dotcom boom - money around and low interest rate - build up a solution in search of a problem (webvan) [[tom_griffith]] mail to [[vikash_mansingkha]], [[scott_stern]], [[charlie_fine]] scheduled on 2025 June (at most two or three times a year) - [ ] add some curiosity on why pragmatist may have said this. - [ ] continue on https://claude.ai/chat/9bebad24-4ecd-4149-9846-13d796063dfd Yakyong Jung is most famous pragmatist in Korea. In a letter sent to his son, he writes: > In this world, there are two great scales. One is the upright and true scale that weighs right from wrong, The other is the scale of benefit and harm—what helps and what hurts. From these two great scales emerge four grades of worth. The highest is to hold to what is right and gain benefit from it. Next comes holding to what is right even when it brings harm. Third is following what is wrong to gain benefit. The lowest is following what is wrong and bringing harm upon oneself. Interpretation of letter by poem expert Jung min is: > The four combinations of right/wrong and benefit/harm create four grades of living. Doing what is right and gaining benefit comes first; doing what is right and suffering harm comes second. Doing what is wrong to gain benefit is third. Doing what is wrong and suffering harm is fourth. Honestly, it's not easy to hold to what is right and gain benefit at the same time. It's not uncommon to hold to what is right and suffer for it. So people say to take the middle path and gain benefit even through compromise, but this only invites more wrongdoing. The first way is rare, the second is disliked, so people end up choosing the third or falling to the fourth. Entrepreneur centered approach is what feels "right" to me. Yes the lack of data, no entrepreneur is asking for it (compared to identified needs of investors on decision making tools) which makes progressing the research troubling. I don't want to negotiate out of fear and would like to push my ideal I proposed in the STRAP paper: > positioning entrepreneurs at the center of decision-making rather than as passive recipients of investor preferences, enabling multiple paths to success through active coordination of stakeholder commitments. This approach differs significantly from the investor-led experimentation paradigm described by Nanda (2024), which emphasizes staged, investor-driven learning as the primary mechanism for uncertainty reduction. Instead, STRAP recognizes that successful ventures require coordinated uncertainty resolution across all key stakeholders simultaneously, with entrepreneur at the center and investor as one stakeholder. The luxury of decision analysis should be given to entrepreneurs, which I'm willing to pour double efforts to make it happen. This idea is root from yours - charlie's entreprneurial phase which describes the environmental characteristics entreprneurs experience with ultimate goal of prescribing tools, scott's entrepreneurial compass which puts idea on the center and testing different strategies, vikash's entrepreneur-centered equity valuation I'm grateful for the second chance to keep working with you on this idea and now focusing on nurturing paper-writing skills with Charlie's guidance. Please help me achieve this idea. 천하에는 두 가지 큰 저울이 있다. 하나는 시비를 재는 올곧고 그릇의 저울이고, 하나는 이해체액 곧 이로움과 해로움의 저울이다. 이 두 가지 큰 저울에서 내 가치 큰 등급이 생겨난다. 올곧은 것을 지키 이로움을 얻는 것이 가장 으듬이다. 그다음은 올곧은 것을 지키다가 해로움을 얻는 것이다. 그다음은 그릇됨을 따라가서 이로움을 얻는 것이다. 가장 낮은 것은 그릇됨을 따르다가 해로움을 불러들이는 것이다. 시비와 이해의 네 가지 조합이 만들어내는 네 가지 삶의 등급이 있다. 올곧 음을 해서 이로움을 얻는 것이 첫째요, 올곧은 일을 하다가 해롭게 되는 것이 둘 째다. 그릇된 일을 해서 이로움을 얻는 것은 셋째다. 그릇된 일을 하다가 해롭게 되는 것이 넷째다. 솔직히 옳은 것를 지키 이로움을 얻기만 쉽지 않다. 올곧은 것을 지키 시다가 해를 입는 것은 없다. 그래서 사람들은 그 중간 일을 해서라도 이로움을 얻으라 하고 하지만 이것은 맞지 올바르지만 불러들이고 만다. 