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Ethan Mollick Profile picture
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24 Jul, 5 tweets, 2 min read
This in an good list of Hacker Laws (some intuitive, some backed by evidence) Some favorites:

Box’s Law: All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law github.com/dwmkerr/hacker… ImageImage
A few examples of Hacker Law’s that have later been shown as true by research.

The Peter Principle: people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "maximum level of incompetence"👇
Dunbar’s Number (which started as an observation)
Moore’s Law (the subject of my first academic paper I ever published!)
Brook’s Law: “Adding human resources to a late software development project makes it later.”

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More from @emollick

Ethan Mollick Profile picture
26 Jul
You have probably heard the argument that we might be living in a simulation, but no one asks the next obvious question: if we were, when would someone turn it off? Well, this paper decided that the answer is "soon" - either out of boredom or to save money arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pape… Image
So, everyone, be more interesting!
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
25 Jul
Seven classes of strategic errors:
I Misinformation: claiming a data relationship that isn’t there
II Misinformation: missing a relationship
III Vision: Solving wrong problem
IV Innovation: Not generating alternatives
V Inaction
VI Action: Acting when you shouldn’t
VII Cascade! Image
This paper outlines 7 classes of errors that affect strategic decision makers, ending with the epic-sounding Type VII Iatrogensis Cascade. Also, there’s a list of questions to ask yourself to avoid cascades. The paper is readable & full of examples. semanticscholar.org/paper/Decision… ImageImage
Many of these are warnings for entrepreneurs. Positives about founders (bias towards action, willingness to experiment) can become negatives if not also tempered with a little planning & patience. It is why having a formal business plan increases a startup's chances by 10-20%. ImageImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
23 Jul
If you are an entrepreneur, you have probably engaged with the idea of "lean startups." As academics have begun to study the lean startup in more detail, they have started to uncover both big advantages & some real downsides. I wrote a summary of these: hbr.org/2019/10/what-t…
The good stuff: treating startups as experiments by generating hypotheses and testing them. This is at the heart of lean startup approaches, and several gold-standard randomized studies now show it actually helps startups make more money
A downside: lean startups are biased towards very specific experiments: fast ones with easily measured outcomes. Startups using lean methods are thus less likely to engage in innovation & strategic leaps. (Also, using the Business Model Canvas has risks) sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Read 5 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
21 Jul
Research has been documenting an increasing "burden of knowledge" - we are learning so much that it is harder to master a field, so young scientists can be at a disadvantage in both research & entrepreneurship.

By way of illustration: Roche's maps of cellular & metabolic process ImageImage
You can explore the full Roche charts here, with some annotations: biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1
More on the burden of knowledge and startups
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
14 Jul
Very cool paper that shows the modern formula for having high status tastes: you like every genre (rap and classic rock, comedy & horror) but you only like very particular “high consecration” examples (Kendrick Lamar & Bob Dylan). The chart of consecrated media is worth a look!
Side note: this appears to be only the 5th academic paper to reference “Paul Blart: Mall Cop”
It also matches an earlier paper in the same journal on the general decline of genre snobbery as a sign of cultural tolerance.
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
12 Jul
You've seen new optical illusions on Twitter. You may not know that they are windows into our brain. 1/

This square is not rotating! This illusion by Caplovitz & Harrison shows how our brains create the perception of motion by integrating tiny movement. weforum.org/agenda/2016/07…
The Perpetual Diamond developed by Flynn & @agshapiro2 never moves. The illusion shows that our brains pay more attention to the edges of objects than its center to infer motion. More in their article: 2/ journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…
All of the lines in this illusion have the same gentle curve - really! The curvature blindness illusion by Takahashi suggests that our visual system defaults to seeing edges, given a lack of other information: 3/ journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20…
Read 4 tweets

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