Category: Notes

Prenotes:

1. The DSM is changing over time
2. Mental health is seeking to be normalized
   • I have a misremembered quote that I heard around the launch of the DSM-5.
     • Statement: “With these changes, almost half the population would have had a mental illness.”
     • Response: “We define physical sickness such that 90% of the population has been affected at some point in their lives, but that does not surprise us.”
3. Autism itself is undergoing some radical transformations as the community grows.

• “Person-first” (“a person with diabetes” vs “a diabetic person”)
• Symptoms must be present in childhood but may mature or change over time
• Lack of reciprocity in conversation
• Struggle with empathic empathy (extrapolating how others feel) but not with affective (feeling deeply for when you see pain)
• Quickly sharing deep, inappropriate information with near acquaintances
• Neural divergent have to use their prefrontal cortex to mask, causing more mental fatigue
• Reading body language is often not consistent and is easy to mask
• “Listen to what we say, not just” what we look like
• “Social motivation” is different from “social energy”
• “Social demands exceed available capacity”
•  Islands of rigidity
• Perhaps it is more about higher/lower reactivity instead of hyper/hypo activity
• Sensors
  • Hearing (including communication and non-communication sounds)
  • Smells
  • Proprioception
  • Vestibular
  • Interoception (“How do you feel?”)
• Autistics tend to have uneven skill distribution
• Autistics tend to meticulously piece together situations instead of using context cues
  • They can focus on the big picture but they default details
  • More intense focus, in general
• Systematizing

• Flavorful foods tend to also be environmentally good food
• Food memories drive a lot of culture
• “Flavor” is now achieved through post-harvest engineering
• 1950’s is when “super markets” cemented their place in society
• We don’t cook in America, we chop
  • (This makes sense; in other cultures, “cooking” is an all-day event where here, it needs to be under an hour)
• Price drove yield
• Shelf-life drove lower nutrition
• Uniformity drove out flavor
• Seasonality is a connection with nature
• Early, peak, late determines sugar and flavor profiles
• There is an inverse relationship between the plant’s ability to convert water into plant… the better it is at converting, the less the flavor
• Focus on flavor over labels
• Organic apples are sprayed with sulfur and copper
• Seek out the produce with character
• Stress improves flavor
  • Cold induces plants to increase their sugar content because sugar water freezes colder than regular water
• Less water is often a good thing
• Grow slow and steady
• “We no longer behave as a local species”
• As we globalize, we are shrinking our varieties of food
• Food transportation carbon footprint is much smaller than production
• What customer want to buy is more important than what you want to sell them
• Citrus is more flavorful, aromatic, and acidic when green
• Ripeness is determined by quickness of use
• The brain is initially energized by bold food but then shifts to wanting diversity
  • We do not tire of bland food nearly as fast as intense foods
• The only nature food that contains proteins, sugars, and fats all at once is breast milk
• Scale is not a bad thing
• We tend to consume whole packages, regardless of size

• Staff engineering is ambiguous; companies are still trying to figure out the role
  • Levels below are for growing autonomy
  • Levels above are for growing impact and responsibility
• “humaning” skills
• Titles signal the quality of the person you are working with
• Pillars
  • Big picture thinking
  • Project execution
  • Leveling up the org
• Avoid “local maximum” to ensure paths are best for the whole org
• TPMs focus on high-level coordination
• https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Microsoft,Amazon,Expedia&track=Software%20Engineer
• “Leadership” is not a distraction from the job, it is the job
• Management is different from leadership
• https://kind.engineering/
• Make sure to understand [and clarify if necessary] your scope
• “You don’t stay in your lane”
• Question: Depth or breadth first
• Things needed
  • Skills
  • Project management
  • Product management
  • People management
• “Everything you do has a high-opportunity cost”
• “You don’t plant grass in your only barrel”
• Ask, “What do I do here?” then document it; review with your manager
• Maps
  • “You are here”
  • Topographical
  • Treasure maps
• “Respect what came before”
  • (There is a fine balance between respecting what came before and pushing to new successes)
• Solve the problem, not just through code
• Team and company culture
  • How much autonomy will I have
  • How hard will it be to make progress
  • Do I need to mind myself
  • Open or secret
  • Oral or written culture
  • Formal or backdoor
  • Allocated or available resources
  • Crystalized (promotions come in turn) or liquid
  • Power, rules, or mission
  • Being out of the loop means you do not know how decisions are made
• Make sure your contributions fit into a larger narrative
• Focus on improvement, not revolution
• Eagerly give support to those trying to make improvements even if you disagree with their approach
• Align goal with sponsors
• Look for “objectives that are always true” (like covering costs or maintaining systems)
• Make sure people feel okay to disagree
• Ask, “Can anyone not live with this choice?” instead of, “Is everyone okay with this?”
• Make sure everyone knows that things will get hard
• Fish around for ulterior motives
• Make sure to connect concepts so people understand the context
• Add more nouns to be explicit on what is needed where
• Beware of “bike shedding”
• “Watermelon project” (all green on the outside but all red on the inside)
• “Wrong gets corrected, vague sticks around”
• Blockage
  • Understand
  • Explain
  • Find a work around
• Three bullets and a call to action
• “There is no such thing as a ‘temporary’ solution”
• You do not need to be the world’s best
• Own your skills and mistakes
• “Radiate intent” so no one is surprised by your movements
• Beware of junior engineers doing administrative work
• Optimize for maintenance, not creation
• Design to be decommissioned
  • Every system needs to be replaced some day
• Success is when other people want to work with you
• It is difficult to improve both management and technical skills
• It is okay to swing between technical and manager roles

