May 2021 BenGoldhaber(.com) Newsletter
Hi all,
I hope May finds you returning to regularly scheduled life with vigor. A bit of housekeeping: I'm going to switch to substack for next month's newsletter. You'll receive it from https://bengoldhaber.substack.com/ - I've imported your email so no action is needed on your part, except please do update your 'favorite-must-read-immediately' inbox filter accordingly.
#writing
One thing I appreciate about my work at HASH is that, in building a general purpose simulation platform, I get to experiment with using it in many highly specific domains. It turns out the opportunity to be a professional dilettante really suits me. Thus a collection of somewhat far flung blog posts this month:
A whitepaper on warehouse picking optimization: Using simulations to model warehouse operations and find better routes and schedules for workers. Warehouses are incredibly complex and we can build better tools for thought that help process and derive insights from that complexity.
Extending the uniswap simulation: A few months ago I created a simulation of the Uniswap protocol. I initially used a pretty rudimentary approach to evaluate arbitrages, and to improve it we implemented a more sophisticated graph search algorithm that plots paths between exchanges to find the best arb. I describe the new features in this post.
Note: I'm interested in doing more agent based models of the crypto space. Crypto is a uniquely good fit for ABMs because it lies at the intersection of game theory and economics, and there aren't many public models of crypto-systems. If you have suggestions for things to model or want to collaborate, let me know.
RPA simulations: A short blog post describing simulations for robotic process automation, a buzzwordy marketer word for using visual interfaces to record and automate white-collar business operations.
On a personal front I'm working on my first long form blog essay - blessay - which I hope to share with you in a month or two.
#bounties
Puzzles! I'd like to build a collection of puzzles, specifically puzzles that require a mix of 'insight' and 'work'. A good example is Project Euler, a collection of programming puzzles that often require having an insight into the nature of the problem ('huh, I bet we could use a recursive solution') and work ('I'll code up an implementation of it'). Similar to Project Euler, they should be viewable on a computer - no jigsaw puzzles - and can have a wide range of difficulty.
I'm allocating a pool of $50 to the bounty, and a week or two from now I'll review the submissions and reward the top five, splitting the prize money between the submitters. I might post this bounty to a wider audience, but as loyal bengoldhaber.com readers you get first dibs. Please share suggestions to goldhaber.ben@gmail.com, and include your venmo, paypal, or dogecoin address of choice.
#links
10 hours of me playing Twilight Imperium: I competed in and won a qualifying round for the Twilight Imperium 4 space cats peace turtles championship! The stream records the glory and tedium of it all (I'm the green player, goldie).
A roundtable on Richard Hamming: Richard Hamming is an inspirational figure to me; The Art of Doing Science and Engineering captures an 'excellency' vibe that I would very much like to internalize. This is a good discussion about the nature of the man and his work from three figures who clearly have drunk deep from the well of Hamming.
Adding is favored over subtracting in problem solving: We naturally tend to search for solutions that involve adding complexity instead of those that simplify. That's a useful heuristic for explaining why organizations and systems tend to ossify over time.
Nixon Seminar ft. Peter Thiel: Peter Thiel et. al. discuss the challenge of China and the 'complicity' of the tech industry. I read basically everything from Thiel-senpai, and this was refreshingly different in that he goes beyond his usual zero-to-one talking points and dives into object level issues.
I'm starting to suspect one of the reasons it feels hard to pin Thiel down, and why he is so interesting, is his fluid switching between mistake theory and conflict theory worldviews. A lot of people naturally fall into one of these two buckets, either they explain problems in the world as the result of mistakes in reasoning or they explain it as adversarial actions from bad people. I think Thiel tends to move more freely than others between the two points of view.
Teller Reveals His Secrets: An old interview with the magician Teller where he describes principles of magic. "If you are given a choice, you believe you have acted freely".
Prospectus on Prospera: Scott Alexander does a long form profile of a new charter city initiative in Honduras. It's time to build baby!
Values Affirmation is Powerful: Sarah Constantin writes about the importance and tractability of internalizing the concept of sovereignty, the quality of:
"believing you are fit to make value judgments. Believing that you are free to decide your own priorities in life; believing that you are generally competent to pursue your goals; believing that you are allowed to create a model of the world based on your own experiences and thoughts."
This deeply resonated with me. A lot of my actions over the past... decade?... have been driven by a desire to feel internal sovereignty. In my experience the modern world, and the ideologies and beliefs that characterize it, are out to get you to lose that felt sense, and that it's extremely important not to.
#good-content
Babylon Berlin: A neo-noir story set in 1920s Berlin. A detective and his assistant investigate crime in the Weimar republic; conspiracies abound. Very good story telling and world building. It makes me appreciate how contingent history is - there were many competing social movements that were trying to change Germany, and it didn't have to go the way it did.
Community: Rewatching Community, as funny as ever. Skip season 4 and you're good to go.
#questions
On twitter I learned that saunas might be a particularly effective preventative measure against alzheimeirs. The theory is that the regular exposure to the heat prevents protein misfoldings that contribute to dementia. The background study seems compelling, but before I urge my parents to embrace our heritage and 'get a nice shvitz' should I be more skeptical of its purported efficacy?
All the best,
Ben
Political alignments and their preferred coping strategies. Tag yourself! I'm "This is not real capitalism" bottom right.