Rajesh Jain

Elections Science has an assessment of 6 single-winner voting methods: “Choose one candidate, the candidate with the most votes wins; Rank candidates, the candidate beating everyone head-to-head, inferred through these rankings, wins—if that candidate exists; Rank candidates, use rankings to simulate sequential runoffs across rounds until the winner has the majority of the remaining 1st-choice rankings; Range Voting (Score candidates, highest scored candidate wins); STAR Voting (Score candidates, use scores to simulate a runoff between the two top scoring candidates); Choose all approved candidates, the candidate with the most votes wins.” The winner: “Approval voting has the voter choose as many candidates as they approve of. That is, the voter would be satisfied with any of the candidates they chose. The candidate with the most votes (equivalent to the highest approval percentage) wins….Approval voting performs an exceptional balance of both selecting a strong winner and capturing each candidates’ support while at the same time being remarkably simple. That is an especially hard balance to reach, and no other voting comes nearly as close.” Approval Voting FAQs.

NYTimes: “Ten thousand years after our species began forming primitive agrarian societies, a panel of scientists on Saturday took a big step toward declaring a new interval of geologic time: the Anthropocene, the age of humans. Our current geologic epoch, the Holocene, began 11,700 years ago with the end of the last big ice age. The panel’s roughly three dozen scholars appear close to recommending that, actually, we have spent the past few decades in a brand-new time unit, one characterized by human-induced, planetary-scale changes that are unfinished but very much underway. “If you were around in 1920, your attitude would have been, ‘Nature’s too big for humans to influence,’” said Colin N. Waters, a geologist and chair of the Anthropocene Working Group, the panel that has been deliberating on the issue since 2009. The past century has upended that thinking, Dr. Waters said. “It’s been a shock event, a bit like an asteroid hitting the planet.””

FT in conversation with Nouriel Roubini: ““I was born in 1958 in Turkey, then moved to Tehran then to Israel, then Italy,” says Roubini. (His father imported Persian carpets to Milan; the whole family later moved to the US. Roubini sees himself as a citizen of the world.) “Did I ever worry about a war among great powers? No way. There was the detente in the 1970s, and Nixon went to China. The risk of nuclear war went to zero. Did I worry about climate change? Never even heard about climate change. Did I worry about global pandemics? The last one had been 1918. Did I worry about AI destroying most jobs? Did I worry about deglobalisation, trade wars? No way. Did I worry about populist parties of extreme right or left coming to power? We didn’t have the same polarisation we have today. Did I worry about major severe recession or great depression? Of course not. In the 1970s we had stagflation but then we had the great moderation. Did I worry about financial crisis? I never heard about financial crisis. This time is different, but it’s different relative to the last 75 years of relative peace, progress and prosperity, because before then the history of humanity was a history of famine, war, disease and genocides and so on. The last 75 years are an exception, they’re not the rule.”

New Yorker: “Classical computers speak in the language of bits, which take values of zero and one. Quantum computers, like the ones Google is building, use qubits, which can take a value of zero or one, and also a complex combination of zero and one at the same time. Qubits are thus exponentially more powerful than bits, able to perform calculations that normal bits can’t. But, because of this elemental change, everything must be redeveloped: the hardware, the software, the programming languages, and even programmers’ approach to problems…A full-scale quantum computer could crack our current encryption protocols, essentially breaking the Internet. Most online communications, including financial transactions and popular text-messaging platforms, are protected by cryptographic keys that would take a conventional computer millions of years to decipher. A working quantum computer could presumably crack one in less than a day. That is only the beginning. A quantum computer could open new frontiers in mathematics, revolutionizing our idea of what it means to “compute.” Its processing power could spur the development of new industrial chemicals, addressing the problems of climate change and food scarcity. And it could reconcile the elegant theories of Albert Einstein with the unruly microverse of particle physics, enabling discoveries about space and time.”

