Episode 10 - Resident Weirdos & Computational Curiosity with Sam Arbesman - EIR Live

Episode Transcript
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Sam Arbesman (00:00):
Send me your weirdos. Like, just interesting
people, interesting ideas,things that don't fit. Like,
send them my way. This is thekind of stuff that I love. This
is this is my catnip.

Ilya Tabakh (00:08):
Welcome to EIR Live, where we dive into the
lives and lessons ofentrepreneurs and residents. I'm
Ilya Tabakh, together with mycohost Terance Orr, ready to
bring you closer to theheartbeat of the innovation and
entrepreneurial spirit. Everyepisode, we explore the real
stories behind the ideas,successes, setbacks, everything
in between. For everyone fromaspiring EIRs to seasoned pros,

(00:31):
EIR Live is your gateway to thedepth of the entrepreneurial
journey and bringing innovativeinsights into the broader world.
Check out the full details inthe episode description.
Subscribe to stay updated andjoin us as we uncover what it
takes to transform visions intoventures. Welcome aboard. Let's
grow together. All right. Todaywe have an amazing and, know,

(00:55):
need I say special?
You know, all of our episodesare special in their own way.
But today, Sam Arbisman joins usand he's the first scientist in
residence that we've had. And infact, in sort of the preparation
for the episode, Terrance and Iwere talking, he's one of the
first scientists in residencethat we've ever run across. And
so kind of from the standpointof what's going on here, how

(01:19):
does that work? It's prettyexciting to be able to dive in
and really learn a little bitmore about kind of Sam's story,
how he got started, and thenultimately dive into what that
role means and go beyond.
So Sam, maybe we'll start withthe beginning. And we really

(01:40):
like to go really to thebeginning, of growing up in
Buffalo and things like that.But let's just talk about your
first chapter and that academicbackground and how you kind of
got started and then we may peelthat back a little bit and go
from there.

Sure. No, it's great to be talking with you
both. Thanks so much. This issuper exciting. Yeah, I guess I
can start by discussing a littlebit about little Sam and kind of
his origins.
And so, yeah, I grew up inBuffalo area. And in terms of, I
guess, kind of varioustouchstones and influences when
I was younger, certainly I wouldsay one big influence was my

(02:22):
grandfather. He lived to the ageof 99. He was a dentist. But he
also an artist and he was also alongtime reader of science
fiction.
So when you live that long, youbasically read science fiction
since like the modern dawn ofthe genre. So he I think he read
he read Dune when it wasserialized in a magazine. He was

(02:44):
like a lifelong reader of allthese different things. He read,
it's like Analog Science Fictionand Fact, one of these kind of
longtime science fictionmagazines, and he would hand me
shopping bags of old issues, andI would go and read them. And I
remember when I went to camp, Iwould bring a whole bunch of
these.
And so he really got me excitedabout not just science, but also

(03:06):
sort of science fiction, kind oflike the visions of the future
and kind of how we think aboutwhat the world might look like.
And so I was really excitedabout that. Another kind of
related early touchstone was theworld of Star Trek. And so my I
think my father grew up on theoriginal series and so I grew up
on Next Generation. And so I wasexposed to that from a very
young age and kind of seeingthese ideas and these stories

(03:29):
that are used as allegoriesabout our own time, but also
kind of how to think about thefuture and kind of what a
positive vision of the futuremight be.
Alongside this, I was, steepedin LEGOs and played with lots of
LEGOs, did a lot of stuff aroundthat, and then also was steeped
in technology. So my fatherhappened to be a very early

(03:49):
adopter of personal computers,and so we so our first family
computer was the CommodoreVIC-twenty. Actually, so William
Shatner was actually thepitchman for it, I think he
referred to it as the WonderComputer of the 1980s and so it
kind of overshadowed by theCommodore sixty four, but the
Commodore VIC-twenty was thiskind of boxy keyboard setup that

(04:13):
you connected to yourtelevision. You stored
information on this modifiedtape recorder called a Commodore
dataset. It was prettyimpressive and it was actually
even to when I was very little,I didn't know how to program or
anything like that.
But because early computers, andyou could, I guess you could
actually purchase, computerprograms like on cassette tapes

(04:36):
or whatever it was, but one ofthe really common ways in which
you acquired computer programswas you would type them in
manually. Like these are calledtype in programs. Think there
would be magazines of pages andpages of code. And I have a
clear memory of like sittingwith my father and him like
typing it in. Actually, not sureI have that many clear memories