• Heinz bought Weight Watchers
• Obesity is the second most common cause of death
• Type 2 Diabetes used to be called “Adult onset diabetes” but was renamed because so many kids have it
• Flavor is the original craving
• Flavor detection is the largest chapter of our genome
• Chickens needs more than corn to live
• Vitamins were discovered, revolutionized plant and animal growth
• Young animals lack the flavor of adults
• Fried chicken used to only need salt and pepper, now it needs all sorts of spices to flavor it up
• “Further processing” is when we add flavor back into things
• Chicken strips are in their way out because chicken nugget eaters are getting older and think strips are too tough
• Carbs and water are replacing flavor while letting things grow faster
• The importance of vine ripening is the energy to make sugars
• Imitation vanilla started with pine cones
• “Need states” track what people are looking for across demographics
• Restaurant kitchens are more like prep areas
• Raw meat and almost everything else has some flavoring
• Natural vs artificial flavoring is about the extraction method, not the chemicals themselves
• A hundred years ago, we used 0.5 pounds of spices per person per year, now it is close to 3.5 pounds
• Flavor dilution is affecting almost everything
• Food addicts crave food more and are satisfied lees
• Substance abuse is a continuum
• Making a narcotic more available increases addiction
• The human nose was not meant to sniff but to taste food
• Plants send caterpillar specific chemicals as they are being eaten
• Flavor cravings are learned and can be connected with nutrients
• “A little bit of something bad could be good”
• Anti-oxidant pills do not do much
• Flavors drive feels
• Left with natural food, children naturally balance their diets on their own
• “Throat burn” is a sign of good olive oil
• Artificial sweeteners are not reducing calorie consumptions
• Adding micronutrients confuses the body because we can no longer associate nutrients with food
• Glutathione makes things taste better but only if paired with other things
• The gut has taste sensors too
• Most animals stop eating to avoid an overdose, not because they are full
• Adding a fruity aroma to water makes it taste sweeter
• Appendix
  • Where did the flavor come from?
  • Try different foods
  • Eat foods that you find satisfying

• “Monkeys have shifted to the wrong peoples’ backs”
• Don’t let monkeys move
• Ask
  • Where is the monkey
  • Where should the monkey be
  • How do I shift it to where it belongs
• Treat everyone well
• Protect your best people first
• Assume good intentions
• Ignore excuses
• Try to not have barriers between you and someone else
• Give targeted feedback for underachievers
  • (This is to prevent them from spiring under your feedback)
• Try to not threaten
  • Only threaten when you mean it and can act on it
• Let them know how peers are responding
  • (A little bit of peer pressure is nice 😁)
• Ask if everything is all right before jumping into questions
• “Give anonymous public praise”
  • So people acting good get praise and people acting poorly become generally jealous
• Focus on correcting behavior, not changing minds
• Efforts matter more than results
• Offer to talk outside of working hours to filter “nonsense” requests
• Give permission to not volunteer (especially to high achievers)
• “Discover” errors together with good employees
• “Treat everyone well but not equally”
• Let people resent you but not your best people