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[severelyadverse]

In a different key

Autism has always been around me. It seemed like this mysterious condition that blocks the gears spinning in someone’s head. Even from the outside, it is clearly a life changing condition, both for the individuals and their families. It’s a condition that I’ve been interested in, but never took the time to learn about. Fortunately, Caren Zucker and John Donvan, both parents to Autistic children, did all the leg work for me in their account of Autism, In a different key.

The blue puzzle piece, a logo often used by autism charities

What is Autism? This is a surprisingly complex question. Indeed, the definition of autism has changed significantly over the years. The main challenge is that autistic traits are not binary, but rather a spectrum of behavioural characteristics. Autistic individuals can include any combination (both incidence and severity) of traits such as aversion to making eye contact, bouts of tantrums, tendency to hurt oneself, limited capacity for verbal / auditory communication, lack of a theory of mind, etc. Some autistic individuals lack the capability to form a complete sentence, while some can be extremely articulate, and even become masters of particular subjects (e.g., Temple Grandin, a cattle expert usually associated with having Asperger’s’ syndrome, in one end of the autism spectrum). In a different key does a great job explaining how the medical profession and the public navigated this messy landscape of traits, progressing from calling everyone mentally feeble or “retarded” to the more nuanced definitions used today.

 What surprised me, however, was our lack of understanding of the underlying causes for Autism. I don’t mean to say that all autism treatments are voodoo medicine. Psychologists and Psychiatrists have developed a whole host of interventions like the Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA, basically conditioning autistic individuals to stop certain behaviour such as hitting oneself) that worked wonders on many, and certainly improved from the defeatist approach of just institutionalising autistic children for life. However, today we still don't understand the genetic or biological basis of the condition. We know the symptoms but not the cause. In some forms of cancer, we understand which exact genes can become “stuck” and cause abnormal tumor growth. This allowed doctors to move from just aggressively hacking away tumors (only for more to grow back) to more targeted therapy on specific cells and genetic pathways. In Autism, given our limited understanding of its mechanics, there are many things that remain unexplained, e.g., why infants tend to develop seemingly normally until they reach age 1-2 then suddenly regress and why autistic individuals seem to lack a theory of mind1. As a result, some of the treatments used in the past, while no doubt backed by theories (often with little supporting evidence), have not withstood the test of time. For example, it was common in the 60s and 70s to blame autism on “refrigerator mums”, who supposedly didn’t show enough affection for their children and caused autism. Other even more ridiculous treatments like facilitated communication (helping autistic children type out messages instead of speaking, which proved to be bogus) and embrace therapy (literally hugging your kid more) also became popular only because we don’t understand autism's causes. More than anything, In a different key shows that medicine today is still a work in progress.

 Flipping through the book, it also struck me that medicine is as much of a scientific endeavour as it is a social movement. While many of the doctors and psychologists deserve credit, their work wouldn’t have been possible if without motivated activists  promoting their causes. The real heroes in the autism battle are the concerned parents who first started clamoring for more research into the condition and relentlessly sought public attention, all while taking care of autistic children. This is not unique to autism. Again looking at cancer, one could also clearly see the impact of activism. However, what’s clear from the book is that activism still takes a long time – in the case of autism, the fight for more research and treatment has been raging for 70+ years. Nor is the path towards “cure” or more successful interventions a straight one. Reading through the stories of autism organisations coming and going and NGOs fighting each other, I got the sense that we are on a journey that is progressing in the right direction, but only over a long time. What’s also interesting is that Autism research has largely been done in the US and the UK. I do wonder how the process would have played out in countries where the lobbying / research grant system is not as developed.

 In a different key is a very interesting book on autism in layman’s terms. Well worth a read.