(04:58):
of that.
I remember seeing errors. It'slike when he would make mistakes
and there would be some weirdglitch thing or whatever like
that. And I began to learn aboutthe kind of this clear
relationship between text andthe program and kind of how
things worked. Then we at acertain point several years
later we moved to the Macintoshand I guess we've actually been

(05:19):
like an Apple Macintosh familysince then to varying degrees.
But another touchstone kind ofrelated to this was because my
father was affiliated with alocal university, we got
internet access.
And so internet access, this waslike really pre web. I actually,
I think I still have the, ourfamily's first edition of the

(05:41):
Internet for Dummies and theentire thing, so it's like many,
many pages. I think there's liketwo pages about the web because
it was so new and such a kind ofside thing. But I remember when
our first download of, I don'tknow, downloading like a
translation of Plato's Republicfrom like Project Gutenberg and
jumping for joy and this thingtook like twenty minutes for
like a tiny text file. So as akid, I was steeped in these very

(06:07):
deeply science y and nerdy andtechnological ideas and kind of
thinking about the future.
So those are the kind of thingsthat I really wanted to study.
And so when I went on tocollege, I ended up majoring in
computer science and biology,trying to really think about, I
was actually very interested intrying to understand the origins
of life and evolutionarybiology, but I was also very,

(06:28):
very interested in thinkingabout how these things, how
biology and other areas could bemodeled using mathematics and
computational models andcomputer programs. And I was
also just very interested indoing research and I really
wanted to become a scientist andkind of continue on in that

(06:48):
area. So after undergrad, wentto graduate school and got a PhD
in computational biology. And soI initially was going to do
things around origins of lifeand evolutionary biology, but I
was also part of thisinterdisciplinary fellowship
program around what weredescribed as like nonlinear and

(07:10):
dynamical systems or kind ofthese complex systems where it's
looking at how systems of hugenumbers of interacting parts
interact, and then in doing so,yield these sort of emergent
behaviors.
Like there is something to besaid for a network that there
are the structure of network andits behavior sometimes cannot be

(07:31):
necessarily understood by justthe individual parts. It's kind
of when these things allinteract, you get these new
behaviors. You might get whetherit's like flocking birds or ants
in an ant colony or how allthese computers interact in the
internet or certain things inbiology like the nature of a
cell. These are all complexsystems and this fellowship

(07:51):
brought together people from Ithink like sociology and physics
and biology. There might havebeen I think like applied math.
So there are all these differentpeople in these different
domains and I realized, oh thisis an unbelievably powerful set
of tools, these kind ofmathematical and computational
tools. This is the kind of thingthat I want to really end up
studying. And so even though Iwas in computational biology, my

(08:13):
dissertation actually ended uphaving no biology in it. Kind of
got did all the coursework inevolutionary biology and
biology, and I said I want to godo this other stuff about
networks of individuals incities and how innovation occurs
and all these other kinds ofthings. And my committee
basically said, if you want togo off and do this weird thing,
like you've taken all thecoursework, so like by all

(08:35):
means, like maybe this is likeshooting yourself in the foot,
but it's the use.
You seem to be wanting toactually do this. And so I said,
great, I'm going go off and dothat. And so, so I did the PhD.

And maybe just to jump back a little bit.

Yeah, sure.

I'm in sort of strikes me a little bit and I
maybe have found this in my ownkind of beginning story also. In
some ways, I got lucky to besort of raised in the age of I
don't know if I'll call it likewonder. Right. But there is sort
of all of these pockets of kindof new and different and

(09:08):
complex. Sounds like, you know,in your background, having
Legos, having sort of theInternet before it was fully
kind of formalized and packaged,you know, because the Internet
like two point zero and threepoint zero pretty
commercialized.
And so there wasn't a lot ofloose wires. And so in some

(09:30):
ways, at least I benefited frombeing able to get some little
shocks when I touched the wrongwire and play around with some
stuff and see, oh, that doesn'twork. Or hey, you know, and it
sounds like there's a little bitof that in your story. I'm
wondering, you know, I know thathad a big in hindsight on my

(09:50):
both curiosity and also probablyknowledge that things don't
always have to happen, you know,in scripted, prescribed kind of
easy bake recipe way. And so I'mcurious on just kind of your
very high level observationsthere.

