such were a bit apathetic about engaging in political debate. Compared to their neighbors on the mainland or in Southeast Asia, day-to-day life in Hong Kong looked pretty good.

•••

The Handover

The negotiations of Handover itself grappled with the fundamental challenge of autonomy. How autonomous will Hong Kong be within China? How will a liberal, more or less democratic place with press freedoms, an independent judiciary, and a stable private property / capitalist system be morphed into a government that is communist, censors its citizens, maintains a crooked judiciary, and allows only flashes of uninhibited capitalism? Will Beijing call all the shots? If not, which decisions are left to Hong Kong officials? These questions give a glimpse at issues negotiators from both sides (China and England) had to wrestle with. How, in other words, does the idea of “one country, two systems” actually get implemented?

In the end, China agreed to declare Hong Kong a “Special Administrative Region” which would enjoy a “high degree of autonomy” for at least the first 50 years of China control. This meant the courts, free press, capitalist system, etc. would all be maintained independently in the short term. A “Chief Executive,” elected by an 800 person election committee in Hong Kong, would govern the state. The Chief Executive would govern in conjunction with the Hong Kong Legislative Council, a congress of sorts, which would be partially elected by the people and partially appointed by Beijing. The rule of law would change from British law to “Basic Law,” a Beijing-written constitution concerning Hong Kong. The most controversial aspect of Basic Law was Article 23 which said the Hong Kong government must enact legislation that “prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government.”

At face value, these arrangements seem excellent: at least in the short term, Hong Kong would maintain its rich independent culture, currency, and democratic institutions. To simplify, the arrangement guaranteed that the flag flying high would change, and British troops would leave the island, but there would be no substantive overhauls.

The fear among democratic activists in Hong Kong and among Western observers was that China wouldn’t follow through on these commitments. After all, “high degree of autonomy” can be interpreted in many ways.

With 11 years of Chinese rule of Hong Kong now behind us, we can safely say that the reality is somewhere in the middle – China has not reneged on its commitments to maintain Hong Kong autonomy, but there is also some evidence that Beijing is dragging its feet on certain democratic measures to run out the clock until the 50th year of control, when they have no need to maintain Hong Kong as a special region.

•••

Political Situation

Political life under Chinese rule has changed in ways more invisible than visible. Universal suffrage still eludes the people and Beijing-appointed Chief Executives have proven less interested in advancing Hong Kong causes than pushing through Beijing policy. Yet British governors, even though they were probably more sympathetic to local causes than Beijing, still, in the end, represented the interests in Britain above all. So what are the “invisible” political changes?

Observers say that what’s changed in the political landscape in Hong Kong is an increased level of self-censorship on the part of the people and media. People are less willing to speak out on issues that might contradict an official Beijing stance. Though in theory they are endowed with the right to do so, at least until 2047 at the 50 year anniversary of the Handover, people are nevertheless reticent. Beijing commits thousands of human rights violations each year on the mainland. Dissenters are hushed ⎯ even killed. Information is controlled. Who knows what Beijing might do to a loud democracy activist, for example, or a newspaper editor who consistently editorializes against the mainland? There have been cases of radio hosts mysteriously resigning after expressing negativity with the PRC. Rather than risk it, people stay quiet.

It is impossible to measure self-censorship precisely. We do not know how many citizens or Hong Kong politicians have changed their attitudes out of fear of retaliation from Beijing.

One positive political development since the Handover is more local engagement in politics. Maybe because the leaders of Hong Kong are Chinese and not British, or because the “central office” is closer (Beijing and not London) ⎯ whatever the case, more Hong Kong citizens engage in politics.

Economic Situation

While politics in Hong Kong has a mixed picture now and an uncertain future (will democracy prevail? will Beijing infringe on political freedoms guaranteed in the Handover agreement?), the economic picture of post-Handover Hong Kong is clearer.

