My new addiction
What a doubling cube tells you about investment decisions. Why you should try live performance. ESG, podcasts, metascience (Kanjun Qiu). Grant winner: Fan Shen.
My new addiction
Why you should try live performance
George Serafeim on ESG with Algy Hall podcast transcript
Kanjun Qiu: Metascience, AI, and why dinosaurs didn’t develop
ThenDoBetter Grant Winner: Fan Shen
Links: demographics, ESG a right social conservative take, judging character.
I’ve picked up a small addiction to an online card game called Marvel Snap. I attribute this to my son has sleep/wake circadian challenges which has led to many late nights/dawns and this needing a moderate brain stimulus to keep awake.
My take on the game will be what a “doubling cube” tells you about life decisions and investment. But first you need to undersatnd backgammon.
Backgammon gambling: I first came across the doubling cube by playing a moderate amount of backgammon as a child.
Backgammon is a bounded rules and probability game. Unlike life or investing where “uncertainty” is important (as in unknown unknowns and other uncertainties) backgammon only has “risk probabilities” in that a skilled human or computer can calculate probabilities that will run according to laws of mathematics (rather than social or human rules). Computers can do this very well with Monte Carlo simulations and the like.
But the doubling cube adds a dose of social and human interaction.
At any time a player (player A) can double the value of a game from 1 point to 2 points. At that point, the opposing player (player B) can accept or fold (for only 1 point loss). If player B accepts then at any point player B can double again (from 2 points to 4) and player A can accept or fold.
In an ideal world - between humans - you assume you can calculate the probabilities of winning and you place the bet when you are sufficiently comfortable on the chances of winning.
You might do this if you assess your chances of winning are 65%.
As the dice rolls the probabilities will shift for or against you.
An added part of the human addition is that you need to judge how well you can calculate probabilities - and know your own skill or edge. You also need to read how well your opponent can calculate probabilities and their skill.
This leads to the lessons:
You should make bets where you have edge and skill and avoid bets where you have no edge.
Even when you have edge, you will lose plenty of times.
Knowing when to fold is important (as is estimating your own skill properly and not fooling yourself)
It is the correct process to make the bet when you have edge even when you lose. Conversely, if you win by luck and not edge then that was a poordecision even if you won. It’s not only the consequence that matters but the process. The same applies to investment decisions.
Marvel Snap takes this idea and adds cards rather than backgammon counters. You typically have 6 turns and you can “double” or snap at any round like in back gammon (but up to a max 8 point game).
You can roughly know how strong your own cards are, and you can guess at how strong the opponents cards are. But, there are many possible surprising combinations that can unfold especially on turn 6. This turn 6 revealing gives a good dopamine hit even on a loss as the unexpected combinations unfold. To do well at Snap - like in backgammon - you need to know when to fold / retreat when you have a losing position. This is my life lesson about knowing when to fold and knowing your own skill levels.
There are small psychology plays that occur. A fast snap often indicates confidence, it’s even possible to bluff with this. In any case, I will be weaning myself off the addiction soon, but currently it’s a decent late night distraction!
Thank you to everyone who came to my live performance in London. It was enormous fun. We - the audience and I - learned a lot and we had a great connection. I do recommend that everyone try performing or speaking to a group of people live.
You can learn (and I have learned to some degree) how
to hold the silence of an audience
to actively listen and connect with a group of people
to speak with out filler words (um, err). Famously you can listen to Barack Obama speeches for these long pauses
be unafraid of being looked at
realise that there is really nothing awkward except what you make awkward yourself
I don’t view myself as a performer and so I’m nervous before performing every time but if you never try you never find out….!
Kanjun is co-founder and CEO of Generally Intelligent, an AI research company. She works on metascience ideas often with Michael Nielsen, a previous podcast guest. She’s a VC investor and co-hosts her own podcast for Generally Intelligent. She is part of building the Neighborhood, which is intergenerational campus in a square mile of central San Francisco. Generally Intelligent (as of podcast date ) are seeking great talent looking to work on AI.
