Acts Not Facts weeknote #5: Always report null results
This is a tricky week to write up because… there’s nothing unusual going on?
In the experiment of weeknotes, this test that there is always something interesting to say, this counts as a null result.
Project #1 shipped a website.
Project #2 nailed a strategy.
I got my hands dirty building after a few weeks not doing that and I am reminded how much energy it brings.
I went to a drinks event and talked to one person who works on machine learning infra in cell biology and life extension and someone else who works on the underlying algorithms for petascale databases. We put bets on when we would see AI sentience for the first time (upper bound: less than 1,000 years. Lower bound: 1-5 years).
There are four early projects I need to develop and I am behind on all of them. I have a list.
The work to deliberately build the London scenius is our conspiracy.
In the spirit of transparency:
I am painfully aware that, when I write a post on my blog, it ends up in a thousand inboxes. And so there is pressure not to be dull. And this null result is dull? Like, nothing happened!
HOWEVER.
We should love null results because they are our stepping stones to positive results, and although we might get lucky sometimes, we can’t just decide to skip that queue.
Always report null results.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social media. Here’s the link. Thanks, —Matt.
This is a tricky week to write up because… there’s nothing unusual going on?
In the experiment of weeknotes, this test that there is always something interesting to say, this counts as a null result.
Project #1 shipped a website.
Project #2 nailed a strategy.
I got my hands dirty building after a few weeks not doing that and I am reminded how much energy it brings.
I went to a drinks event and talked to one person who works on machine learning infra in cell biology and life extension and someone else who works on the underlying algorithms for petascale databases. We put bets on when we would see AI sentience for the first time (upper bound: less than 1,000 years. Lower bound: 1-5 years).
There are four early projects I need to develop and I am behind on all of them. I have a list.
The work to deliberately build the London scenius is our conspiracy.
In the spirit of transparency:
I am painfully aware that, when I write a post on my blog, it ends up in a thousand inboxes. And so there is pressure not to be dull. And this null result is dull? Like, nothing happened!
HOWEVER.
Always report null results.