From an economic growth perspective, Hong Kong GDP is growing at a rate comparable to the period leading up to the Handover. Moreover, the prospects for continued strong growth are likely due to China’s emergence as the largest developing economy. Despite a scare early on ⎯ the Asian Financial Crisis pulled Hong Kong into a recession literally the day of the Handover ⎯ the island recovered within a few years. Unemployment lessened. Economic ties with mainland China deepened thanks to a 2004 free trade agreement and a loosening of immigration restrictions between the two regions. Meanwhile, mainland China continues to post stellar growth numbers. Due to proximity and special agreements, Hong Kong companies get first dibs on mainland opportunities, and the mainland imports from Hong Kong tariff-free.

Timing-wise the Handover may turn out to be perfect for economic growth. For many years, Hong Kong mooched off its powerful colonizer. Back then, Britain was a more formidable economic force. Hong Kong built up its infrastructure and culture under the umbrella of a rich, safe, free Western patron. Meanwhile, China was slowly but surely developing. Now, as the lines seem to cross on the graph, Hong Kong becomes part of a more stable China which is rising rapidly, and leaves behind a Britain whose time has come and gone.

In its current position as an economic hub, Hong Kong boasts close ties with China (it is, after all, part of the Beijing apparatus) as well as a history of Western-style freedoms. This means multinationals eyeing the Chinese market ⎯ and there are more of these opportunists than ever before ⎯ who are unwilling to enter the chaos that is Shanghai, opt to set-up shop in Hong Kong as a safe baby step.

So: economic life in Hong Kong post-Handover is strong and getting stronger.

•••

Conclusion

“Over the past 10 years, there have been some very bumpy moments – politically and economically. But some of the more dire predications I remember so vividly from 1997 have not come true. One country, two systems has worked,” British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said last year. This seems to be the consensus among experts on the region. Fear mongers abound in 1997, predicting economic ruin, political overreach from Beijing, and so forth. Few of these fears have been realized. Has Hong Kong changed beyond a simple flag change? Yes. It is more Chinese than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of British and American ex-pats have left the city. The governing political bodies now draw more influence from their communist bosses in Beijing than their democratic and capitalist bosses in London. So culturally, yes, Hong Kong is different. Politically, yes, Hong Kong is different ⎯ probably for the worse, but Beijing still largely respects the Handover agreement. Economically little has changed besides deeper ties with the mainland. In sum, any changes that have occurred since 1997 have been on the margins. Hong Kong remains a dynamic economic powerhouse, with a mostly free press and a somewhat-representative government. Contrasted to the tense situation in Korea, or the Tibetan uprisings in mainland China, or the general instability and coup d’états that plague Southeast Asia, or the economic stagnation that seems to be afflicting Japan, Hong Kong is a bright spot in the Pacific Rim. For now. The next big juncture in this small island’s life will be in 2047, when China no longer has obligations to the international community over autonomy. Until then, Hong Kong gives us reason to smile.

When In Doubt, Start a Company in a Big and Growing Market

2008-06-23T13:00:00-07:00

That's what a friend told me recently, and it's a great point. He said a big and growing market will support a million mistakes as you build your start-up.

It's similar to what Jonathan Rosenberg said a few months ago: better to be a smaller slice of a big pie than a bigger slice of a small pie.

If I Were You...The Giving and Receiving of Advice

2008-06-19T20:21:08-07:00

The Silicon Valley Junto, a discussion society Chris Yeh and I run where we bring together friends over lunch about once a quarter, convened today in Menlo Park for the topic:
If I Were You...Advice Giving, Advice Receiving, and the Best/Worst Advice You Ever Got. We were inspired by this Fortune magazine feature where various CEOs answered this question.

Our lively and stimulating discussion covered several bases on the topic of advice. Here are some notes:

When you give advice, give the person options, and let them choose the best path. People hate to be told what to do -- need to make them feel empowered to make the decision for themselves.