Yeah, no, definitely these sort of
wondrous things were kind ofmaybe not tainted by as many
commercial endeavors. Certainlyearly computing stuff was just
very collaborative, maybe in ormaybe the right word is like

(10:27):
there was almost like a gifteconomy where people were kind
of sharing things. It wasn'tquite like open source. Open
source was certainly common bythose times, I'm thinking like
early days of the Mac, there wasjust this massive shareware and
freeware community where peoplewere just trying things out and
giving things away and sharingthings and letting people try
out different pieces ofsoftware. Certainly the early

(10:47):
internet, it was a lot lessslick, but it was a lot easier
to get involved with it.
So I remember building websites.My websites weren't pretty, but
I mean, be honest, as people onthe table have noticed, like
none of the websites were prettyduring this time because
everyone was just trying thingsout. And I can remember like
using GeoCities and these otherkinds of things, and so there

(11:07):
was this very easy on ramp to alot of these different kinds of
things. And the same thing likein maybe this period of around
like the 1990s or so, there wasalso just a lot of really
interesting ideas at theintersection of computer science
and science itself andtechnology. So you have these
kind of areas of complexsystems.

(11:29):
So for example, like thecomputer game company Maxis, the
maker of SimCity, was doingthese unbelievable things, which
really, and I think about this,I think back to it now, one of
the questions I often have is,could there be a Maxis nowadays?
Or was it kind of in thisspecial moment where people were
thinking about complexityscience and gaming and the

(11:49):
nature of cities and urbandesign and the Gaia hypothesis
or whatever it was, because itwas Sim Earth. And played the
original version of SimCity andit was amazing. And I was just
kind of exposed to these kindsof things and you also had
people trying things withcellular automata and like John
Horton Conway's Game of Life orFractals. It just felt very

(12:11):
playful and weird.
And that being said, on the onehand, maybe it's not like for
the most I think for most peoplewho engage with science and
technology or even the Internetnowadays, it might not feel that
way, but I do actually thinkthat there is this undercurrent

(12:31):
of a lot of these kinds ofwondrous things still. And so
actually there's a number ofpeople who kind of talk about
this, like, for the Internet,it's like the poetic web, where
people are just doing weirdexperiments and, like, trying
weird things with with HTML andjust kind of experimenting with
ideas and or building smallthings. Actually this is and and
we can discuss this more, but,like, this is actually one of
the things that I that I discussin in my forthcoming book, the

(12:54):
magic of code, which isalongside this kind of
utilitarian feel of computing,there's always been this kind of
enchanted, wondrous feel aswell. Even back in the earlier
days, I mean, you could say likemy childhood had all these
wonderful things, but the truthis that was also the same time
as when, I don't know, peoplewere playing with Microsoft

(13:15):
Office and certain things likethat.
Was like spreadsheet. Beingsaid, I actually think
spreadsheets are one of these Idon't necessarily use them that
often. They are one of the mostpowerful on ramps to coding for
non coders in kind of thisunexpected way. And so they're
and we can talk aboutspreadsheets as well. But you're

(13:35):
right.
Like, the spreadsheet is muchmaligned and there's the world
of enterprise software andspreadsheets, but alongside that
were all these other kind ofwonderful things. And so I do
think I happen to be exposed toa lot of these exciting things
and being able program and delvedeeply into the world of
screensavers and just kind ofthat weird playful place. But I

(13:57):
do actually think all that stuffis always there no matter what
time you are growing up, youkind of just have to search for
it. And I feel very fortunatethat I was exposed to it at an
early age and I was able to findit and maybe it was a little bit
easier to find. But I do thinkit's kind of always there you
look.

Yeah, well, and the thing that I was sort of picking
up for me, a lot of thatexploration was really sort of
curiosity driven and sort offolks being in some cases just
curious, in other cases, in asearch for understanding, in
another case, of connecting thedots for stuff. And in some

(14:33):
ways, the way that you weretalking about and my experience
also with kind of chaoticsystems communities, if you're
either talking about theSouthwest Research Institute or
IASCA or sort of some of theseweird places where chaotic and
complex systems have beenstudied over the decades at this
point, I find that a lot of thefolks show up there in like a
similar search. So that's sortof one of the reasons I wanted

(14:56):
to pick at it because as youstarted talking about sort of
these communities, cause they'revery interdisciplinary and they
sort of bring a lot of differentperspectives to be able to put,
you know, sort of the piecestogether to understand what's
actually going on here.

