While I don’t have that much to say about the essence of the Fourth Paradigm yet, I have to admit that I feel immediately at home with this group within eScience. One of the best quotes in the book is:

“Need driven versus curiosity driven. Basic science is question driven; in contrast, the new applications science is guided more by societal needs than scientific curiosity. Rather than seeking answers to questions, it focuses on creating the ability to seek courses of action and determine their consequences.”

Substitute ‘societal needs’ with ‘business needs’, and I have myself a nice bridge between eScience and commercial eScience. I suppose that’s been one of the fundamental misunderstandings about the Scientist-Practitioner: that they were only poking about out of curiosity. Science for the sake of science.

What if we were transparent about the intent to use science for purely commercial gain? Sounds Edisonian I suppose?

Much of the literature seems to be about very huge computing problems, like analyzing the data from the LHC. I’m not necessarily as concerned with problems of that order of magnitude. In fact, most business problems are fairly modest by comparison. What will, however, hold back commercial eScience, are the same forces that will hold back eScience. That is to say, the lack of unification among the fundamental tools.

At any rate – this field looks attractive.

I’ve participated in some of that research over the years, and it’s always pretty enlightening.

It’s good news.

And it’s gone well.

I think looking for simple and remembering the end goal are two key ingredients. Backcasting happens a lot. Expecting exogenous shocks instead of being all outraged when they happen is another.

That’s all that’s really on the mind.

That and how much code I have left to write.

The Seven Axioms are:

1. The purpose of analytics is to derive competitive advantage for the organization / firm / entity.
2. Data alone does not yield competitive advantage.
3. A sequence of progressive hypothesis testing is the most efficient and effective method to derive competitive advantage from data.
4. Predicting the future requires an understanding of cause and effect.
5. Correlation is not always Causality.
6. Accuracy over Precision.
7. It is possible for there to be two optimal, equally true, answers to a problem. (And Sometimes More!) (X^2 = 4, x=-2, 2).

They might appear to be fairly straight-forward. And they are. In my opinion.

A statement like Accuracy over Precision was certain to cause problems. And it has.

If you look at the language around cause and effect, causality, and there being many correct right answers to the same problem: you get the point. It follows from the Axioms that, to derive competitive advantage, you need to be able to make predictions about the future, and the only way to really get there is through progressive hypothesis testing with accurate data, and understanding both complexity and causation.

It’s strong work, and quite possibly one of the best reading experiences I’ve had since “Reading Virtual Minds”.

On Page 149, there’s a quote in explaining the common occurrence for ‘fires’ to occur as a result of low-ball estimation:

Curt: Why do they have the fires?

Sam: Yes

Curt: There could be a million different reasons if you think about it, I mean, clients coming in with aggressive timelines period or everybody will come in with big dreams, right?…Like you never lose the champagne dream even if you’ve got a beer bottle budget, right? You always dream big but you might not be, like, okay…”

And I’m in awe.

What a gem.

And I ask myself: how can we optimize and predict dreams? How we do rationalize the denominator here?

What a fascinating business problem.

Of course, I shouldn’t really say simultaneously. I can only read one at a time. More accurate language would be ‘jumping between four books’.

The first is Sam Ladner’s excellent thesis on the commodification of time in the new economy. It’s a pretty awesome read.

The second is Gladwell’s latest book. And it’s a manageable read because the chapters are well contained. It’s called “What the dog saw”, and that line is pulled from one of the Chapters on Caesar Milan. Fun!

The third is a seminal 500 page book about competition. And it’s a sobering read.

And the fourth is about mental structures in the new economy. And I haven’t decided if I’m going to admit that I even read it.

So many at the same time. Sometimes I get to a point in a book where I literally can’t stomach it. It’s either so dense or so depressing or so wrong that I need to put it down and change the channel. Instead of popping open the web browser and heading over to 4Chan, I suppose it’s easier to flip over to another book. Naturally I’m putting off the gratification of completing something. But, so be it.

But at least there’s apple sauce. Apple sauce to wash down all that awful, awful medicine.

And Sam’s thesis is not medicine. I’m actually really enjoying it.