Lazy Sunday #13 - decisions under fear, boredom and playing tag for long-term memory

What is on today?

Men and women decide differently under stress, what Sundar Pichai thinks about at night (hint: it’s work) and why Garry Tan, the new CEO of YCombinator, made some decisions that could risk his reputation.

Something else is pretty clear: risks associated with producing digital products will keep decreasing.

Have fun!

Find my research: neuroscience

Gender fear

A peer-reviewed study suggests that women prefer immediate smaller rewards over bigger but delayed rewards when making decisions under a state of emotional distress (e.g. fear). Men do not seem to be affected as much.

The study claims that this might have potential evolutionary reasons. It might have made more sense to provide immediate rewards to escape a stressor (e.g. hunger, predator) to survive, especially with offsprings.

It is worth considering the outcomes of such a study and be used as a mental “tool” during e.g. salary negotiation or venture funding discussions.

Before you get all “gender-bias” at me, the sample size of the study is fairly small (308 people), so yes, there is a chance that similar experiments with a larger number of people show different results.

But there are other data points, seemingly correlating with the findings above: pay and funding gaps between genders undoubtedly exist. And this study could highlight one factor of many.

It might make sense to stop and ask, “why am I making this decision? What is my current state of emotional distress?” - irrespective of gender, by the way.

If you don’t want to read the complete study, I recommend to at least read the “Discussion” at the very end.

(PLOS)

In your fridge, on the look-out for a snack again?

The problem with an overly complex brain is the multitude of reasons for a certain behaviour.

For example, craving food does not have to be purely driven by hunger. “Dah, really” you say?

Correct, but you still go into the pantry and look for that chocolate bar or nuts after dinner, hating your scales days after, right?

While there are certainly triggers from the body to say “hey, we are low on energy [hungry] because you haven’t fed us for 7h, as you have been working on that stupid slide deck!”, there are also food-seeking neurons which are just a little bit overreactive and crave for a reward with no relation to hunger what-so-ever.

So sometimes it might make sense to stop in front of the fridge and ask yourself: “Which neuron cluster is triggering me now?” 😏

(UCLA)

What memories get into long-term memory?

Our brain experiences the world in short bursts of moment. We cognitively experience as in continuity, getting tricked by our very own brain.

But just think back - can you really remember every little bit of movement or sensory input? I guess you did not even feel the surface you are sitting on right now until I told you so.

A lab in the NYU found that our brain uses the time between input bursts and processing to mark incoming signals with electric tags, so-called electric wave-ripples. Memories with such specific tags get replayed during sleep over and over again (up to thousands of times per night) and thus consolidate into long-term memory.

What exactly causes the brain to mark specific memories is not objectively defined, as it probably depends on person to person? We also know that there are connections to the dopaminergic system, i.e. dopamine-high activities are often well remembered.

The question becomes: do we need to deliberately provide short moments of “consolidation time” when we try to learn new things for better long-term memory?

(NYU)

Find my research: office

Smart stacking of boredom

Boring tasks at work - time tracking, meeting notes, weekly reports. You get the point.

We are more likely to procrastinate and impact our productivity (’Well, let me get another coffee and I might start with it.” - ends up in another water cooler conversation…).

“Boring” means “reward is not enticing enough to get started”. Dopamine circuits doing their work. And we don’t do ours.

But we can work against it, according to this study.

If you stack “boring” and “not boring” after one another, you might give your motivation a boost.

Before and during a boring task, your dopamine levels might fall further - because the reward was not as expected. To get it back up again, it might make sense to do some work that is really “rewarding”. And then use the uplift to work through another “must-do” task.

I haven’t tried it yet, but sounds reasonable to me.

(University of Notre Dame)

On top of tech

Are AI and neuroscience drifting apart?

Every now the topic pops up in AI circles. Does AI, with its current success, really need input from neuroscience? Some say no, some say no - not any more.

There might be a truth in the middle: not for current technology in use (e.g. transformers are not necessarily based on neuroscientific fundamentals), but if AI wants to be more energy efficient (do more with the same energy consumption?) then yes.

The brain remains the most energy-efficient computing powerhouse.

New chip technology, similar to what Sam Altman’s Rain Neuropmorphic, tries to implement more neuroscience to leapfrog. We shall see.

The panel discussion at this year’s Cosyne 2024 Conference talks about exactly that. If you want to nerd out - have a look.

(Cosyne 2024: does AI need neuroscience?)

The era of production and productivity

Since starting Brainthrough, I have argued that the current advances in either / or tech and neuroscience will bring us a significant, and long-awaited, productivity boost.

It is not a question of if, but when.

Rex Woodbury, General Partner at Daybreak and publisher of a weekly newsletter called Digital Native, thinks along similar lines in his recent article.

The best tech will increase time to output without seriously jeopardizing quality, decrease entry barriers to produce content, reduce team sizes to get same output (even small teams can produce really good content - Youtube will see a boost in high-quality content!

(Digital Native)

Sundar Pichai talks risk-taking in big organizations

This is a direct link to Thursday’s deep dive into some of some realms of risk. If you haven’t read it - here you go.

At one point, I mentioned that for start-ups each high-risk decision gone might be a death sentence. But despite that, smaller companies to make high-risk decisions much quicker than enterprises.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, talked about something very similar in a recent interview at Stanford:

He also discussed the question of incentivizing decision-making and risk taking the right way. Not easy, I can tell you. Look at bankers and the resulting financial crash in 2008.

(Techcrunch)

Techstars is not alone: Y Combinator is reducing headcount

…this could be the headline of this FastCompany article. It is not.

YC is probably the most successful accelerator, backing companies like Twitch, Coinbase, AirBnB, Stripe, Dropbox, Rippling, and CEOs like Michael Seibel (founder of Twitch), Garry Tan. Even Sam Altman (you know that, OpenAI dude) and Brian Chesky (founder of AirBnB) were presidents.

But it is also difficult to get in. Standford-difficult.

Despite all of this, YC is not immune to changes in the economy.

Garry Tan, the new CEO, made changes such as reducing cohort sizes, removing late-stage investment vehicles, and reducing the number of partners.

Not all went down well, as it will always be the case.

Interestingly this was not such a public discourse compared to Techstars changes earlier this year. Or maybe LinkedIn and Twitter algorithms did “their job”.

Anyway, changes happen at all stages. Companies expand and contract. This is human (fortunately or unfortunately).

Both networks are very powerful, YC is probably the gold nugget on top of a big mountain and they are doing their job to support innovation and diversity in tech.

Finally, it is amazing what one can build in just over 15 years. YC’s first batch was Winter 2008. Have a look at the companies!

(FastCompany)

Misc but not least…

In many places around the world, draught is an issue. Living close to the deserts, e.g. in Africa, can mean that every dry inch of land will slowly be overtaken by sand. The Sahara has expanded about 10% over the last 100 years.

That might not sound like a lot, but it is almost 4x the size of the United Kingdom.

This documentary about the attempt to hold the desert back. A project financed by the UN.

Andrew Millison does an impressive job highlighting the challenges and opportunities in agriculture on his channel.

Hope you could learn something new today.

If you think somebody else would love to read this, feel free to forward or share this link: https://bit.ly/3J8m4Vi

If you think I should talk to somebody who could be beneficial to this newsletter, feel free to introduce me!

Other than that: happy Sunday and you will find me in your inbox next week.

Alex