A New Prediction Market Lets Investors Bet Big on Almost Anything - I see it is behind a paywall - but you can read it all on Apple News

The article is about a ‘new’ prediction market : Kalshi - which initially had problems with getting approval …

“But their concerns were overruled by the agency’s politically appointed commissioners, one of whom has since joined Kalshi’s board.”

The concerns are clear - but for all of that - I can’t help wondering if this still might be a good idea. (Revolving doors between government and commerce aside.)

Of course - they aren’t the first. Heard of predictit (I never knew it was a Kiwi play.)

How Remote-First Crypto Players Could End the Company HQ

We will see.

BUT

The real news buried inside the post is how many of these scams companies are based in Malta, The Caymans, The Bahamas … very … what’s the word … ‘levelling’?

As for crap like this …

““Fellow crypto exchange Kraken followed suit in doing away with its HQ in April, and while CEO Jesse Powell said the closure was specifically a response to incidents of crime impacting its employees on the way into the San Francisco office, he added Kraken has “no plans to establish a new, formal global HQ.”

My bold - BUT - if that really is the reason - why not set up an office in a different city - in Texas or Florida say

(*) I have a hard time calling them ‘reporters’ or ‘journalists’.

As long as Spotify continues to generate headlines like Joe Rogan: We Have a ‘Mental Health Problem Disguised as a Gun Problem

I am good with Netflix generating headlines like Netflix CEO defends Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais

Though I take issue with Netflix falling back onto the ‘Free Speech’ defence. I would rather they used the ‘change the channel’ argument.

Astral Codex Ten had me curled up on the floor in stitches ….

Man, it’s been a crazy few months. You hear I quit my job at Google and founded a fintech startup?”

“No! What do you do?”

“War insurance!”

“War insurance?”

“Yeah. We pay out if there’s a war.”

“Isn’t that massively correlated risk?”

“Yeah. The idea is, we sell war insurance to companies who do badly if there’s a war - tourist attractions and the like. Then we sell the same amount of peace insurance to military contractors. As long as we get the probabilities and costs right, we make the same profit either way.”

“Neat idea, how’s it going?”

“Great! Ayatollah Khameini just bought a ten billion dollar policy.”

“Of the war version or the peace version?”

“Can’t say, confidentiality agreement.”

Read The Whole Thing

This is a question asked by Valerie Andrews over on BizCatalyst360

My short answer is NO. No we can’t.

I’ll get into the main thrust of my positon re the article in a moment - but first lets' talk about ‘the disembodiment of knowledge’.

“Disembodiment …. manifesting as a disruption of bodily self-awareness which induces a disturbing feeling of self-detachment or “depersonalisation”.

If that is disembodiment … then I don’t even agree with the premise. Maybe if a discussion ensues in the thread below - I will come back to this, but here is what I do know. The internet has certainly thrown open the doors to questioning facts and that is not always a good thing. But equally it is not a bad thing.

The world is a sphere is a fact. Despite the arguments. In fact, not to get meta - I would argue that simply rejecting the idea that the world is a sphere and is in fact flat is not an argument, but a simple unsubstantiated contradiction. I for one cannot get into those kinds of conversations.

Remember this?

“An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.”

But some ‘facts’ aren’t as clear - because it tends to question what we have been taught. As an English school kid I was taught about India and Pakistan. I ‘knew’ the facts.

Or did I?

I don’t know the answer. But thanks to the internet I now know that what I considered to be a ‘fact’ is actually up for debate. It depends on your context.

Anyway. Back to the plot.

Valerie opened her article …

“This is the age of Kindle, cloud storage, and the app-for-everything. We’ve said goodbye to personal libraries and printed books, to cabinets and accordion files, to calculators and accounting ledgers. But is our understanding of the world—and even our sense of self— diminished as we lose our paper trail? The Berkeley artist Ann Arnold recently joined me in considering the advantages of the analog life. Here are our a few of our observations about old-fashioned ways of storing and accessing information.”

I don’t use a Kindle. I definitely use cloud storage and use a lot of (good) apps for things I want to do.

Just from that paragraph …

“We’ve said goodbye to personal libraries.”

No we haven’t.

In fact despite being very much a digital citizen, I have not said goodbye to most of the things on that list - other than (filing) cabinets and accordion files (thankfully). My calculator, accounting ledger and personal library exist on my computer. Needless to say, printed books do not - but yes, I do have them, because, like Valerie - I like them. Very much - just like my vinyl record collection and my CD collection they are very much part of me.

