Disqus - Latest Comments for skmurphy

Re: How “Tesla Takedown” Activists Fool the Public

skmurphy — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:55:50 -0000

Who is funding this network?

Re: THIS IS BAD: Vancomycin may be losing effectiveness against C. diff.

skmurphy — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 14:15:25 -0000

"Fecal transplant" approach restores lower GI microbiome and can stop C. Diff. Surprised article does not mention it as a viable alternative to vancomycin. See

https://my.clevelandclinic....

https://www.hopkinsmedicine...

https://www.mdanderson.org/...

C. diff is a naturally occurring member of lower GI microbiome, and is held in check by a healthy population of other bacteria in lower GI. These other bacteria can be killed off by many commonly used antibiotics enabling a "green field" environment for the slowly reproducing but very hard to kill C. Diff to fluourish. When it achieves a critical mass, quorum signaling chemicals induce a phase change in behavior where it gives off toxins. See https://journals.asm.org/do... for more on this.

Re: Still Out of Control

skmurphy — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 16:48:23 -0000

"We do know some things now. I feel confident to
say that overall one big thing we collectively know now is that the nine
principles of how to make complex things that I describe in the last
chapter of Out of Control really do work."

If it's been too long since you read the book, the "Nine Laws of God" from
Chapter 24 are at https://kk.org/mt-files/out...

Re: What is Sense-making? - Cognitive Edge Network Blog

skmurphy — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 13:45:32 -0000

Dave I withdraw my request for you to substantiate your claim that the full quote came from Klein. I have been able to source two of the three sentences and the third is a generic definition.

"Sensemaking is the ability or attempt to make sense of an ambiguous situation."

Generic and perhaps incomplete as a working definition; it can be omitted from the passage without any loss of meaning.

"Sensemaking is a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively."

This is an exact match from "Encyclopedia of Decision Making and Decision Support Technologies" Volume 2 (2008) where it's used twice as a standard definition. Your passage changes "sensemaking" to "More exactly, it"

"Sensemaking is a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively."

Is an exact match to a sentence in "Making Sense of Sensemaking 1: Alternative Perspectives" (August 2006 Intelligent Systems, IEEE 21(4):70 - 73.

I agree your time is much better served working on a new article on sensemaking that incorporates all that we have learned in the last 15 years or so.

Re: What is Sense-making? - Cognitive Edge Network Blog

skmurphy — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 19:03:37 -0000

Please try to hunt it down: I think you have combined a definition from Encyclopedia of Decision Making and Decision Support Technologies by Frederic Adams and Patrick Humphreys (See
https://www.google.com/book...
with a quote from Klein's 2006 paper Making Sense of Sensemaking 1: alternate perspectives.

Re: What is Sense-making? - Cognitive Edge Network Blog

skmurphy — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 18:31:23 -0000

It's not in "Sources of Power." It appears to be an amalgam of several different statements, only the last one is by Klein. This statement

"Sensemaking is a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively."

Comes from "Making Sense of Sensemaking 1: Alternative Perspectives" (August 2006 Intelligent Systems, IEEE 21(4):70 - 73)

That same article rejects conflating sensemaking with "situational awareness." It suggests

"By sensemaking, modern researchers seem to mean something different from creativity, comprehension, curiosity, mental modeling, explanation, or situational awareness, although all these factors or phenomena can be involved in or related to sensemaking."

Re: NEWS: NYU scientists: Largest U.S. study of COVID-19 finds obesity the single biggest factor in New…

skmurphy — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 01:46:05 -0000

mass transit--BART, Trains, Buses--transport a lot of folks in LA and SF. There may be more risk in NY Subway. SF is dense and very low deaths/hospital bed/ICU usage. I wonder if it's smoking rates. Probably a combination of factors. There is a possibility of different strains on two coasts.

Re: NEWS: NYU scientists: Largest U.S. study of COVID-19 finds obesity the single biggest factor in New…

skmurphy — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:15:18 -0000

Full tables at https://medrxiv.org/content... among positives obesity is most prevalent but not highest risk factor: history of cardiovascular disease and diabetes stronger indicators of risk of critical illness (where about 80% will likely die either in hospice, on ventilator, etc.) For example asthma has a lower prevalence in population so present in fewer critical cases but is a significant risk factor See table 1 of positive tests page 18 in compare ratio of hospitalized to non-hospitalized. higher ratio, higher risk. Age, diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease are all larger risks. Obviously there are overlapping confounding effects between different conditions.