Oh yeah. Actually you mentioned with like the
Santa Fe Institute for ComplexSystems, I actually spent a
summer there as an undergrad, sothat was definitely part of my
formative times in terms ofthinking about these ideas and
just seeing this intellectualferment and going back to this
curiosity of just people saying,Okay, there are all these things
around us. There are these weirdphenomena. We can either take

(15:30):
them as they are or really tryto interrogate what makes them
so. And are there relativelysimple mathematical rules or
computational, like, methods ofactually trying to generate
these kinds of phenomena.
And it turns out if you abstractaway a lot of the details, you
can do these kinds of things.And of course the details still
matter, but it's stillunbelievably powerful. But yeah,

(15:53):
but I agree that there is alsothis deep power to being
curiosity driven, and that'scertainly been a through line in
my career. But I mean, goingback to like Little Sam, I think
about it. I spent probably aninordinate amount of time
getting collection so there wasa writer Martin Gardner.
He wrote this column forScientific American, I think it

(16:16):
was called Mathematical Games,but it was about kind of this
recreational mathematics, and sothere were things around like
cellular automata and just kindof other weird things, and he
eventually collected thesecolumns into volumes. And I
remember going to the libraryand just reading like, devouring
these different books and just,like, finding all this weird
stuff in the world. And I yeah.And and also just more
generally, just going to thelibrary and, like, yeah,

(16:37):
certainly public libraries wereanother major touchstone of my
childhood and, like, andbasically just combing the
stacks and the shelves trying tofind weird interesting things
oftentimes in kind of like thescience area or whatever. And
and and just, yeah, pulling thisstuff off off the shelves and
just being delighted by it.
And I I really think that kindof non directed curiosity, or I

(17:00):
would say driven by curiosityrather than a specific
direction, is an incrediblypowerful way of finding
interesting things. But theneventually, kind of going back
to also my network scienceapproach, all these different
things are going to eventuallybe connected and you kind of
just have to let them simmer fora little while, but there's a
great deal of power in that.

Terrance Orr (17:19):
You know, I want to double down on this theme of
curiosity because there's athere's a theme already starting
to emerge. Even though you'reour first scientist in
residence, there's this theme ofexposure, access, and curiosity
leading to a bridge to otherthings or weird things that
people will do in in theirlives, in their in their
careers. And you you mentionedsomething earlier, which was,

(17:42):
you know, I said all of thesethings to this, professor in in
the university, and I said, youwanna do all of these weird
things? Go go ahead and have atit and talk to us about some of
those weird things that youstarted to do and tinker with
versus taking a non linear sortof academic route.

Yeah, so sir, I mean certainly there was kind of
were the topics I was studying.So for example, rather than kind
of focusing very deeply oncertain aspects of
bioinformatics or evolutionarybiology, I was jumping around
and studying how innovationoccurs in cities or I think I
was looking at collaborationamong scientists and trying to

(18:19):
quantitatively understand that.But I also had research that
eventually was part of mydissertation about how language
is processed in the mind andactually using kind of these
network science models tounderstand how networks based on
similar sounding words actuallyaffects how language is
processed. I collaborated withcognitive scientist on that.

(18:40):
Super fascinating.
Then I also had, I think, achapter or two on hitting
streaks in baseball and justthis totally different area. And
it was just whether it's likesomeone asking a question or
reaching out or I just kind offind something interesting.
Yeah, there were all thesedifferent directions. But I
think but also in addition sothat was the kind of the topic

(19:00):
approach. But I also then begana little bit when I was in
graduate school, but especiallyafter I got my PhD and started
doing a postdoc, I also startedexperimenting with, I guess,
different modes of publication.
So traditionally in science andacademia, you publish scientific
papers. I was publishing some ofthose scientific papers in

(19:21):
journals and things like that.But I also was really interested
in writing for popularaudiences. I felt that there was
a great deal of power inengaging with the public, being
able to explain ideas, but alsogoing back to kind of this idea
of like connecting lots ofdifferent things together, you
can do that in a way for generalaudiences that you often can't

(19:43):
do for academics, where I couldwrite something about, I think I
had I wrote something about likefractals, but also something
related to like movies. It waslike fractals and mathematics at
the movies or and then I writtenyeah, you can just combine
things in a different sort ofway.
And so especially during mypostdoc, I began writing

(20:07):
articles for the ideas sectionof the Boston Globe, where it
was kind of like people writingabout big ideas, and I started
writing essays for them, whichwas a lot of fun. I think I
wrote a little bit for TheAtlantic, and then actually
began writing a book my firstbook for general audiences,
which is about kind of the rulesand regularities behind how
knowledge changes, kind of likehow science changes over time.