Yiren Lu writes about how to process negative feedback. Among the suggestions: “Ask for specific examples and feedback. Cross-check negative feedback against historical pieces of negative feedback that I’ve received. If multiple people have given me the same piece of negative feedback independent of each other, I’ll take it seriously. Put processes in place for improvement in the future and communicate that to the feedback giver. Separate out the feedback itself from the way it was delivered…Don’t procrastinate on addressing negative feedback. The longer I wait, the larger it looms in my head, when often it’s a relatively small thing.”

WaPo: “Book lovers are known to practice semi-hoardish and anthropomorphic tendencies. They keep too many books for too long, despite dust, dirt, mold, cracked spines, torn dust jackets, warped pages, coffee stains and the daunting reality that most will never be reread. Age rarely enriches a book.“Nobody likes to throw a book away. Nobody likes to see it go into a bin,” says Michael Powell of Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore…“We don’t want them to die. I love them. They’re a part of me,” says author and Georgetown linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, 77. She has books in almost every room of her Virginia home, long ago exhausting shelf space…“Books represent a significant investment of time and intellectual effort in our lives,” Powell says. “They’re more like friends than objects. You’ve had a lot of conversations with the book. You want to remember the experience. They’re echoes of what you’ve read.””

NYTimes picks the 4 best strategy board games of 2022: Root, Brass: Birmingham, Ark Nova, and Lost Ruins of Arnak. “Modern tabletop games are wonders of design and narrative, running the gamut from cooperative dice-rolling adventures to elaborate setups that allow for tense negotiation over resources. But sometimes you want to walk away from the table knowing that your carefully considered decisions (not fickle chance or fast-talking negotiation) are what led you to sweet victory (or, more often than I care to admit, crushing defeat). This is where strategy games shine.”

The Generalist: “Even excluding its aptitude for delivering insults, Twitter has begun to feel like an increasing mental strain. Though it is useful for The Generalist’s distribution, I don’t enjoy it. Indeed, usage seems to be negatively correlated with many qualities I’d like to cultivate over my life: focus, nuance, civility, equanimity, and depth. After observing and engaging on the platform for the past few years, I believe it primarily rewards facile controversy, reposted content, and the lowest-common-denominator thinking. Very rarely do conversations of any depth break out; if they do, it is by accident. John F. Kennedy once said, “Show me a man with a great golf game, and I’ll show you a man who has been neglecting something.” The modern adaptation of that sentiment might be, “Show me a person with a large Twitter following, and I’ll show you a person who has been neglecting something.””

Michael Tanner at Cato: “The U.S. welfare system is enormous, with roughly 134 different programs and costing more than $1.8 trillion per year. While it has done a reasonably good job of reducing material deprivation, in effect making poverty a little less miserable, it has done a remarkably poor job of equipping families to escape poverty altogether. Truly improving the lives of the poor is not a question of spending slightly more or less money, tinkering with the number of hours mandated under work requirements, or rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse. We need a new debate, one that moves beyond our current approach to fighting poverty to focus on what works rather than noble sentiments or good intentions—a system built on work, individual empowerment, and Americans’ philanthropic impulse. That would be a system that enables more low‐​income Americans to leave welfare for self‐​supporting work.”

Cato on Turkey: “…All the concerns about “illiberal democracy” [are] quite right. The latter is a simply electoral democracy that is devoid of political liberalism—with pillars such as freedom of speech, rule of law, and judicial independence. Without such guardrails, democracy can simply devolve into the tyranny of the majority, embodied in the whimsical rule of a strongman.”

Mohit Satyanand on Bihar: “When 70% of a state’s population depend on agriculture, they are locked in a cycle of tiny, fragmented holdings, low levels of capital and technology, and low productivity. Migration of unskilled labour to the rest of the nation is not a viable route to prosperity for 130 million people. The state needs to attract industry and modern services, if it is to stand a chance of catching up even with its neighbours, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.”