We get a little nerdy on the podcast but we cover AI thinking, fears on rogue AI, and the breakthroughs of Chat AI. We discuss some of her latest ideas in meta science based on the work she has done with Michael Nielsen (previous podcast here) and what are the important questions we should be looking at.
We chat about the challenge of old institutions, the value of dance and creativity and why her friends use “to kanjun” as a verb.
We cover her ideas on models of trauma and why EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy) and cognitive therapies might work.
We discuss why dinosaurs didn’t develop more.
We chat around “what is meaning” and “what is the structure of knowledge”, what are the strengths and weakness of old institutions; culture vs knowledge vs history and other confusing questions.
Kanjun gives her advice on how to think about dance (dance like you are moving through molasses).
Dance is inside of you. It just needs to be unlocked.
We play underrated/overrated on: having agency, city planning, death of institutions, innovation agencies, high frequency trading; diversity
Kanjun thinks on how capitalism might want to be augmented and what excites Kanjun about AI and complex systems.
Kanjun asks me questions and I offer my critique on Effective Altruism. (Although Tyler Cowen more recently (link here Dec 2022) and philosopher Larry Temkin (podcast link here mid 2022) have deeper comments on this).
This is quirky long form conversation on a range of fascinating topics.
I awarded a grant to Fan Shen. She writes:
Creation has always been my passion, my way to interact with the world around me and I have been writing ever since I could remember things. I grew up in China in an era when drastic changes were constantly happening with a widening gap between the rich and the poor. My working-class family background and my gender have made me one of the marginalized with less access to social resources and less visibility in society. But writing has helped me to find my voice, the voice of the marginalized.
At the age of 10, I was sexually assaulted. This trauma brought me years of depression and having been exposed to the very dark side of human reality and emotions at a very young age, I once again found my strength and resistance in creation. I taught myself to paint as a way to let out my anger and grief. Because of this, painting has since then become a way of expression and healing for me.
Creation through writing and painting has helped me to understand myself, and the world around me. At first, I wrote about my own experience and reflections, but gradually I started to write about human conditions, the shared human experiences of pain and love, convictions, darkness, and transcendence. I want to grasp the truth of our time, to reflect the reality of society and human conditions in it. I care specifically about how political powers invade private lives, and how private individuals make their daily resistance to the power.
Luckily, my creation has not just offered me self-healing, but also attracted external recognition of my creativity. I was admitted by the Royal College of Arts in the UK because of my painting. At the age of 18, I was awarded the national first prize in the New Concept Writing Competition, one of the most prominent writing competitions in China. As a result of this award, I was offered to choose to study at any top university in China. Quite fatefully, instead of choosing the highest-ranked comprehensive university, I made my choice for Shanghai Theatre Academy. I was expecting something that would channel my passion and light my life.
And I was right about my expectation. Theatre turns out to be the art format that is closest to my heart. I see theatre as the deep dialogue of souls, the most intensive and emotional format of story-telling and expression. Theatre reveals the most essential and painful issues of its time, and it attacks and embraces the audience in the most drastic way. In theatrical creations and performances, I can transcend myself from merely a victim, a survivor, one of the oppressed, to someone who has grasped her situation and the world around her, and more importantly, has the agency to change fate. There is somehow a redeeming nature in theatre that my mind resonates with.
During my undergraduate education, I read and watched theatre extensively. My undergraduate thesis was on Edward Albee’s theatre work where I discussed the reflection and critiques of theatre works of his time when people were pursuing social status and wealth at the cost of alienation and neglect of humanity. I am particularly in love with modernized theatre works, because they are much more decentralized, telling stories of the insignificant and depicting the absurdity of reality. Rooting deeply in the concerns for social problems, modernized theatres carry so much more power to make an impact on the audience. The boundary between the audience and the performers can be blurred, and theatre, therefore, becomes a resistant action toward social and economic injustice.
With this view about theatre, I found Lars Norén’s work particularly interesting because he made such a detailed observation of the everyday life of the impoverished. His take on living theatre and his focus on family and personal relationships created such powerful stories and emotions that I can truly relate to. I have also found a lot of inspiration from reading the works of Ingmar Bergman and Susan Sontag. Bergman has inspired me with his inexhaustible curiosity and compassion for humanity, whereas reading Sontag has helped me liberate myself from my past traumatic experiences. I feel that strength as a creator, and that I share that passion to create works that can truly connect with the audiences.