(20:30):
This book was called The HalfLife of Facts. And so I began
writing this during my postdocand quickly realized that due to
kind of my interdisciplinaryinterests and the fact that I
didn't just want to write forother academics, but I wanted to
write for general audiences asthat these are the kind of
things that are not a good fitfor an academic career. It was a

(20:53):
lot of fun.
I had a great time, but I alsoknew that I was definitely not
grooming myself for atraditional academic career. It
took me a little while torealize that and so actually
there was a certain point whereI thought I'm going to still
kind of do the traditionalacademic route. Went on the job
market, began looking at facultypositions. I think a dean at a
school at one point when I wasbeing interviewed said, We like

(21:15):
you a lot, Sam, but how wouldyou fit into our department? And
I began thinking, Okay, isprobably a sign that academia
might not be a fit for me.
Luckily I've since been able tokind of carve out a career kind
of adjacent to a lot of thosethings, But I do think that
trying to pigeonhole yourself Imean sorry, I'll take a step

(21:37):
back. Deep expertise in kind ofplaying according to certain
roles or categories can be very,very powerful and very, very
useful. I think, and I don'twant to discount that, but I
also think that refusing to bepigeonholed and trying other
weird kinds of things can alsobe really, really valuable. And
I think it's sort of it isanother way to build a career.

(22:00):
It is far less clear.
There's not a map or a guidebookor a clear direction, and it can
be often very frustrating, butit can also be very rewarding
because you're then allowed todo the things that you want to
do. If you want to do some deepexpertise thing and that accords
very nicely with some specificrole, that's great. But I

(22:22):
realized that the way I wantedto do things and the kinds of
things I wanted to do did notaccord with that. And luckily,
I've been able to kind of carveout that path.

I just want to jump in real quick. You know, in some
ways, because you had so manysort of translational and
interdisciplinary encountersearly, you sort of were already
kind of playing the role that wesee many entrepreneurs in
residence play, where they havesort of a background or a
context and they sort of bringit into another land and then
they translate. Right. And realtranslation isn't about just,

(22:53):
you know, sort of saying, here'sword for word how it plays out.
But you have to sort of, youknow, kind of bring in the
context and the vocabulary and,you know, help people really
understand.
So I just want to sort ofhighlight that part. I think the
other part that I didn't realizeuntil way later is valuable is
operating in that environmentand understanding motivation and

(23:14):
understanding how people kind ofengage and where whether it's
interest or kind of whateverdrives a person to because in
research endeavors, youultimately have to have willing
participants that arecollaborating actively to make
forward progress. And that, youknow, sort of that collaborating
actively in that bandwidthattached to each project is sort

(23:36):
of a dynamic. It's not a staticthing. And it's not money
typically, right?
Or salary even or whatever,although that that plays a role.
But I think it's reallyimportant, you know, because
I've seen a lot of folks jump upand talk about university
programs not commercializingtechnology and things like that.
And I think a lot of it isbecause of sort of a fundamental

(23:57):
misunderstanding of motivationand alignment of incentives. And
I think it's, you know, sort ofimportant. And I just wanted to
highlight that that experienceand spending enough time, you
know, and having enough at batsthere is really, you know, kind
of an interesting thing and isimportant later when you go into
startup entrepreneurship, thingslike that.
The motivations are a littledifferent, but aligning those

(24:19):
things and understanding them,found to be very helpful, at
least in my encounters andcareer.

I love that. And I think that kind of alignment is
also there are some similaritiesalso in terms of the way in
which you think about this kindof like role of translation
because you have to be able tosay not just topic wise, okay,
this kind of thing is actuallysomething else you're familiar
with, but also here's thereason, like here's the

(24:46):
incentives that I'm operatingunder or this other person's
operating under, and here's howthey are actually in accord with
some other person. You kind oftry to do this kind of
translational role. But Iactually, going back to the
translation stuff, I oftendescribe in my own role as
scientist in residence, we cankind of discuss what it entails.
But to a certain degree, itinvolves this importexport of

(25:08):
ideas and people.
It's kind of like, I'm notnecessarily innovating new
things specifically, but I'mfinding, oh, this other area has
been thinking about this kind ofthing you might not necessarily
realize it exists, or thisperson could be really valuable
to this other thing that thisother person is doing, And being
able to kind of create thattranslation or making people

(25:28):
understandable to each other orhelping them find these ideas, I
think can be really valuable.And actually and related to, and
maybe partly one of the reasonsI'm kind of more comfortable
with it, going back to whatyou're saying, I've been doing
this for a long time, of in thiskind of uncomfortable in between
things, in the world of networkscience and complexity science,
these worlds draw togetherpeople from lots of different

