Cosmic dust. I write about complex social problems. PhD from the University of São Paulo. Most tweets in English.
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Joined July 2008
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Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
Most success in business is fat-tailed and probabilistic. Most effort in business is dedicated to pretending that it isn't.
Amidst all the controversy over Shaun's model (who cares), I think this is a key point.
Private equity tends to be focused on incrementalism.
Cutting costs. Growing with existing customers. Adding new, similar customers. Gaining wallet share.
These aren't bad; they make sense. They just aren't step function, exponential.
The focus on what you can underwrite may raise the floor, but it also limits the ceiling. That's their model.
"The models that dominate all human decision-making today are duly heavy on simplistic logic, and light on magic – a spreadsheet leaves no room for miracles."
-@rorysutherland
This seems be especially true with AI. I am seeing a lot of PE guys very skeptical of ROI on AI. But the experimentation and giving some room for "magic" could lead to exponential improvement.
It's not a criticism of PE, it's just not their model. They need hard data on ROI for every dollar they spend.
That's the delta between the two groups - PE needs to underwrite every single expense and VC is trying to find exponential outcomes.
What arethe real costs of driving a car? poder360.com.br/opiniao/o-ca…
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
Denmark is moving to ban Frankenchickens — the first country in the world to do so.
What we’ve done to chickens is the largest genetic experiment ever run on any animal, and one of the most troubling.
Geneticists took a scrawny bird and engineered an obese meat machine. The chickens we eat today grow four times faster than chickens did in 1957.
But their bodies are not four times stronger. By just six weeks old, many will suffer ailments of old age — heart failure, organ colapse — while one in four will become lame (Knowles et al., 2008).
In studies, lame birds will choose feed laced with painkillers — a sign of chronic pain (Danbury et al., 2000).
Their parents meanwhile are kept on starvation rations. Birds engineered to grow this fast would otherwise eat themselves to death before laying a single egg.
We now breed over 70 billion of these birds a year. Denmark is acting to reverse this giant genetic experiment. The rest of the world should follow suit.
The Danish government wants to ban a fast-growing breed known as “turbo chickens,” setting up another clash with the farm sector over animal welfare.
vist.ly/5qhf8
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
All the slides from talks from the workshop on "Talking about Risk & Resilience" are now available on the workshop blog: talking-about-risk-and-resil… #risk #resilience #socialscience #abm #simulation #crises #wur
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
What is happening in Brazil? Many abroad read Lula’s reelection over Flávio Bolsonaro as a win for liberal democracy. We are a Brazilian group that has studied liberal democracy for over 15 years, and we think that reading is wrong. A thread 🧵 1/16
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
Agent-Based Modeling: Worlds Within Worlds, a new interactive story from the Santa Fe Institute, chronicles the rise of ABMs in the social sciences, with a focus on SFI contributions.
Over the next few weeks we’ll highlight pieces of this story. First, how it begins:
PART 1: In a former convent in Santa Fe in the late 1980s, economists, physicists, and computer scientists scribble equations on a blackboard where an altar used to be. They are discussing a promising new approach to scientific modeling, one that represents individual actors in, say, an economy or a pandemic, and the rules those “agents” follow.
Today, the method — known as agent-based modeling — offers powerful insights for predicting financial crises, managing pandemics, and even uncovering truths about the past.
Read the full story and run the models yourself: santafe.edu/abm
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
I think foie gras is pretty barbaric, as are the ways we produce a lot of meat products in general. I support any and all bans on specific meat products that most people would agree are produced in horrific ways, and that they wouldn't endorse if they just read about the conditions the animals are in, so I support the proposed foie gras ban in DC.
If this were a law about force feeding dogs in the same way I don't think we'd be having as many conversations about the second order effects.
(...) ideologias políticas podem ativar mecanismos internos para levar as pessoas a viver, de fato, em planetas simbólicos distintos, ainda que pareçam ocupar o mesmo espaço físico. O resultado prático é um software mental que produz verdadeiras realidades paralelas."
Hoje é dia de testemunhar esse fenômeno no grau máximo. É como assistir a um eclipse. poder360.com.br/opiniao/bols…
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
This is an extraordinary advertisement because it's effectively spending 60 seconds to tell us how technology is ruining our lives.
Incidentally, it fails to point out that not only is French toast not toast, but Canadian bacon is not technically bacon.
By law, property owners are responsible for the sidewalk, which must be kept in good condition. But here there is a tree. Nature does not abide by human laws.
Volta do Perse, ônibus gratuitos, fiquem aí no duelo de superioridade moral enquanto Flávio e Lula prometem terrenos na Lua e deixam claro que a crise fiscal vem aí. O Brasil já perdeu. poder360.com.br/opiniao/nao-…
Realismo ingênuo, conceito tradicional da psicologia social, é a ideia de que enxergamos objetivamente a realidade e que, por consequência, quem não compartilha da mesma visão é burro, enviesado ou mal-informado. Ajuda a explicar essa cansativa batalha diária de tribos políticas.
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
New contribution: "Theory is Two-Faced and this can be a problem for modellers" by Bruce Edmonds. #abm #theory #inference #modelling #socialsimulation #simulation #RofASSS @bruceedmonds rofasss.org/2026/10/21/theor…
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
New essay! It explores a very simple and in some sense pretty obvious idea that I think is nevertheless hugely important for understanding politics, culture wars, and media bias. Put simply, our brains evaluate ideas based on their diffusion value: not just whether they seem true, but whether other people accepting them would advance our goals. conspicuouscognition.substac…
O "pobre de direita" virou o personagem do segundo turno, pelo menos até o momento. A barata que vota no inseticida, como tenho ouvido. Lulistas são de Vênus, bolsonaristas são de Marte (2024) fornece outra perspectiva. poder360.com.br/opiniao/bols…
O outro ingrediente dessa equação é o realismo ingênuo. "Temos a clara sensação de que percebemos a realidade objetivamente, sem qualquer filtro. E acreditamos que quem não concorda conosco está apenas mal informado ou diabolicamente enviesado". (poder360.com.br/opiniao/a-ps…
Hamilton Carvalho (oi, complexidade) retweeted
Global supply chains depend on flows of information as much as they do on flows of goods
go.nature.com/4zkEnP6
