Monday Always Steps Forward

Thank you for subscribing and continuing to send in your suggestions. I will put a few small changes into practice this week and look at ways to balance the post types for our growing community. Over the last month, the community has grown by 20%. Welcome to the newest members.

Harpreet Sahota asked me how I write so much content. We met up this weekend during my first vacation in almost a year. I write for a living, not only on Substack but also for clients.

I answer the questions, ‘What does this mean, and what should we do about it?’ I write digests for clients and give presentations based on them. I build all the documents that support technical strategy, implementation, and execution. I write up my processes and teach them to a range of students.

Writing and communicating are about 60% of my day. Listening and learning are the other 40%.

Always know why people pay you. In my case, people pay me to synthesize a large body of information into easy to understand formats. I provide context, insights, and meaning missing from every other source. I make my information actionable.

My clients are good with uncertainty and complexity, but even high performers have limits. My clients are intelligent experts in their domain, but they have gaps. They surround themselves with expert advisors who reduce the complexity and fill in gaps.

People shy away from calling themselves, experts. In a room filled with mediocre people, experts are often shamed for being the most intelligent person in the room. That is how mediocre people survive in the business world.

In one of the Spiderman movies, the villain says, “Never be ashamed of being the smartest person in the room.” Mediocre people call experts ‘full of themselves’ or ‘imposters’ for being knowledgeable and expecting their capabilities to be recognized once they’ve established a track record. Mediocre people roll their eyes when experts dive into a concept they are interested in or provide detailed background on a complex concept.

I am an expert in technical strategy and applied machine learning. I am one of the only experts with a dual background in the world. The only reason I can say that with confidence is because I have been in rooms surrounded by other experts. I know what expertise looks like.

The goal of this community is to create a space for people to discover their expertise and not be ridiculed for it. This is a community of established and emerging experts. Never be ashamed for being the most intelligent person in the community. If you are one of those rare minds, don’t be afraid to unleash your genius.

I know what genius feels like and sounds like. I am intelligent, but not at their level. However, by being in the room with geniuses and adding knowledge to their conversations, I know I am still valuable to even superior minds. I am a translator and simplifier. I recognize patterns and explain their significance.

Brilliant minds can do what I do. They cannot do what they do AND what I do simultaneously. It requires two different types of minds, so choosing one means rejecting the other. They live in the nodes of our knowledge graph. I live in the edges.

In this newsletter, I explain how causal methods connect to other areas of our field and how they integrate into the business. I teach communications for impact and sources of authority for leadership. Everything I write explains nodes or concepts, focusing on how those concepts are connected (edges). Defining the edges is how I add value to the data science experts in this community.

Most education is built to teach the nodes. Classes develop expertise about a few nodes in a cluster. Experience allows us to explore the edges between those nodes. Over a long career, we begin to explore the connections between our cluster and several others. This is how we become experts.

There is only so much that can be written about nodes. I find the best content to be hidden in the edges. We can say the same thing about data science. Knowing there is a connection between two variables is interesting. Finding causal relationships is even more critical. Understanding the dynamics of the cause is where insights come from.

When I explain those dynamics, brilliant people can work their magic. It is difficult to watch the discoveries from the sidelines. Becoming an expert has meant finding the boundaries of my expertise and value too. Limits are part of being an expert.

I had to accept the limits of my role to find satisfaction in it. I am an enabler and instigator. I hand out seeds, and you cultivate forests. I light fires, and you forge engines in them. I point out opportunities, and you build businesses around them. Without your willingness to step forward, I would not create much more than novelty.

There was no framework for an edge product. Edges are decentralized by nature, and products were all centralized. Quantum technology allows for a decentralized paradigm. Edge products will soon coexist with node products. Models are the translation layer that will manage the complexity so they can interact.

In the causal graph, increasing certainty rules the node, and layers of uncertainty govern the edge. The first foundation can only exist in the nodes. The second only exists in the edges. You live in the nodes if you see an arrow moving from bow to target by applying the formulas that describe complex systems. If you see the array of targets the arrow strikes and complex systems that could indicate one over the others, you live in the edges.

This community is also built as a place where edge thinkers are accepted as you are. Step forward and be recognized. Speak as you see the world. Explain the manifold of configurations. Detail the topologies and deformations leading to the nodes. This community knows the edges are never fixed and always non-linear.

Part of what I am writing explains edge thinking to node thinkers and vice versa. I am presenting a framework for us to work together and provide value to each other. A community of experts will understand and recognize the contributions each brings. We are in exponential progress. Combining the first and second foundations opens the door to factorial progress.

The technology is emerging to enable second foundation products. The constructs do not exist for them yet. I wonder if the language to describe them exists yet. New math will be built to represent them in node terms.

Bring your frameworks forward. Propose your solutions and paradigms. Evaluate the thoughts of others. Begin to assemble, validate, refute, and reassemble the ontology that will provide the domain knowledge for edge products. Realize there are edges and nodes in the emerging ontology, so we need experts from both foundations to succeed.

Yes, this will sound detached from reality, and that’s because what is being built does not exist yet. Yes, this will require divergent thinking because there is no blueprint to follow. We cannot innovate at this level and act like everyone else. It’s essential to get weird and explore extreme lines of thought while node thinkers impose structure and evidentiary standards.

This community allows for minority ontologies. We explore them when we see potential or cannot refute them. Minority ontologies can introduce new knowledge, and we need new knowledge to make this work.

Node and edge thinkers step forward to confront the hard problems. The edges’ dissociations show the nodes what’s possible. The nodes’ engineering shows the edges what’s feasible. It takes courage to articulate a vision and attempt to build something that sounds both detached and amazing.

Go faster than the speed of light.

End hunger and homelessness.

Build a new kind of intelligence.

All three fit the description. You could do any one of those. You can add yours to the list. The future is yours to see, build, and experience. Shall we begin?