NOAH
JACOBS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
2025.02.09-On-Overengineering
2025.02.02-On-Autocomplete
2025.01.26-On-The-Automated-Turkey-Problem
2025.01.19-On-Success-Metrics
2025.01.12-On-Being-the-Best
2025.01.05-On-2024
2024.12.29-On-Dragons-and-Lizards
2024.12.22-On-Being-a-Contrarian
2024.12.15-On-Sticky-Rules
2024.12.08-On-Scarcity-&-Abundance
2024.12.01-On-BirdDog
2024.11.24-On-Focus
2024.11.17-On-The-Curse-of-Dimensionality
2024.11.10-On-Skill-as-Efficiency
2024.11.03-On-Efficiency
2024.10.27-On-Binary-Goals
2024.10.20-On-Commitment
2024.10.13-On-Rules-Vs-Intuition
2024.10.06-On-Binding-Constraints
2024.09.29-On-Restrictive-Rules
2024.09.22-On-Conflicting-Ideas
2024.09.15-On-Vectors
2024.09.08-On-Perfection
2024.09.01-On-Signal-Density
2024.08.25-On-Yapping
2024.08.18-On-Wax-and-Feather-Assumptions
2024.08.11-On-Going-All-In
2024.08.04-On-Abstraction
2024.07.28-On-Naming-a-Company
2024.07.21-On-Coding-in-Tongues
2024.07.14-On-Sufficient-Precision
2024.07.07-On-Rewriting
2024.06.30-On-Hacker-Houses
2024.06.23-On-Knowledge-Graphs
2024.06.16-On-Authority-and-Responsibility
2024.06.09-On-Personal-Websites
2024.06.02-On-Reducing-Complexity
2024.05.26-On-Design-as-Information
2024.05.19-On-UI-UX
2024.05.12-On-Exponential-Learning
2024.05.05-On-School
2024.04.28-On-Product-Development
2024.04.21-On-Communication
2024.04.14-On-Money-Tree-Farming
2024.04.07-On-Capital-Allocation
2024.03.31-On-Optimization
2024.03.24-On-Habit-Trackers
2024.03.17-On-Push-Notifications
2024.03.10-On-Being-Yourself
2024.03.03-On-Biking
2024.02.25-On-Descoping-Uncertainty
2024.02.18-On-Surfing
2024.02.11-On-Risk-Takers
2024.02.04-On-San-Francisco
2024.01.28-On-Big-Numbers
2024.01.21-On-Envy
2024.01.14-On-Value-vs-Price
2024.01.07-On-Running
2023.12.31-On-Thriving-&-Proactivity
2023.12.24-On-Surviving-&-Reactivity
2023.12.17-On-Sacrifices
2023.12.10-On-Suffering
2023.12.03-On-Constraints
2023.11.26-On-Fear-Hope-&-Patience
2023.11.19-On-Being-Light
2023.11.12-On-Hard-work-vs-Entitlement
2023.11.05-On-Cognitive-Dissonance
2023.10.29-On-Poetry
2023.10.22-On-Gut-Instinct
2023.10.15-On-Optionality
2023.10.08-On-Walking
2023.10.01-On-Exceeding-Expectations
2023.09.24-On-Iterative-Hypothesis-Testing
2023.09.17-On-Knowledge-&-Understanding
2023.09.10-On-Selfishness
2023.09.03-On-Friendship
2023.08.27-On-Craftsmanship
2023.08.20-On-Discipline-&-Deep-Work
2023.08.13-On-Community-Building
2023.08.05-On-Decentralized-Bottom-Up-Leadership
2023.07.29-On-Frame-Breaks
2023.07.22-On-Shared-Struggle
2023.07.16-On-Self-Similarity
2023.07.05-On-Experts
2023.07.02-The-Beginning

WRITING

"if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently."

- Charles Bukowski

Writing is one of my oldest skills; I started when I was very young, and have not stopped since. 

Age 13-16 - My first recorded journal entry was at 13 | Continued journaling, on and off.

Ages 17-18 - Started writing a bit more poetry, influenced heavily by Charles Bukwoski | Shockingly, some of my rather lewd poetry was featured at a county wide youth arts type event | Self published my first poetry book .

Age 19 - Self published another poetry book | Self published a short story collection with a narrative woven through it | Wrote a novel in one month; after considerable edits, it was long listed for the DCI Novel Prize, although that’s not that big of a deal, I think that contest was discontinued.

Age 20 - Published the GameStop book I mention on the investing page | Self published an original poetry collection that was dynamically generated based on reader preferences | Also created a collection of public domain poems with some friend’s and I’s mixed in, was also going to publish it with the dynamic generation, but never did.

Age 21 - Started writing letters to our hedge fund investors, see investing.

Age 22 - Started a weekly personal blog | Letters to company Investors, unpublished. 

Age 23 - Coming up on one year anniversary of consecutive weekly blog publications  | Letters to investors, unpublished.

You can use the table of contents to the left or click here to check out my blog posts.

Last Updated 2024.06.10

Join my weekly blog to learn about learning

On Iterative Hypothesis Testing

2023.09.24

Lindy Expectancy: 26 Weeks

Iterative Hypothesis Testing is just my nerdy way of saying “repeated trial and error.” I genuinely believe that when used correctly, trial and error can be the single most powerful force in the world.

Subscribe

-------------------

Complexity

A lot of cool things come from the study of complexity; the goal is to understand tools that help us live in a ‘complex’ world, one in which there are billions of different players competing at different games, constantly evolving their strategies and goals.