The quality of the advice -- that is, whether the advice could be considered good or bad -- is not necessarily connected to the ultimate consequences of following the advice. For example, if you advise someone to invest their money prudently in the stock market, and instead they liquidate all savings and buy lottery tickets, and win the lottery, did you offer bad advice? Can the quality of advice be judged based on the results that ensue from following it?

When giving advice, include the word "because" -- it increases eventual absorption, regardless of what you say after the word "because."

Are advice givers' primarily concerned about the advice-receiver following through on the advice? Usually. Usually the you want to frame your advice in a way that will best inspire action and a change in behavior. But sometimes the advice giver doesn't have this objective; sometimes he just wants to feel superior, etc.

Remember four things when giving advice:
- The role and responsibilities of the person on the other side of the table. See the situation from their perspective.
- Your intentions -- keep them pure
- The delivery itself -- focus on tone and spirit in which advice is delivered. This is crucial.
- Summary -- close off the interaction, make sure everyone is on the same page. Whether it's a one minute conversation or four hour meeting, get some closure and action items.

Much of advice giving and receiving is just good communication tactics and good sales techniques.

When you seek advice, should you consult the domain expert or someone who knows you best? Your mother may know you best but she may not know the industry you're considering going in to. Domain expert knows the market but doesn't know your individual differences.
- Get advice first from the domain expert to get a model and assess your choices. Then consult the person who really knows you to understand which choice makes most sense for you.

When you give advice, it's easy to fan the embers but hard to strike a new fire. So listen carefully to their situation and find some aspect of it that you can build upon and emphasize. This will result in best outcome, rather than trying to instill an entirely new idea or some concept that's not already part of their framework. [BC: This is very insightful.]

Actionable advice is best advice. Saying "speak up more" to someone who doesn't talk in meetings is not actionable; saying "say at least three things in the meeting" is more clearly actionable.

The advice giver can be changed when he gives advice. That is, even though he's doling out suggestions to someone else, that process can change the person usually for the better.

People who are "unconsciously competent" are not the best people to ask for advice. True experts often can't explain what they're doing and why.

Good advice givers have self-knowledge. They know their own biases and discount them before giving advice.

Related Posts:

- We overvalue advice when the situation is hard, undervalue advice when situation / problem is easy
- You can't give advice until you've thoroughly acknowledged you understand how busy the other person is
- More general thoughts on the topic of advice, including "sometimes people ask for advice but what they really want is your attention."
- Even when someone discloses their bias before giving advice, we still don't discount the advice enough. Say our mechanic tells us we need to buy some repairs. Clearly he's biased but we tend to forget about the bias.
- How to be a good mentee -- be good at asking for and taking advice.

Do Speculators Create Social Wealth or Just Shift it Around?

2008-06-18T23:50:43-07:00

The former, says Richard Posner, in this excerpt from his post:

There is also an echo of the traditional but erroneous suspicion of speculation as an activity that does not create social wealth but merely shifts it around. That is incorrect. Speculation aligns prices (whether commodity prices or the prices of companies) with values and so creates more accurate signals for production and investment. It is a vital economic service. That is not to say that speculators "deserve" higher incomes than ditch diggers. Desert doesn't enter. Incomes are determined by supply and demand.

Passion in Action: Kevin Garnett's Post-Game Interview

2008-06-18T14:13:35-07:00

Slate called Kevin Garnett's post-game interview last night (after the Celtics won the NBA championship) "the strangest post-game interview of the television era." It's two minutes. Hilarious. Embedded below. Excerpts from Slate's blow-by-blow at bottom.

0:00: Greeted by Tafoya, Garnett first appears to be gripped by emotions familiar to any sports fan who's watched a championship celebration: happiness and disbelief. He presses his brand-new championship hat to his head with both hands, seemingly afraid it might come loose.

0:07: "NBA Champion—how does that sound?" Tafoya asks. Garnett is at a loss for words. After a long pause and more futzing with his new hat, he says, in a strangely even tone, "Man, I'm so, I'm so hype right now."