Re: HMMMM: Wuhan Flu: “This is a completely new disease.”…

skmurphy — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 17:37:30 -0000

Possibly related https://chemrxiv.org/articl... from abstract (bold added)

"The results showed the ORF8 and surface glycoprotein could bind to the porphyrin, respectively. At the same time, orf1ab, ORF10, and ORF3a proteins could coordinate attack the heme on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to dissociate the iron to form the porphyrin. The attack will cause less and less hemoglobin that can carry oxygen and carbon dioxide. The lung cells have extremely intense poisoning and inflammatory due to the inability to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen frequently, which eventually results in ground-glass-like lung images. The mechanism also interfered with the normal heme anabolic pathway of the human body, is expected to result in human disease. According to the validation analysis of these finds, chloroquine could prevent orf1ab, ORF3a, and ORF10 to attack the heme to form the porphyrin, and inhibit the binding of ORF8 and surface glycoproteins to porphyrins to a certain extent, effectively relieve the symptoms of respiratory distress. Favipiravir could inhibit the envelope protein and ORF7a protein bind to porphyrin, prevent the virus from entering host cells, and catching free porphyrins."

Re: AT AMAZON, Doctor’s Best High Absorption Magnesium Glycinate Lysinate, 100% Chelated, Non-GMO, Veg…

skmurphy — Tue, 15 May 2018 12:42:01 -0000

FYI Iherb has this same exact magnesium formulation from "Doctor's Best" for only $9 https://www.iherb.com/pr/Do...

Re: Dad and The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming - Stephen Wyatt Bush's Blog

skmurphy — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 18:02:46 -0000

This "ten commandments" in this are taken form https://blog.codinghorror.c... which was an interpretation of Weinberg's advice on egoless programming. The "Ten commandments" do not appear as such in the Psychology of computer programming.

Re: Why the best meetings happen at the coffee dock

skmurphy — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 22:27:46 -0000

I have had similar experiences and agree with your conclusion but wrestle with the implications for the increasing number of teams that are not co-located. What can geographically scattered teams--especially global teams--do to foster conversations that capture at least some of benefits of a quick face-to-face chat at the water cooler or coffee station?

Jonathan Follet offered some suggestions for managing "the long hallway" between team members in distributed teams, see https://alistapart.com/arti... concluding with:

"When building a virtual team, remember that you’re trying to accomplish something very difficult: to create and maintain a close-knit feel between far-flung people. Don’t think it will be easy, and have great patience when it comes to scheduling, miscommunications, and personality quirks. Everything you do should increase your—and your colleagues’ comfort—improve communication and camaraderie, and generally make things easier. Large companies with fixed office locations spend gobs of money trying to keep their workers happy via cafeterias, workout facilities, coffee machines, and holiday parties. You should expect to spend a fair bit of your own resources on doing the same, even if it comes out in different ways."

I blogged about this in http://www.skmurphy.com/blo... where I offered two observations about long distance work relationships:

1. Time zones matter more than miles: once people are not in the same room the offset in their circadian cycles is harder to manage than geographic distance.

2. Anthony Jay suggested in “Corporation Man” that managers should embrace systems that augment memory but distrust and minimize the use of systems that replace communication. Because what matters in communication is not what’s said but what’s understood, synchronous communication enables you to quickly close the feedback loop to make sure that you understand what the other party meant and vice versa.

Re: Video: Deploying Sensor Networks in Commercial Real Estate… Why & How!

skmurphy — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 18:12:20 -0000

Can you boost Yodit's voice, sound is too faint.

Re: The Top 10 Worst Pieces of SaaS Advice

skmurphy — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 15:45:48 -0000

I agree with Tom Lipscomb's comment: you normally have to write the RFP to win it.

Two other terrible pieces of advice

Ask your customers how they would feel if they could no longer use your product (the Ellis P/M Fit test see http://www.startup-marketin... ). All this does is plant doubts in their minds about your viability and level of commitment to the product / market.

Ask your customers if they would pay $1M for the product. This is presented as a "Jedi mind trick"(See for example http://leanb2bbook.com/blog... ) to get them to reveal the maximum they would be willing to pay. it normally just ends the conversation and any prospects for a deal.

Re: Laws of 10x found everywhere. For good reason?

skmurphy — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 15:46:07 -0000

Think about two levels of Pareto (80-20 rule)

4% of population contribute 64% each 1% on average contributes 16%

16% of population contribute 16% each 1% on average contributes 1%

80% of population contributes 20% each 1% on average contributes 0.25%

Re: 4 Questions for Improving Personal Productivity

skmurphy — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 22:29:50 -0000

The question of "Am I motivated to do this work" is
at best subordinate to "Does the business require that I get this done
now" and at worst irrelevant. A more legitimate question might be: have
I been working long enough that a break would improve my concentration
(or is it time to get some sleep).

Re: Simple Tool Improves Medication Adherence

skmurphy — Sun, 07 Aug 2016 19:05:09 -0000

Page two of this http://www.queri.research.v... seems to be what the article is talking about.