(25:50):
fields. And I can actuallyremember when I was, during my
postdoc, I think I was part ofsome email list about network
science and it drew people fromlots of different fields. I feel
like fairly often, like everyweek or two, someone would say,
oh, how anyone know how to makesome, like measure the
relationship between the networknodes or some mathematical

(26:10):
thing?
And then someone wouldinvariably pipe up like, oh,
this has been, this was donelike thirty years ago in
sociology or some other field orwhatever it was, and no one just
knew. And so there is thisreally interesting thing that
you have to be willing to engagewith other domains because there
are often these very clearsimilarities and like one thing

(26:31):
can map onto another, but weoften don't feel that and that
being that kind of intermediarycan be very valuable.

Well, and there's some really well known examples
like calculus, right? And thenthere's a lot of less known
examples. And part of theexcitement about sort of
connecting the unconnectedthat's possible through some of
this kind of AI and LLM stuff isthat especially at the
intersection of disciplines,there's a lot of still untilled

(27:01):
knowledge, if you will. So Ithink there's going to be a lot
more than just us weirdos cansurface, which is actually a
funny deal.

So in my first book, The Half Life of Facts,
actually discussed there's thisinformation scientist by the
name of Don Swanson. And he hasthis unbelievable paper called,
it's called Undiscovered PublicKnowledge, and I think it was
written in the mid 1980s. Butbasically, his he creates this
thought experiment. He says,Okay, imagine somewhere in the
scientific literature, there's apaper that says A implies B, and

(27:32):
then somewhere else in thescientific literature could be
another a similar subspecialty,could be a totally different
field, there's another paperthat says B implies C. And so if
you read both, you would say,Oh, maybe actually A implies C.
You can kind of combine themtogether. But because no one has
actually read these two thingsand combined them, there is this
undiscovered public knowledge.And so he wasn't content kind of
leaving it as a thoughtexperiment. He decided to

(27:53):
actually use the cutting edgetechnology of the day, which was
like keyword searches in somemedical database, so well before
LLMs and things like that. Andhe was actually able to make
medical advances.
And I think he actually ended uppublishing a paper in a medical
journal about the relationshipbetween, I think, consuming fish
oil and helping reduce some sortof circulatory condition. Even

(28:15):
though and he was an informationscientist, he wasn't coming at
this as a physician. And so andthat was just like a quick proof
of concept. And of course, sincethen, we have all these
unbelievable tools to try tosurface more of this
undiscovered public knowledge.So, yeah, I mean, we can try to
do some of it, but I definitelythink more and more as science
grows exponentially, and there'sjust so much more literature

(28:35):
than we can possibly imagine andpossibly read, we need to work
in partnership with our machinesto do this kind of scientific
and technological innovation.

Absolutely, guys. Well, let's talk about your
connectivity, right? Andspeaking of translation and
connecting things, like, let'stalk about your bridge to the
scientist in residence role.Right? At a very well known
venture capital firm, your yourrole today is basically being a
connective tissue, right, ofideas and peoples for emerging

(29:03):
science areas and things thatyou like to weird out on anyway,
Sam.
So tell us, A, how you how theroll about, you know, came about
at Lux Capital. How did youbecome a scientist in residence
and what do you do there? Walkus through your day to day.

Sure. Yeah. So I joined Lux as their scientist in
residence now about a decadeago. So I've been with them for
a while, for a pretty long time.And I had known so one of the co
founders of Lux, Josh Wolfe, heand I had known each other for a
number of years and I had beenhelping them out with various

(29:38):
ideas and topics.
And before I joined Lux, I waspreviously at the Kaufman
Foundation, so it's a bigphilanthropic foundation devoted
to entrepreneurship, innovation,education, and at the time they
had a research and policydivision certificate, an in
house think tank. I'd beenworking for them. It was kind of
this nice bridge between mecoming from academia to kind of

(30:00):
actually being in the real worldand doing things around
entrepreneurship. And so atKaufman that had kind of given
me my first taste of the worldof startups and the world of
venture kind of from theoutside. At least from the
outside, I had thought, oh, theventure world could be a place
where someone who's a kind ofmore generalist, kind of a
little bit more weird, could fitwell.