0:20: Garnett tells Tafoya that "anything's possible." He then leans back and howls at the moon: "ANYTHING'S POOOOOOSSIIIIIBLLLLLLE!" He holds the note for four seconds.

0:27: At this point the catharsis gets the better of Garnett, and he begins crying. These are not the poignant tears of joy shed by Michael Jordan upon winning his first Larry O'Brien Trophy. Garnett is in the throes of something closer to a child's tantrum, mumbling indecipherable words. Approximate translation: "Oh my buh buh, fa fa fa fa fa." He then buries his head in the shoulder of an unidentified Celtics staffer, who proceeds to say, "Yeah, baby!" repeatedly. ABC's producers pull away for a moment, cutting to a long shot of the arena....

0:57: "This is for everybody in 'Sota!" he bellows, a classy shout-out to the fans who supported Garnett for the first 12 years of his career. Such is the reservoir of good feeling that Garnett has built up in Boston that no fan will begrudge the Twin Cities getting top-billing in Garnett's list of thank-yous. If Ray Allen had dedicated the Celtics win to the hardworking people of Seattle or Milwaukee, one wonders if it would have gone over quite as well....

1:06: Garnett thanks Peanut. As ABC noted in its pregame show, Garnett is very fond of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, but this Peanut would seem to be a person. When Tafoya caught up with Garnett after Boston defeated the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals, he closed out the exchange by saying, "What up, Brand? What up, Peanut?" Brand would seem to be Brandi, Garnett's wife. Might that make Peanut their newborn?

1:14: Garnett screams into the camera, "I made it ma! Top of the world! TOP OF THE WORLD!" That's exactly what James Cagney's maniacal, cackling gangster character says at the end of White Heat as he dies in a fiery explosion atop a gigantic gas tank. This explains a lot about KG's self-image.

1:20: Tafoya, who must be complimented on her poise throughout this exchange, parlays Garnett's screaming into a question: "What does 'top of the world' feel like, Kevin?" The query seems to momentarily ground Garnett, who again flirts with the normal rules of postgame interviewing, offering up some choice platitudes: "Ray Allen had a great game" and "I'm so happy right now—I'm not going to sleep for a week." Of course, since this is Kevin Garnett, the latter statement might not be hyperbole—he's previously claimed not to have slept for four or five nights during the Pistons series.

1:37: "I'm certified! I'm certified!" Garnett bellows. This may be the first time you could mistake a newly minted NBA champion for a raving lunatic on the subway.

1:40: In a more benign re-enactment of Joe Namath's propositioning of Suzy Kolber, Garnett says, "Michele, you look good tonight, girl." Over the course of the playoffs, the two have developed an easy rapport. After Game 1 of the Pistons series, he told Tafoya, "You look good in your pink, girl."....

The interview concludes, but the camera stays with Garnett as he turns to find Bill Russell waiting to greet him with a benevolent grin and a bear hug. In a conversation earlier this year, the 11-time champion told Boston's new star that he would give him one of his hard-earned rings if the team failed to take it home this year. KG almost cried. Now, even the stiffest upper lip in Boston has to be quivering as Garnett and his forebear embrace. "I got one of my own," says Garnett. "I got my own." He steps back, looks at Russell, and says "I hope we made you proud."

A less weird individual might have left it at that, but Garnett has one more line for his mentor: "Now you got to tell me where to go tonight."

If You Don't Know Who the Sucker Is, It's You

2008-06-17T20:39:31-07:00

I was in New York all last week and met some interesting people. Here's one of the best nuggets I heard from a hedge fund portfolio manager:

I think, in the end, you gotta specialize in something. You need to know an industry and know everyone else in the industry, and how you're different and better than the other guys. If you're looking around the table and you don't know who the sucker is -- who's off-base in their thinking -- then it means you're the sucker.

The general idea of knowing how you stack up against your competition -- whether on a personal/career level or as a start-up -- is very important.