The amount of things you can do in this world are unending, unbounded. It can be overwhelming.

A tool to help function amidst all of that is the iterative hypothesis test: the scientific method, over and over again. You have an idea, you try it, and if it doesn’t work as well as you’d like, you fine tune it.

The Hypothesis

What exactly do we mean by a hypothesis, here?

Hypothesis: An assumption that you can test.

Simple as that. A hypothesis is this thing you think might be true but aren’t really sure about. So, we should go and test it!

That is the critical part: you absolutely have to be able to test these assumptions in such a way that you can measure the results.

For now, we’ll keep what we mean by hypothesis bound to things that don’t have large, negative externalities for other people. We’re working with assumptions on the scale of tweaking your running form, not with assumptions about geopolitical or macro economic cause and effect.



Caption: The butterfly effect, anyone?

Trial One–The Hypothesis

I’m rambling on about you needing a hypothesis, some idea or thought to test, that should ideally be an updated version of your last hypothesis.

What if we’re on trial one, though? How do we even know where to start with our hypothesis?

Well, chances are someone has done something similar to what you’re trying to do; why don’t you go and ask them? Or read the book they wrote about it?

One of my first posts focused on learning from experts, and my last post focused on taking others' advice as a framework for filling out your own experience. In this context, both of these things hold true. They can help you seed a hypothesis.

The Test

Okay, so let’s say you read this article suggesting that cutting out carbs may lead to weight loss without changing any other variables–you can eat the same amount of calories and lose weight? Sounds good to me.

So, the hypothesis has been seeded, and now it’s time to test it. Which should be easy enough in theory, we’re just cutting carbs.

Not so fast–we’re doing the scientific method, remember? Give me at least a little more rigor. We need parameters, here. Are you eating zero carbs a day? Good luck.

Let’s instead say we do below 30 grams of carbs a day, and let’s say we run the test for a month. Now we have something to work with.

Selection Pressure

Still, we actually need to measure the results or we just went on a diet for nothing. In this case, the measurement we take over the course of the test would probably be our weight. Does it get lower as we go along?

If we want to get more specific, it would be body fat percentage, but if you’re not concurrently making an effort to put on muscle mass, then this nuance can be safely ignored.

We also have to be careful to not change a bunch of other variables dramatically, like how much we’re working out and sleeping, or we might mess up the results.

I’ve actually done this specific test (cutting out carbs) a number of times before, and it works. The hypothesis, the assumption, was tested, and it passed.



Caption: Ah yes, the scientific method–I never thought it was as complicated as my fifth grade teacher made it sound, and it’s really not.

Fine Tuning

Okay, so we had our hypothesis test. That was cool. What now? What about that word iterative?

This is where the fun part comes in. Now that we had a hypothesis that worked, we’re going to change it.

What?! Why would we do that? We just went on a diet for a month and lost weight and now we’re going to jeopardize our results?

Yes. Yes we are.

Iterative: Involving repetition

Iterative Hypothesis Testing means we just keep testing stuff out, trying to see if something works better than our current solution. There was certainly something to that no carb diet… but, now there’s this other paper on cutting processed carbs, not just all carbs. That’s a nice nuance.

Afterall, it’s never just about weight: remember Goodhart’s Law:

Every measure that becomes a target falls under pressure to no longer be a good measure.

We don’t just care about weight, we care about health, and energy levels, and how we feel. So, let’s try it again. This time, we’ll allow for fruit and raw honey. We’ve updated our hypothesis, and we can give it a go. We’re now in our second iteration.

Maybe this time we don’t lose quite as much weight, but we’re more satisfied. This is just as important–when dealing with our health, we can zoom in and zoom out as we’re trying to find what really matters.

The Meta Goal

Each hypothesis test implies something about us–what we think we care about. If my test is about losing body fat, that implies I care about losing body fat. Really, though, that’s only true up to a point. My actions have never indicated that I really care that much below below 15%, certainly not as much as I care about eating tasty food.

This is an important distinction–there is never ONE thing we are optimizing for in life, there’s always a collection of a million different variables, and the iterative hypothesis tests are as much about finding out what those are as they are about hitting some range of that goal.

Entrepreneurship

I just talked about diet, but this framework can be applied to literally anything. I think about it in terms of fitness, presenting, writing, coding, and, of course, entrepreneurship.

A very high octane example is from Elon Musk. If you haven’t started reading Walter Isaacson’s new book on him, I highly recommend it.

Musk failed a lot with SpaceX.



Caption: Quite the expensive pile of scrap steel—Falcon I.

Musk blew up three rockets before he got one with its payload into orbit. At each of the three failed launches, something obviously went wrong. What’s really important, though, is that each time, something different went wrong… Musk & SpaceX were not just making the same mistake over and over again. They got closer each time.

Ultima is not launching rockets into space, but we have had a lot of failed hypotheses, thinking that if we do X, so and so will pay Y. If we get closer each time, though, if we keep failing up, and we fail fast enough, we will have something worth something to someone.

Progress, not perfection.

Subscribe

-------------------

There are two main reasons I started writing these notes: I enjoy doing so and they help me to share what’s going on in my life with those I care about.

Now, I’m really starting to appreciate the challenge of communicating complex ideas in as simple of words and thoughts as possible. I think it’s a good challenge and measure of my own comprehension–putting ideas on paper challenges them, forces you to refine them and make them real. If I can’t share these ideas with you, they’re either bullshit or I don’t understand them enough.

Writing is part of a processes of iteratively hypothesis testing ideas. I hope you enjoy.

Live Deeply,