  1.     Apparently, some autistic individuals lack a theory of mind. This means that some autistic individuals cannot think from other’s perspective. See the Sally-Anne test for how this is tested – super interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test

[severelyadverse]

Hard at work on the Seven Sisters

[severelyadverse]

On Writing - Stephen King

I used to read fiction as a kid. My favorite was a translated version of Robinson Crusoe. The cover of the book was black, covered with a plastic-ky gloss, and had a thumbnail picture of Crusoe on it. I remember coming home from school and lying in bed reading under the sticky summer afternoons in Hong Kong. I probably read it for more than 10 times.

Strangely though, I don’t recall that much of the plot. All I remember is Crusoe somehow getting stranded on an island, building a canoe which he couldn’t move, acquiring a slave Friday, and eventually making it back to England. I have always found this inability of recollect stories frustrating. To me, reading fiction is a bit like sleeping. I would come out at the end of the book feeling like I just teleported back from an alien world, remembering only bits and pieces of what happened. Often, I could recall the mood of the ending, but not the actual plot. To me, reading fiction seems more like consumption than investment, and so after a while I became a non-fiction only reader.

Naturally, I was a little hesitant to pick up On Writing by Stephen King, a famous fiction writer. I knew very little about King, except that there is always a full shelf of his books in stores. I did know that he wrote The Shining and many other horror books. In the back of my mind I pictured him as an old man that wore small gold-rimmed glasses halfway down the ridge of his nose, collected dead bodies of animals and had a black cat with yellow eyes.

King opened the book with the chapter CV, describing his upbringing in a working class family in Maine. King was a bit of a troublemaker at school, but had a genuine gift with his pen and a passion for short stories and horror movies. His writing was not an immediate success. After he finished college, he worked at a laundromat for a few years and started teaching at a school, while relentlessly writing at night. Eventually, after countless rejections, he got his first major break with the book Carrie. Not that exciting of a story for someone making a living off fantasy stories, no?

What I found particularly striking, however, was the way he threaded together his experiences (which while far from being boring, wasn’t terribly exceptional) into a captivating read. He kept the language informal and often mixed in vivid imagery and dialogue. My favorite part was his description of doctors puncturing his ear drum as a kid. It read so smoothly that it almost felt like King was telling you about his life casually over dinner. I blew through a third of the book in the first sitting. His writing illustrates that there is middle ground between outright dictation of everyday speech (as in waitbutwhy) and more descriptive, verbose styles such as that in Lord of the Rings. King’s style is not unlike Tim Geithner’s in Stress Test, but more refined and less matter of fact. It is definitely one that I would like to imitate.

My other major takeaway from the book is that there is a lot that non-fiction writers can learn from their counterparts in fiction. Like it or not, a lot of non-fiction can be really dry and esoteric. Publications like the FT can be captivating for finance nerds, but they don’t speak to a wide audience. Stories offer a way out. Humans are more likely to relate with narratives than dry facts and derivations. Having finished On Writing, I came to realize that a lot of non-fiction writing that I enjoyed, such as Hiroshima on the New Yorker and The Emperor of All Maladies, leveraged a lot of the same techniques that fiction writers employ, such as dialogue and character building. On the contrary, most SeekingAlpha articles, while intellectually interesting, are hidden behind a cloudy wall in my head and impenetrable for outsiders. Looking back at some of my previous work here on streamsmith, I realize that many of my pieces, such as “Stepping out of the shadows of umbrellas”, could have been much stronger if I had invested the time to present the message around a story or character. King masterfully (he strongly disapproves of adverbs) demonstrated why he is one of the world’s foremost fiction writers. The second half of his book on actual writing advice was solid, but the first half on his personal story was an even more impressive demonstration of what good story writing is like. If you want to become a better writer, but have trouble staying awake while flipping through The Elements of Style, look no further than On Writing.

[severelyadverse]

Marc Andreessen on BTCs

Bitcoin bothers me.

Perhaps it's because I am so used to associating currencies with the state that using some unknown currency invented by a group of unknown, pseudo-japanese/anarchist/benevolent/allknowing computer scientists seems somewhat foreign to me

@dshenanigans, always great at digging up random articles, recently sent me this article on Bitcions by Marc Andreessen, a legendary VC player. The article makes a case for why BTC should be big in the future The argument can basically be summed up as:

a.) lower transaction costs

b.) lower fraud rates

dshenanigans has been advising me hardcore not to take up these two arguments with MA.