During and after my time at Shanghai Theatre Academy, I have actively taken many internships/projects in theatres and film companies where I have become experienced in taking many different roles in theatre creation. In collaborative projects, I work closely with the director to help decide on many factors for the play. I also work as a team player with other production staff and actors. Mostly, I would hold leading roles in collaborative creation projects, both as the playwright and as the dramaturgy. For example, in the original play *White-tailed Crow*, I wrote the script and also sorted out the themes, rhythms, cores, and expressions of the play from a critical and creative perspective. This award-winning play is currently being performed in Shanghai as I am writing this cover letter. I have had several solo productions and exhibitions as well.
On one hand, I seem to be a budding young creator in the local theatre scene, ready to devote myself to theatre creation, on the other hand, I do struggle a lot with the limitations in the world I live in. In my mind, theatre is about sincerity, actions, queries, and resistance. My background and experience have facilitated me to see from different perspectives on very complex situations, and I love to keep using theatre practice to interfere with social problems, being a voice of resistance. But the resistance has been so restricted by censorship in China. I have been longing for freedom in the creative environment for a long time. This is why I am preparing for the application of theatre master programme abroad. I really want to try to live and study in a performance art environment in the real world’s social, political and economic conditions.
I am very excited to receive the grant and have the chance to chat with professional theatre maker. I have made a play which will show on stage at Shanghai soon. It is a drama about human insecurity and existence. It is about an old lady, who leaves her previous life to build a new one in the middle of a desert, after she has made her move. The story gathers a group of people who are an intellectual, a peasant. a dumb girl who and some merchants who are angles. They are lost. At the end of the story, when death takes everyone, there are no concrete answers to whether these people are saved, but the audience can get that in listening the old woman has unwittingly saved these disturbed people.
It was because I had felt a great wave of unease and loss these years. There is no hope, no security, no way back for creators, yet theatre has always been rooted in my soul again, and I feel that what I actually want to do is to appeal the hope. I’m calling for a power to listen, to see, to understand others. I think that in the midst of the modern spiritual crisis, listening itself contains a great power. What I am calling for is also communication, listening, the substance of love.
Now, several of the plays I am working on are about:
-Pneumoconiosis workers in China;
-The voguing dance of underground transgender people and its power to create families;
-One of my previous novels, which is being censored, is about a woman who hangs herself for a pearl and benevolence.
-A work about secretly ill children, a group of children who committed suicide in the internet corner of the millennial, and another group of people who witnessed the suicide of children.
-A work about micro-society and political experimentation, the whole society is the inner externalization of a person in power, about an extremely mediocre person who is held up on the altar by the times, and his heart will provoke feedback in every corner of society.
With this said, I truly thanks to Mr.Yeoh, and I hope to complete those works and get in touch with theatre makers. Please feel free to contact me [BY: I will pass on any messages]
I made a transcript of the George Serafeim and Algy Hall (Citywire) podcast on ESG. Algy doesn’t challenge George on the push back on one of his key co-authored papers: Corporate Sustainability: First Evidence on Materiality (a summary commentary on the critique with links to it here - the comments are from noted statistician Andrew Gelman, but the orginal critique is from Luca Berchicci and Andy King). This was for many years a well quoted piece of evidence for ESG materiality. The case from academic papers is now more mixed with some of the strongest evidence (IMHO) remaining from the Alex Edmans employee satisfaction work and related work on “human capital” (a term that many non-accountants don’t like!), Caroline Flammer’s work on incentives, long-term, and CSR/ESG (using regression discontinuity design) and some of the work on material transparency.
Still, George is a leading business school voice on ESG/Sustainability and his comments on “Purpose and Profit” and the extra-financial factors that can drive business are useful to know.
(While I podcast myself, I find it much quicker to read transcripts more than listen when I’m going through a lot of work).