Re: Customer Development interviews are no longer worth the effort

skmurphy — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 04:37:11 -0000

If your point is to have conversations that include a demo of a prototype or minimum featured product in preference to an abstract conversation about needs, I share your perspective. Even when a product is complex to configure and build developing a simple datasheet, a simulation model, or other form of illustration will anchor the conversation around some real examples; this seems like a good way to have a serious conversation.

Re: What Everyone Should Take Away from Twitter’s 8% Staff Reductions

skmurphy — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 14:27:54 -0000

This insight "We have an entire generation of startup founders who don’t have muscle memory from getting their burn rates back into shape from 2008/09 or 2001-2005." reminded me of Mike Arrington's 2007 Twice Shy Entrepreneur http://www.techcrunch.com/2... where he lamented his skills from 2001-5 were a liability in 2007:

"Silicon Valley these days is made up of two kinds of entrepreneurs (I’m painting with broad strokes, bear with me). The first group is the old guard. These are people who started companies during the late nineties and up until the 2000 stock market crash. The second group was either in school during that period, or doing something other that working in the tech world, and have started companies after the fallout from the crash.

Generally speaking, experience counts for something. So you’d expect entrepreneurs who’ve been through the ups and downs of a tech startup to have an advantage over the newcomers. Or at least have an equal chance at success. But in fact the opposite may be true. A number of venture capitalists I’ve spoken with have said that too many “old guard” entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it’s hurting their startups."

In 2008 I revisited this in http://www.skmurphy.com/blo...

"What a difference a year makes. Now the “newcomer entrepreneurs” have had the chance to lay employees off and are encouraged by the VC’s on their boards to focus on profit and survival instead of bold growth. And the experienced entrepreneurs--like Arrington--are probably feeling a little less out of sync with the environment."

It looks like the most recent boom has worn off.

Re: Most corporate idea crowdsourcing platforms fail. Here’s how to do it right.

skmurphy — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 17:28:54 -0000

I think your X axis should run in the other direction (increasing cost left to right). This screws up your "upper right quadrant" selection criteria but I think the distribution of real opportunities is more subtle. In particular this will generate a set of potential opportunities above the diagonal where the benefit exceeds the cost. The challenge is that cost is unbounded so it's hard to have it decrease starting at the origin. You should also consider the 3 horizon planning approach and cluster ideas into those you can invest in and see an immediate payoff, those with some lag, and those with considerable lag.

Re: Culture and Innovation

skmurphy — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 09:37:52 -0000

When I wrote my post in 2010 that was the website you had. What some people think of as "old websites" can have very high authority. The net effect of changing your links is to break all of the inbound links that were created before the change, this normally has a substantial negative impact on your domain authority or search engine ranking (how high Google and other Search Engines rate your content vs. others for the same search terms) which most webmasters take great care not to piss away.

I can appreciate from the perspective of 2015 a post I wrote in 2010 seems to link to a very old version of your site but many other sites take great care not to lose inbound links when making upgrades. There are plugins for WordPress that allow you to redirect old links to new ones, the Google Webmaster tools can tell you if the Google has found other websites that are linking to pages that no longer exist.

You have some very significant articles in your "back pages" that are not only important for an historical perspective on the evolution of complexity thinking but, at least in my opinion, still represent the cutting edge of the field today. It is unfortunate that in the process of improving the appearance of the site the webmaster changed all of the URLs and did not add redirects so that the old links still resolved.

Re: Culture and Innovation

skmurphy — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 16:48:59 -0000

This used to be linked at http://cognitive-edge.com/b... that link no longer resolves. Whoever convinced you to let them change the link structure without adding redirects should be fired and if they were an outside firm you should ask for a refund.

Re: Culture and Innovation

skmurphy — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 14:49:17 -0000

This is a fantastic post but you changed the link structure of your blog without adding redirects so everyone who linked to the old URL now has a broken link. I updated my link from http://www.skmurphy.com/blo... but I have to believe there were many other links that were broken.

Re:

skmurphy — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 22:19:45 -0000

This is Napoleon Hill in "Think and Grow Rich" Chapter 7 in the section on 30 causes for failure:

8. PROCRASTINATION. This is one of the most common causes of failure. "Old Man Procrastination" stands within the shadow of every human being, waiting his opportunity to spoil one's chances of success. Most of us go through life as failures, because we are waiting for the "time to be right" to start doing something worthwhile. Do not wait. The time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

The length, word choice and phrasing does not match other proverbs in Jacula Prudentum see the section in https://en.wikiquote.org/wi... for several hundred examples.

Re: Lessons From Sending 5M SaaS Customer Development Surveys

skmurphy — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 18:50:29 -0000

Surveys early and surveys first are two different approaches. I think it also makes a difference whether you are selling to business or consumer and what the target price point is for a product. If your answers is not "survey first" but "conversation first" then think we disagree primarily on when you should start to switch to surveys. It's not clear from the article where you believe that demark or transition point is. What took strong exception to was "surveys first" but reasonable men may differ.