But who cares about being wrong anyways???? being wrong >>> trying to sound even-handed! To double down on my arguments, I'll make some predictions (with absolutely no BTC put where my mouth is) at the end of each of my points

I am NOT trying to take on the entire concept of BTCs, but the article by MA seems a little off to me. 

Lower transaction costs

What MA said: using BTCs is awesome because transaction fees are lower, especially for international trade and remittances

Severelyadverse: Lower transaction costs are definitely better for everyone. While using BTCs is quite cheap NOW, my guess is that the cost of using BTCs will rise, and it will eventually be debateable whether using BTC will be cheaper than using say USD One of the reasons why i think the cost of using BTC (excl. volatility) is going to go up, not down, is because a lot of entrepreneurs are building stuff for BTCs. Maybe these guys are also pseudo-japanese/anarchist/benevolent/allknowing computer scientists, but my suspicion is that they are not non-profits. Just ask Marc

 If regulators are on the hook for settling disputes between BTC parties, BTC will probably become regulated, which leads to higher compliance costs. See Felix Salmon's recent post 

Prediction: using BTC is very cheap right now (excl. volatility), but will not remain to be the case. While it will probably be cheaper than using western union (10%), it probably will be in line with paypal (2-3%)

Lower fraud rates

What MA said: using BTCs is awesome because all the transactions are traceable. Also, the receiver of a payment does not get any information from the sender that can be used to steal money. Therefore fraud rates will be lower #longliveBTC

Severelyadverse: When there's a big pot of money moving around, there will be people trying to steal it from you. I guarantee that - it's just a matter of what they are trying to steal, and how difficult it is. If your BTCs are codes on a computer, can't I just steal your codes? One might argue that it will be hard to offload, but as the Chinese saying goes,"where justice is a feet tall, the devil is a meter tall" (道高一尺，魔高一丈）. It seems to me that it's a matter of when some guy's BTC stash will get stolen overnight, not whether it will happen

And once fraud starts to happen, people develop tools to protect their BTCs, which cost $$$ (MA will probably be cashing out on this, in dollars), which brings us back to the point about low transaction costs above

Prediction: There will be BTC fraud, and the fraud rates will be comparable to that of credit cards

Also, a few quick comments on the article in general: 

I am quite put off by the stylized example MA gave about the internet at the beginning. I once worked for a start up whose business is to turn horse manure/sh*t into energy, which eventually failed. Dealbook could have said the following:

A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers.

Political idealists project visions of liberation and revolution onto it; establishment elites heap contempt and scorn on it.

On the other hand, technologists – nerds – are transfixed by it. They see within it enormous potential and spend their nights and weekends tinkering with it.

Eventually mainstream products, companies and industries emerge to commercialize it; yet its effects remains viable only in theory; and later, many people wonder why its eventual demise wasn’t more obvious from the start.

I just don't think the quote does anything to strengthen the argument for BTCs.

Finally, MA's use of the quote from Bernanke is also BS:

Bitcoin “may hold long-term promise, particularly if they promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system"

First of all, Bernanke never said that. Alan Blinder did (ht dshenanigans once again)

What the quote said, paraphrased and applied to general companies, is this: "a company has long-term promise, particularly if it is faster, more innovative and more efficient than its competitors (also if its employees are better looking)"

All this BTC hate aside, i think the whole BTC debate provides an interesting thought exercise on the raison d'etre of currencies, and what makes them useful.

It is interesting to think about BTC using the gold standard as a yard stick. If BTC becomes more established, it is essentially a currency with fixed supply, something entirely unique in today's world since we came off the gold standard. If BTC takes over all currencies, we are basically back on the gold standard. There are strong reasons why I believe this won't happen (I don't think anyone has made that argument either), but this is probably material for another blog post