(30:22):
And so after I left the KaufmanFoundation, I had been working
on my second book, then oncethat was kind of in a good
enough place to kind of thinkabout the next thing, I began
thinking, okay, what should I donext? And I thought maybe the
venture capital world could besomething interesting or a
possibility. And so I wastalking to Josh Wolfe about this

(30:44):
and we kind of created this ideaof scientists in residence. And
it was initially very much anexperiment. I guess it's been a
decade, so hopefully theexperiment has been deemed a
success.
But one of the things that Irealized since and once I joined
Luxe and now having been therefor ten years, certainly being
at Luxe has vastly exceeded myexpectations and it's an

(31:06):
unbelievable environment andunbelievably intellectually
fertile and there's so manyideas and things like that, but
I also now know that other thanLux, basically no other firm
would know what to do with me,and so I was very, very
fortunate that I kind of endedup with the firm that really
kind of got me. But yeah, so interms of what I do, I would say

(31:26):
the way to think about my roleis I survey the landscape of
science and technology. And Lux,we operate at the frontier, and
so I survey this landscape and Itry to find interesting ideas at
that frontier. Oftentimes, wouldsay the way I operate is I'm not
doing the investment, and so I'meither upstream or downstream

(31:47):
from investment. So downstream,I might find ideas or people or
topics that could be relevant toour portfolio of companies that
we've already invested in.
But much more often, I'm engagedupstream from investment, kind
of like finding ideas that aremaybe not ready for investment,
or maybe are just kind of areasor communities that we want to

(32:07):
be involved with. Sometimesthose areas maybe will never be
good investment ideas, butthey're just kind of interesting
communities that we want to kindof bring into the orbit of Lux,
and so a lot of what I do takesthe form of, I mean, sometimes
finding potential people that wemaybe want to invest in, but
often it's a lot of writing andspeaking on behalf of Lux, but
just engaging with thesecommunities and bringing them

(32:29):
into the orbit of Lux. And sothe kinds of things that I've
explored are everything fromcomputational tools for thought
to certain things around AI andcoding, certain things around
nontraditional researchorganizations. We can talk more
about that, but that'sdefinitely one thing I think
about. But kind of just tryingto find interesting area and

(32:50):
actually, I mentioned earlierthe idea of the poetic web.
The poetic web is certainly nota good business investment, and
certainly not a ventureinvestment, but it happens to
have some of those interestingpeople around. And and these
people are great to have kind ofin the orbit of of the of the
kinds of things that Lux isdoing. And so those are the
kinds of things that I spend alot of my time exploring. I

(33:11):
definitely so in terms of morepractically, I have this Trello
board of all these ideas thatI'm thinking about. I'm jumping
from them sometimes like everyhour to hour, talking to
interesting people, reading aton, writing, just reaching out
to interesting weird people whoare thinking about things that I
didn't even know existed andthen just learning about them.

(33:31):
So yeah, it really allows me tokind of scratch that curiosity
itch and then kind of bringthose things that I'm curious
about into the orbit of Lux.

You know, what's really interesting is that sort
of a I'm always not caught offguard, but surprised how folks
are militant about efficiencyversus resiliency. Right. And
there's kind of the operatorsthat are really focused on
throughput efficiency, you know,no waste, that kind of thing.

(34:04):
But also, you know, definitelywithin my biological history,
but even within my professionalhistory, I've also seen folks
like the A. I.
Community come out of researchmode and go into scale mode.
Right. And folks like thecomputer engineering and
computer science community gofrom algorithm mode to, you

(34:25):
know, kind of value at scalemode. And so it's really
interesting to sort of thinkabout, you know, I think the
role you described is one of thepockets that is sort of doubling
down and maybe mapping,identifying, giving a little bit
of light to where some of thisresiliency lives. But yeah, it's

(34:45):
just it's interesting to thinkabout because I think that, you
know, maybe seven years ago, tenyears ago, we would have had a
different discussion about sortof the AI and computer science
community and what theircommercial impact is on the
world.
I'm curious how you kind ofthink about that and whether
that sort of rings true with youor not.

