CEO of @GetGreenzie. Love automating things with software. @entrepreneurorg, @ypo. Let's go run or lift heavy things together.
Atlanta, GA
Joined February 2007
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Mower with our software working since June 2022. Mowing sites like this Kroger Distribution Center every week. Every DC in the US next.
Took all three kids to get a strep test.
Did didn’t have to pay anything because of health insurance.
Get the bills, and they all had the same test, the exact same procedure, and two of the bills were ~$400 but of course my health insurance graciously knocked it down to $92. But one of them was $127.42. And it was the middle kid.
Same test same procedure same place same time and the amount is just enough that I’m not gonna contest it because why would I?
This is why I canceled our health insurance and signed up with crowd health.
With crowd health, I would have just paid for the $39.99 strep test at the time I actually had the test done.
@crowdhealth
The engineer in me hopes this is true. Makes me wonder where that data on product quality comes from? Is it Facebook groups? Reviews?
Consider a physical good used by contractors. Like a lawnmower….
Assorted things I've been mulling over regarding agents in the economy:
• Companies are in some sense the original superintelligence. It's often the case that they can use their amortized cognitive surplus to advance their interests against those of certain consumers: relative to the optimization capacity of companies, consumers can be inattentive, underinformed, irrational, etc. (Think, say, of some of the classic insurance upsells at the end of a booking process, which is typically priced substantially above what a regular policy would cost.) Herbert Simon introduced the idea of bounded rationality, and firms often end up benefiting from it. Thanks to personal agents, we will probably get somewhat more rational in how we engage with companies.
• How exactly will outcomes change? Well, certain kinds of price discrimination will work less well (how do coupons work if every agent hunts fastidiously for them?), and certain kinds of customer cross-subsidy will change (today, people who forget to cancel subscriptions subsidize those who don't). Taken across the economy as a whole, I'm not sure what the incidence of all of this will be.
• In corporate strategy, people have long debated the relative importance of distribution and product quality. Perhaps you've made something better, but does anyone know about it? Won't people just continue to buy the ACME Corp Mousetraps? Personal agents will, I think, act as a kind of structural subsidy for product quality. How would markets look different if individuals always spent at least 10 hours researching their purchases? On the margin, focusing on making a product better is, I think, going to become a more effective strategy for companies. This is good!
• It true, a corollary is that information about product quality will become more important and impactful. Today, most people have very limited ability to aggregate and integrate such data, but agents will have insatiable thirst for such signals. (It's often said that data is becoming more valuable because it helps in the training of models. That's obviously true, but I think there's a secondary way in which it's more valuable simply as a complement to cheaper intelligence.)
• A big question is whether agents will increase superstar effects (rational agents all settle on the same product) or increase dispersion (because everyone has slightly different tastes and preferences, which agents are good at eliciting, finally overcoming the artificial clustering we've been subjected to).
• Many internet companies have monetized demand routing, which is in turn often predicated on short attention spans. "I'll click on the first thing I see." This has led to some amount of inefficiency, as companies try to propitiate capricious ranking algorithms and incur various placement fees. It's not all deadweight loss (willingness to pay is itself a kind of signal, which is valuable to buyers), but it's not great. How will the nature and value of this routing change in a world of personal agents? I don't know the answer, but I think that the effects might be pretty big.
• Much of what I'm writing hinges on the assumption that personal agents will be on the consumer's side. I suspect that that will be the winning strategy, but whether it's true, and what it means to be true, involves a lot of other questions.
Taken as a whole, the market is a massively parallelized, decentralized, and highly imperfect value attribution machine, and, taking stock of all of the effects, it seems to me that the quality point may well be the biggest: that agents will change the nature of the backpropagation such that the rewards for better products increase. Maybe this is too optimistic, but I suspect (and hope) that companies that make things that they're proud of will feel that the universe is a little more partisan in their favor.
Just saw a Waymo being carried on a tow truck and it was still on, all the lights all the sensors. Godspeed to the Engineer who is SSHed in there right now.
We have officially mowed the distance to the moon in autonomous miles across the fleet of @GetGreenzie mowers.