Emily Balcetis: “What is your personal commitment to this goal? And if it feels low to you, then looking backwards, you might be motivated in that middle ground. But if it is something that you’ve always wanted to do, you’re passionate about, and you’ve already shown interest, looking forward might be a source of motivation.”

Economist on paper: “Technology can close the gap between paper and screen, but not entirely. Typing will never be as distinctive as handwriting. Doodling on a phone is just not as satisfying. And some of the attractions of the analogue become even clearer as digital technology becomes more pervasive and powerful. Catalogues do not have to be checked for viruses (however obsessively people wiped them down in the early days of covid-19). As machines get better at generating text, more exams and interview tests may be conducted with pen and paper, just to be sure. Mastery of digital technologies is vital. But a sense of touch, authenticity and humanity still matter—and not just on paper.”

ThePrint: “In arguing your ideas, rather than reflecting on them, you’ll meet challenges to your thinking and formulate responses. And the agility you’ll develop can spur you into stronger ideas. Dialectic done right, [Dr. Mitchell] Green says, helps you hone your position. Rather than thinking in, you talk out—and get real-time feedback on how you construct your ideas. In that, you can learn not only what you think, but also how you think.”

Donald Boudreaux: “One of the finest yet most-underappreciated features of the free market is its ability to discover and correct errors. Errors are unavoidable. Resources are used wastefully here and suboptimally there. Some people in some capacities are poorly informed. Particular workers are underpaid while others are overpaid. Today this employer has ‘excessive’ bargaining power, as does that seller of widgets. But nearly all of these errors are profit opportunities. Alert and creative entrepreneurs earn profits if and when they successfully ‘correct’ market errors. Underpaid workers, for example, are like $100 bills lying on the sidewalk. Ditto for consumers buying overpriced outputs. Because market participants spend their own money, they confront powerful incentives not to err and, no less importantly, both to be on the alert for their errors and to correct their errors ASAP. The market punishes strongly the throwing of good money after bad. The market also, because it typically features simultaneous ‘experiments’ – that is, different firms simultaneously trying their hands at satisfying the same consumer demands or ‘solving’ the same ‘problems’ – readily exposes those particular activities that work best.”

WSJ: “Researchers found that Chinese subsidies may be vulnerable to special-interest politics and went to favored groups or to stabilize employment or industries in decline. “At the aggregate level,” the authors write, “subsidies seem to be allocated to less productive firms, and the relative productivity of firms’ receiving these subsidies appears to decline further after disbursement.” Talk about myth busting. This should quell anxiety that Beijing’s state-directed allocation of capital is working for China, much less is a model for anyone else.”

Eric Ashman: “Here are three questions to ask when evaluating the potential of a new product or service: Will your early adopters accelerate organic growth? Are your customers coming back for more? Do you have enough pricing power to deliver profitability?…. Building a culture of innovation isn’t easy. It requires an acceptance of failure, supported by a culture of measurement and accountability. But it’s a powerful force for finding product-market fit, profitability scaling your startup and building enterprise value. It’s also a much more fun and fulfilling way to build your company. ”

Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Kyle Harrison: “Founders will continue to get bundled as larger firms start thinking about their portfolios as “asset exposure,” rather than individual company journeys. Ask a founder, who raised at a hefty valuation, what their VCs are doing for them right now. The good ones are helping figure out the process of battening down the hatches, and growing their business more thoughtfully. But a lot of them? Disappearing. The “asset” is underwater, and they’re better off spending their time with assets whose price isn’t as miscalculated. As the aggregation of assets in venture continues, there will be pros and cons. Some of the value-add of different venture firms is made possible because they become a center of gravity, and that’s powerful. But for founders, it’s important to understand the business model of these larger firms and how much or how little your company’s outcome may move the needle for them, and therefore how motivated they are for you.”