첫째는 드물고 둘째는 싫어 새째나 닫게 되고 마는 것이다. ![[homophily of contrarian 2025-05-29-15.svg]] %%[[homophily of contrarian 2025-05-29-15|🖋 Edit in Excalidraw]]%% using [[language_translation_template]] ---- ## Apr.22 Goal of this thread is to analyze my attraction to you. After analyzing behavior of "conscientious contrarians" like yourselves who challenge conventional thinking to address misaligned incentives, I'm beginning to think conscientious contrarians' reward for their persuasion action may be defined as "alignment of beliefs between self and the other stakeholders" -- which is syntactically restricted and probabilistic but semantially expressive. # **Areas Where We Share Understanding** Rich Sutton and David Silver's paper [Welcome to the era of experience](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CZa8p9RGxkApYIgHuABveUwj/https%3A%2F%2Fstorage.googleapis.com%2Fdeepmind-media%2FEra-of-Experience%2520%2FThe%2520Era%2520of%2520Experience%2520Paper.pdf) articulates what I've long intuited: entrepreneurship is a perfect domain to study intelligent experiential learning. Moreover, this may answer charlie's question to vikash last fall on whether AI for entrepreneurship can rely on expert rules given the field's lack of clear right answers and immediate feedback, citing the same author's [bitter lesson](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CZa8p9N7-4tNW1ukMAPYNgjN/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.incompleteideas.net%2FIncIdeas%2FBitterLesson.html). Their concept of agents that "generate and label their own data, act continuously, and refine models through experience" provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how entrepreneurs learn through direct engagement with reality rather than purely from pre-existing knowledge. The paper's emphasis on robust reward design (e.g. using bi-level optimization (where "agent's reward function may itself be adapted through experience") supports my argument (which raised disagreement during bayesian entrepreneurship seminar) about how uncertainty must be incorporated into entrepreneurial utility functions and or reward. Detail in attached slide featuring 🥚egg to 🐓chicken diagram. I just re-discovered how I verified the validity of this question of "uncertain utility/desire" from vikash during [my first encounter with him in 2023.](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CZa8p9RoKMAxF9tSIQbh4aEp/https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FzyJ0E-arMOk%3Fsi%3D_kzNprV0DEI2I_L2%26t%3D1275) thanks for giving me hope, vikash! ## Areas Where I Seek Your Perspective What I'm particularly interested in exploring further is how conscientious contrarians manage to rectify misaligned incentives across different levels of agency operating at different clock speeds. I have EV startup (Tesla) example - they identified misaligned incentives across the automotive industry where dealers discouraged EV adoption, engineering teams prioritized incremental combustion improvements over native EV development, and energy companies maintained fossil fuel dependency. Their response was to create direct sales channels, ground-up electric vehicle designs, and proprietary charging networks that better aligned with customer preferences. This represents a conscientious contrarian strategy that experiments with a system of stakeholders who are incentivized not to broaden their beliefs on what's possible.  Conscientious contrarian's persuasion act is two sides of the same coin with using models for propaganda purposes. To mock this misuse of model, system dynamics software has a function called [create propaganda models](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CZa8p9REBFoljmYPqwI4WB5I/https%3A%2F%2Fmetasd.com%2F2019%2F07%2Fworld-loves-open-loop-models%2F) which automate discovery of parameterization of a model that both fits history and makes a preferred policy optimal. Under the hand of different user (entrepreneur not policy maker) I think this can be a feature that helps identify utility forms to target e.g. to find a beach-head market.  To prepare my evaluation exam, any support (a few I can think of) on below would be very helpful. **desirability and operational feasibility (charlie and scott)** 1. How entrepreneurs can use the tool i made to experiment with the world 2. Do you have ethical concerns for supporting entrepreneurs to potentially use model to persusade/ for propaganda? There's a thin line between the two p- words.  **technical feasibility (vikash)** - I'll follow up after class today! 1. Do you agree with my interpretation of the author's emphasis on situated cognition as indicating convergence of different machine learning tribes (e.g. evolutionary/behavior <> bayesian as anticipated in p.26 of angie24_bayes_behave_evol_ent.pdf attached)? 