Tag: Random Thoughts

Most people don’t have the concept of ROI on time, although time is the most valuable resource everybody possesses.

Sometimes you feel you are wasting your time. This is a sign of very low ROI of your time.

But nowadays, low ROI activities are concealing themselves with a very short time commitment so that many people are tricked into it.

Just like people don’t feel that bad to buy a small lottery ticket which likely has a negative return, people don’t feel that bad to waste 10 additional seconds.

When your marginal utility of watching one more short-video is low, this 10 additional seconds is a bad investments. What’s worse, you may keep doing this “bad” investments for some time, resulting in low ROI on 30 minutes of an hour.

Additionally, it’s very hard to measure the ROI on one more additional short-video. Someone could argue that the initial few ones are good, as they are likely the good ones based on other people’s feedback, or first few minutes of “taking a break” is good.

But that utility is decreasing gradually for every additional video you watch.

The incremental decline is too small for people to notice. 

The best way to counter the impact for me is to stop at the end of the video and think what you get from it, and what else you want to watch instead of just accepting what the app gives to you.

If you watched short videos today, just try to ask yourself before you go to bed – what do you remember? I bet there is not much valuable info.

Be aware of your ROI on your time before you open the app and when you are using it. Don’t let your habit guide you.

It has been 4 years since Covid-19.

From q2 2020 to q1 2022, China attracted export orders as many parts of the world was shut down. US lowered the interested rate and asset prices surged.

Then a few things happened: the war in Ukraine, the interest rate hikes, and the Shanghai lockdown among rolling lockdown in different parts of China.

From q2 2022 to q1 2024, US has attracted capital with high rates and developments in AI. US started to introduce more targeted policies in maintaining tech leadership (namely AI), from foundry subsidiaries and chip restrictions. China would get rid of lockdowns but started an even more difficult fight with property sector problems.

As of now, after the eventful four years, many things have rebalanced to a point that I think many have achieved their agenda.

US regained global leadership, via global defense partnerships in Ukraine and middle-east, and via LLMs, monopoly in the most advanced chips, and computing power. US has diversified supply chains and TSMC has plans to build 3nm or below to the US.

China recalibrated its growth model and has de-risked this property bubble. China has built out its own chip capabilities although very limited and maybe only up to 7nm (Huawei restarted smartphone business again in China). China now views itself with fewer chock points than before.

Policymakers should be happy? They seem to have gained tremendous power. In first 2 years, they seem to be reacting / pushed to do things, while in the second 2 years, they were definitely more active in setting the tone.

Regular people lost some confidence/freedom in the last two years, after the first two years of gaining lots of bargain power

The goal for supply chain security is probably not the whole picture.

This sounds like ESG to me.

I think a better question to ask is how to create a new class of mfg businesses that can do well in the US.

Or how the US society embrace this type of business and jobs and their families.

Do people love this kind of mfg work?

Can they earn decent wages?

Are companies profitable? Does ROE and IRR make sense?

There are some differences between a chip maker and a toy maker, but the questions would be similar.

To grow a number, in math there are addend, or multiplier, or exponent.

Similarly, in businesses, one could grow a company in different ways.

• Adding a location for Walmart is likely a addend – the addition won’t help/affect other locations
• Apple introducing Apple Pay is likely a multiplier – value created for all users and profits per users improved across the board
• Exponential impact is more subtle. I think organization / cultural improvement is likely the case, where better talents are attracted, better outcomes are achieved, and a virtuous cycle is created

Is it possible to replicate this kind of growth for individuals? Or to categorize an individual’s effort into similar buckets?

Here is an example I think of:

• Reading a book to learn a piece of knowledge is like an addend
• Reading a book which has impact over a lifetime / all future decisions is like an multiplier
• Reading a book to form a better map of knowledge is like an exponent, in the sense that future books can be “better” read – you get the point faster, you understand the author better, you connect more dots, etc.

Find the exponent, do the exponential function in life.

This is a feeling / theory that I originally thought about during covid-19 – that if you divide people’s risk tolerance by 1-10, before covid it may be ok for people that are 3 ratings apart to mingle (say 5-8), but then only people that are 1 ratings apart are comfortable to be together (say 2-3).

The impact is obvious – if living with less diversified opinions and more like-minded people, people might grow more comfortable within a more similar but narrow circle, and then become less tolerant to different opinions, and might develop a bit biased impression of “mainstream”. It’s a bit like the echo chamber problem exacerbated by social media.

I do feel that even covid-19 is over, the situation is not getting better. Maybe because people are used to being less tolerant over the years. Maybe people just care less about things & people that they don’t see.

It’s not sure if deglobalization is the cause or the result of this.

One things is clear – I haven’t seen much sign of people realizing this subtle change and forces to reverse it.

 

Years ago, we have entered into a world where communication with one another is instant and nearly cost-free. For broadcasters, this is the golden age that they could spread their messages easier than ever.

But that time seems to the last, as tech firms supporting those platforms are taking or required to take more actions in limiting messages/ads allowed to broadcast.

The underlying thesis – people realized that the nature of information will change depending on the number of audience.

Twitter’s recent action is to ban political ad purchases – to reach a large audience just by spending money. We could easily see that in a world such thing is allowed, it would just become a competition for war-chest, candidates bidding higher prices to reach the audience.

Some actions are for general accounts/messages – a Facebook account or post for example. Most are justified actions now. But this is a slippery slope. More messages could have been banned for the sake of overall well-being.

On the other hand, tech firms don’t want to spend too much on screening messages/ads. After all, they are not speaking those languages. But the challenges they are facing are more real than ever, while implementing more rules will also draw more critics.

There is a balance and trade-off here.

Tech firms need to balance between the percentage of communications allowed and the overall “healthiness” of the platform. The latter would impact long-term ads sales, users growth/engagement and political pressure/costs.

By just looking at the title, I don’t even know what I am trying to say.

But here is an example. We are know targeted ads (by Facebook or others). By purchasing ads for a more precisely defined population, sellers are wasting less time for other audience. The overall efficiency of transmitting messages (ads in this case) increases. This is value creation.

However, as Facebook gaining more insights and pricing power, it can charge higher prices for more effective ads to the extend that targeted ads are just a little better than traditional (mass) ads. I put 95% in the title but that is just to give a feeling. The sellers will be better off but the marketing costs will continue to increase and in the end they will find it very hard to earn a lucrative net profit margin.

This might be the ultimate price discrimination and Facebook is capturing nearly all the value down the chain.

Some time in the future, we will find old-school ways are much more friendly.

So human beings won’t evolve fast within 20-50 years, without any genetic engineering.

As we are reaching our limits, it would be very hard to break any records – for those sports that measures speed, height, strength, etc.

But that is what we are all expecting (as audience) and what keeps the sports industry exciting and growing.

So those sports have become increasingly dependent on “outside helps” – including those (e.g. certain drugs) banned by the overseeing committee.

Therefore, there will be increasingly possible that future sports will be driven more by technology development and the supervising body will be more “tolerant”.

What is more, there is always a blurring line between “allowed medication” and “forbidden techniques”.

I will be very interested to see how this conflict/problem will be solved/mitigated.