Chris Nassetta, CEO of Hilton: “In the room, the biggest changes you’ll see will be just getting the basics right and technology. You would laugh at the things that we talk about because you’d say: Of course, Chris, everybody cares about this stuff. But getting it right all the time makes a difference. What are the things that people care about? A great bed. Great linens. Great lighting. Plugs by my bed. A great TV with great content. Great bathrooms, space on the counter, a great lighted mirror. Water pressure and hot water. And great towels. Don’t give me sandpaper—I’ve stayed in some of our competitors…I have a philosophy in life, and that is keeping a steady hand on the wheel. Have a plan and work the plan and adapt the plan. The plan needs to change. Let me use driving vernacular. I don’t take every exit, but I will change lanes and I will take exits that really make sense. My longevity has been the ability to just sort of filter noise out and know when to take an exit occasionally, when to change lanes, but not doing it so often that everyone around you is rattled and they can’t see what tomorrow is going to be.”

R Gopalakrishnan: “Obliquity flashed in my mind as I read the book, Afterness, by former Hindustan Unilever chief Ashok Ganguly, though the book has no allusion to that term. Dr Ganguly states that he never dreamt of becoming a scientist, he never targeted how to rise in his corporate career, and he did not aim to serve as a scientific advisor to the Prime Minister. Yet, all these things happened in his life. He hints that if we focus diligently on doing what we need to do in our jobs, somebody else will manage our career and progress. It could be that the employer company takes care, or that Lady Luck or God will be watchful. After we have run the course of our careers, the wisdom of obliquity dawns on us. Psephologists and economists realise how wrong their prediction models were, business leaders realise how misguided they were about the centrality of their own role in achievements, and politicians realise how much froth and blah they had deployed to seduce their voters. Professor Kay says that obliquity “describes the process of achieving complex objectives indirectly…. happiness is where you find it, not where you go in search of it.””

A K Bhattacharya: “India’s governance structure…allows very little room for local governments like the municipal corporations. As a result, the third tier of governance (the first two being the Centre and the state governments) has grossly inadequate powers of raising resources to fulfil its basic responsibilities. Worse, most of these municipal corporations do not even show much interest in using their existing powers to tap into new sources of revenue to fund the schemes that they must run for the upkeep of the municipalities. Two consequences follow. One, the performance of municipal corporations suffers hugely. They are often short of funds to even pay salaries to the staff at the many agencies and organisations they run to provide basic services to people like primary education, health and sanitation. The second consequence is worse. These corporations become more dependent on financial allocations from the state governments. If the allocations dry up, the corporations fail to discharge their basic functions. And if the municipal corporation is ruled by a political party other than that running the state government, the financial consequences are serious.”

Hayek: “Unless we are willing to restrict the powers of government even in respects where it might be used for good purposes, we shall not succeed in preventing an indefinite growth of government powers. To allow everything which seems expedient for the achievement of a desirable end is to dispense with all moral principles. The submission to rules which must be observed irrespective of whether in the particular instance their infringement is harmful or not, is the main condition for the possibility of order in a free society. And to these rules the state should be no less subject than the individual.” [via CafeHayek]

Tim Martinez: “Larry Greiner’s Growth Model states that each new level of “growth” creates a new crisis which he identified as: Crisis of Leadership – moving from start up mentality to a more well defined management style. Crisis of Autonomy – management becomes siloed and more interested in the business unit vs the whole. Crisis of Control – Owner/Operators find it difficult the relinquish control. Crisis of Red Tape – Bureaucracy, excess of reports, broken systems, etc slow growth. Crisis of Growth – how to continue growing as a mature, successful company?”

Siddhartha Mukherjee: “Being able to manipulate that basic unit of pathology becomes vitally important as we move forward because it allows us to manipulate, not at an organ level, but at the level of what constitutes the organ. Take CAR-T cells [chimeric antigen receptor T cells used in cancer treatment]. If you’re making a CAR-T cell, you’re extracting a vital part of the immune system, changing it using gene therapy, and then returning that same cell into the body so that it can perform a function. In the past it would be unimaginable because you would have no mechanism really to grow these cells outside the body, to change their parameters, and then return them to the body, and treat a disease like cancer, using this level of cellular manipulation.”