2. Recent technology introduced during your class (especially program (model architecture) synthesis) made me hopeful for Charlie and my vision for developing ai co-founder. Moreover, your call for a PhD thesis on "conditions for robust modeling on the world that support the engineering of a broad range of intelligent systems" relevant to this vision. Do you agree the first page of angie25_🥚2🐓.pdf is "broad range of intelligent systems that can be expressed with syntactically restricted languages that are probabilistic"? As you may know, I share your optimism on probabilistic program and would like to get an opportunity to share my development so far to get your guidance on the next action items. Thank you very much! Angie [[angie_🥚2🐓.pdf]] [[angie24_bayes_behav_evol_ent.pdf]] --- ## Jan 25 My dear mentors Charlie, Scott, Vikash. Today I thought a lot about you while reading [Phil Anderson](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CSc1pvbFxfG3Vy_ulwkssgBv/https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPhilip_W._Anderson) (one of the most influential physicists of the twentieth century)'s biography _A Mind over matter._ Five fun facts about Mr.Anderson. 1. he was an undergrad rival with Thomas Kuhn 2. he was a CONTRARIAN (p.42) 3. his advisor Van Vleck had a reputation for kindness (p.44) 4. he once had William Shockley as a mentor (p.72) 5. he was a purposeful persuader (p.82) Contexts are attached :) Angie ----- ## Oct.18 24 Dear mentors. Whether I'm sending this to share the presence or absence of my fear, I'm not sure. It is about the conscience. Last night, the quote below from Nobel Laureate Han Kang's [Human Acts](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CKeeEfnzMzrcbs3qfwDuctsM/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fbook%2Fshow%2F30091914-human-acts) pierced through me. The novel centers on the 1980 [Gwangju uprising](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CKeeEf3uLremPM1DEQUdZ5ix/https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGwangju_Uprising), a pivotal event in South Korea's democratization. What began as student protests against military rule became a citywide rebellion. It was brutal - 800,000 bullets were given to suppress 400,000 civilians - but it exposed the regime's violence, fueling nationwide protests that led to 1987 free elections. Moon Jae-hak, the real-life basis of the novel's protagonist, was only 16 years old when he chose to resist. > It wasn’t as though we didn’t know how overwhelmingly the army outnumbered us. But the strange thing was, it didn’t matter. Ever since the uprising began, I’d felt something coursing through me, as overwhelming as any army. > Conscience.  > Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world. > The day I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of my fellow civilians, staring down the barrels of the soldiers’ guns, the day the bodies of those first two slaughtered were placed in a handcart and pushed at the head of the column, I was startled to discover an absence inside myself: the absence of fear. I remember feeling that it was all right to die; I felt the blood of a hundred thousand hearts surging together into one enormous artery, fresh and clean … the sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that vessel and into my own. I dared to feel a part of it. I was startled to find myself crying and resonating with Gwangju civilians who felt it was all right to die. I never did a year ago..  To communicate with you, the conscience I am following intuitively, I'm learning. For now, all the language I have is -- I fear the violence in current academia that forces conformity, recognition, and hierarchy. But as I struggle to be conscientious scholars like you, I feel an absence of fear. ---- ## Oct.04 24 Dear Charlie, Scott, Vikash, I have a mystery to solve. Why do I feel so attracted to you? This mystery was partly solved by _Bayesian entrepreneurship_ paper "Entrepreneurs are more likely to convince those who share their idiosyncratically optimistic beliefs about an opportunity with implications for homophily".  This morning, I learned the concept of [Conscientious Contrarian](https://0599faed.streaklinks.com/CJWPdVl6umRuNVLe9ggz_Z8u/https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FData4DM%2FBayesSD%2Fdiscussions%2F262%23discussion-7276153) from Nate Silver's recent book and wanted to share it with you.  Thank you for being my heros of conscientious contrarians - giving me reason to be optimistic on academia! Angie P.S. Attached is my hope to be more like you :)