Charles Brian Quinn retweeted
Every once in a while, a news story makes me audibly gag in disbelief. This AI ban for kids....
The fact that AI poses a problem for the classroom shows just how pernicious the classroom is. Ban the classroom, not the AI!
The classic, CLASSIC trope of young kids is "Why?"
AI never gets tired, never even a hint of frustration, never blows kids off with a trite explanation.
One of greatest challenges of parenting, nearly solved. Solved.
To see this otherwise requires one or more of the following shocking admissions:
1- Not really caring that kids want to understand the world.
2- Not really caring about one's own responsibility for aiding that understanding.
3- Not really caring that oneself doesn't understand basic questions about the world, like why is the sky blue.
4- And for school, not really caring that school prefers to blunt kids' understanding of the world in order to protect the teachers' guild, this being the gazillionth + 1 example of school-as-jobs-program.
Spotted in Atlanta, but it had a steering wheel and a guy driving it with both hands on the wheel, not even using regular FSD!
Charles Brian Quinn retweeted
Successful hardware operating in the field is worth an infinite number of expert opinions
As a guy who sells software on a mower that includes hardware that enables it, I am very keen on people saying why do I have to pay for the software?
This is why I think Eight Sleep should take a page from Tesla‘s playbook and just make some software updates. They can be minimal! then I won’t feel bad about paying software annually to make my mattress work.
Tesla also does a good job of back boarding features, so if I were them, I’d back porch silencing an alarm somehow with the mattress and hardware already there that’s available on the new ones. Then I’d happily pay 180 bucks.
Put @OmarchyLinux on a thinkpad and couldn’t get used to the super (windows start) button, so asked agent to swap it with alt to mimic the mac command button and much better.
Charles Brian Quinn retweeted
It is crazy how unhinged the Flock debate has become. We are talking about technology involving license plate readers (not surveillance systems) on public roads. Yes, there are potential overreach issues. They can be solved with proper legal/regulatory boundaries.
Charles Brian Quinn retweeted
I’ve seen enough of this Flock fear garbage.
First of all, Flock cameras are automated license plate readers not facial recognition tools.
Second, they have proven to be the primary self defense tool for cities. Localities that employ these are able to catch some of the worst criminals and get them off the streets. These cameras also help with finding missing persons.
The idea that Flock cameras have potential for misuse and therefore should be removed despite the safety that it brings to cities is delusional. There’s always an abuse concern with any tool you bring to law enforcement. If we took that fear to its logical extreme we’d have cops armed with rubber bands or even less. We’d have England. No thank you.
And no, you don’t have a privacy interest in your government-issued license plate that has the sole purpose of tracking and identifying your vehicle as you drive it on the streets. This argument is nescient nonsense and only spread because people today are too lazy to think. You absolutely have privacy concerns that can be triggered by certain misuse but we have recourse for that in the court system.
We don’t live in a utopia safe enough to forego the opportunity to use modern law enforcement tools. Don’t let internet delusion control your politics.
When facial recognition tools start being deployed in public we can discuss real privacy concerns. But that’s not what Flock is.
I suspect that a lot of the anti-Flock delusion on social media is driven by foreign disinformation. It’s just another way to keep Americans hysterical, disinformed, and afraid. Remeber — this is how our adversaries operate these days; they pour fuel on the fire.
Report on @Alphaschool Shadow day in Atlanta: well executed day in the life of a typical school day. Held at a hotel, but excellent setup with guides, and a classroom experience. Kids did not want to go (school on Saturday!?) but at the end of the day they loved it.
Highlights were the life skills, building things, and Alpha points. My son told me after: “we have to try hard things, even if you make a mistake it’s ok.”
They loaded them up with some educational toys they showed off at home, later.
I’m super interested in Timeback and wished I could have peeked at it and the apps they had them do. Glad we did it.
Now to come up with the dough, to pay for it! It’s as pricey as all the private schools here….
Charles Brian Quinn retweeted
The older I get, the more I realize that optimism is a competitive advantage. Not blind positivity. The belief that problems can be solved. That things can improve. That your actions matter. People who believe a better future is possible are the ones who create it.