BUT - my information world is 90 to 95% digital. I have ‘everything’ on my computer - which means that where ever I am in the world - I can still pull up something I need when I need it - try doing that with your ‘at home library’ whilst travelling, or in the office, or on holiday, or from seat 36C on a plane crossing the Atlantic ….

In fact … to riff on another line from the article ….

“In the 2020s, the Englishman John Philpin viewed his computer as an extension of his brain, a virtual (fully backed up) vault filled with a lifetime of accumulated memories and accomplishments.”

Not to take away from the physical book or the analogue world … I love them both and the digital world is the same - yet different.

I too love the touch of the paper when reading the book - but knowledge isn’t only found on paper. Part of the knowledge I store digitally is in video format, others in audio format, yet others in image format. I am utilising beta software that allows me to find things inside of the video and audio. Not yet ready for prime time - but definitely coming.

Knowledge is also found in comments in threads - and if I see something like that - it is captured and added to my digital vault. Take for example this post, which was orginally going to be a comment posted to BizCatalyst. (NOT LinkedIN or Facebook - as I intimated in those two spaces - I like to comment where the work is done.) If it remained a comment, it would still be added to my my digital archive with a link to where it was posted. As a post it is automatically part of my ‘knowledge’ world.

Meanwhile, in the image world Apple - and I suspect Google (though since I don’t use them - I cant absolutely say) - allows me to search for text inside of photographs. So I can take a picture of a restaurant’s menu and later search for that restaurant name - and up it comes, together with the phone number that I can click on to call.

Try doing that with a book!

Valerie also referenced French author Henri Bosco. How she described his thinking reminded me of Zettelkasten. Unclear whether he specifically used the methodology - but there are plenty of writers that do.

One of the systems I use in my knowledge management is Obsidian - but Notion and Roam are two other alternative. All of them support a digital version of Zettlekasten. I DO NOT use Zettlekasten - for my needs the overhead is too great - but I know people that do.

By the way - to answer …

“What do we lose as we toss out the stash of work-related articles, the stacks of reference books, the cabinets full of rigorous research, the piles of faded diaries and journals?”

I scan things into my system as I go. So I don’t have to make that decision.

Finally, it’s an old one - but thought I would share this YouTube video … imagining a conversation when the world moved on from the scroll to the book.

In conclusion, ‘HumanIT’ is moving on. The world of atoms is not being abandoned but rather it now has a companion in the world of bytes. I would say that the storage and retrieval (retrieval being something that Valerie does not specifically call out in her article) of knowledge is best managed by bits and bytes - not atoms … and so this transition is finally allowing knowledge to ‘come home’.

What do you think?

I wanted to share this because for me it truly resonated with the message we often hear in these modern times which is to “Follow Your Passion.”

The importance of the letter is (as is so often the case with Fenyman) - deep and clear.

Dear Kichi

I was very happy to hear from you, and that you have such a position in the Research Laboratories.

Unfortunately, your letter made me unhappy for you seem to be truly sad. It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems. The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man, even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures because you have some erroneous idea of what is worthwhile.

You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods. But at the same time I had another Ph.D. Student (Albert Hibbs) whose thesis was on how it is that the winds build up waves blowing over water in the sea. I accepted him as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about). I am sorry, excuse me. I hope by this letter to correct it a little.

I have worked on innumerable problems that you would call humble, but which I enjoyed and felt very good about because I sometimes could partially succeed. For example, experiments on the coefficient of friction on highly polished surfaces, to try to learn something about how friction worked (failure). Or, how elastic properties of crystals depends on the forces between the atoms in them, or how to make electroplated metal stick to plastic objects (like radio knobs). Or, how neutrons diffuse out of Uranium. Or, the reflection of electromagnetic waves from films coating glass. The development of shock waves in explosions. The design of a neutron counter. Why some elements capture electrons from the L-orbits, but not the K-orbits. General theory of how to fold paper to make a certain type of child’s toy (called flexagons). The energy levels in the light nuclei. The theory of turbulence (I have spent several years on it without success). Plus all the “grander” problems of quantum theory.

No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.

Best of luck and happiness. Sincerely, Richard P. Feynman

The Original Post at Letters of Note has gone - but can be found on the internet archive.