It definitely rings true. I mean, the way I
think about this is I thinkthere's a lot of these kind of
like slow simmering ideas thathopefully will eventually become
relevant. So like for examplewith I mentioned like the Tools
for Thought community. Thiscommunity and depending on how
you count it, like it's beenthinking about some of these
ideas for decades. Maybe in thepast few years it's become more

(35:29):
prominent, but like these thingshave been around and so and the
same thing with AI.
Like these kind of ideas,they've been around for a long
time. Actually even if you lookat like computer magazines from
like the 80s and 90s, like thereare advertisements for things
that are pretty rudimentaryneural networks, but the kinds
of things that we think aboutnow. And so these ideas are not
necessarily new, they have beendeveloped and maybe they're

(35:51):
qualitatively different andquantitatively different, but
there is this kind of clearertrajectory and being able to
take the time to explore thesethings that don't have that
immediate payoff, kind of likehaving a little bit of slack in
the system, I think is reallypowerful. And this is kind of
more broadly, I think, lot aboutthe need for outlier roles in
organizations. Because it'sgreat that we have experts and

(36:15):
people kind of very focused ontheir specific role, I think
that's very important.
But if everyone in a company oran organization becomes kind of
so busy and specialized thatthey don't have that bandwidth
for exploration, then theorganization might not
necessarily be able to be asresilient or adaptive to the
things that are going to bechanging. So one of the ways I

(36:38):
think about and so certainly,yeah, you want to have space for
randomness and kind of longertime horizons, and I certainly
think of my role kind of in thiscategory, but one of the ways
more broadly I think about thisis also in the context of
there's this great book by KenStanley and Joel Lehman called
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned.And basically the idea behind it
is, and it's from certain ideaswithin computer science and

(37:00):
evolutionary computation andoptimization, but when you have
some high dimensional searchspace, some really complicated
thing you're trying to optimizefor, oftentimes going directly
for it is not the right way tooperate. Rather, what you need
to do is have this undirectedapproach where you kind of just
focus on interestingness andnovelty and kind of collect

(37:21):
individual what what they referto as stepping stones.
And then and then these steppingstones that are kind of
interesting, you eventuallyrecombine them. And so and maybe
this is just a way of me kind ofjustifying my far less
systematic and more undirectedapproach, but I really do think
there is a great deal of powerin kind of taking the time to
follow your curiosity, whatseems interesting, and
especially from anorganizational level, having

(37:44):
space within an organizationthat for individuals or maybe a
team of people who are kind ofoutside that core function who
are just doing that kind ofweird stuff or being willing to
entertain ideas that are not yetin the mainstream, that can be
really powerful. Which is whyand maybe this is kind of just
like an overly contrarianstreak, but oftentimes when
something becomes very popular,I almost just like

(38:07):
physiologically, like, no, no,I'm done with that. I need to go
on to the next thing. And I trynot to overcome that, or I try
to I try not to always do that,But I think you you sometimes
need people like that in anorganization who are always
looking for the weird thing, notnecessarily the next thing,
because you really can't predictwhat is going to be the next
thing.
But if you follow your curiosityand maybe cultivate a sense of

(38:28):
sense of taste on just weirdinteresting things, then some of
those things will pay off, somewill not. I mean I've gone deep
in rabbit holes of just thingsthat I think are really
interesting, and they areinteresting. I think they're
legitimately interesting.They're not necessarily going to
become like the next big thing,But I definitely think that it's
valuable to kind of have thatspace in an organization.

Yeah, I think what's interesting is the how do
you where I see a lot oforganizations kind of miss at
what you're talking about isthey don't sort of understand
how the pieces could potentiallyfit together because there's
sort of a both cultural andoperational posture on what we
do here and what we don't dohere. There isn't, for example,

(39:12):
university research withcorporates, right? There's sort
of a misalignment on where kindof the market is and sort of
what the goal of engagement is.And so it's interesting to sort
of think about how can peoplenavigate that a little bit from
the metacognition of how do youget different types of people to

(39:34):
be able to work together, right?Or at least understand that,
hey, this is my lane.
This is your lane. Here's someoverlap. You know, here's a way
we can all row in the samedirection, at least the same
quadrant, if not the samedirection.

Well and that's there's the kind of well known
dichotomy of like the hedgehogand the fox, which is kind of
I'd say, so Isaiah Berlin, thephilosopher, he kind of
developed this by analogy withhe used it based on, I think it
was like an ancient Greek poetwhere it's like the hedgehog or
like the fox knows many thingsbut the hedgehog knows one big
thing or whatever the poeticline is. And he says, Okay, this

(40:10):
is an interesting way ofcategorizing thinkers, where
there's kind of like the foxeswho are maybe jumping from thing
to thing or have multipledifferent mental models, and the
hedgehog has one big idea thatkind of organizes the things
they do. And I feel like,especially when it comes to the
entrepreneurial ecosystem,oftentimes startups, they have
to be hedgehog like to a certaindegree because you have to be

(40:31):
like founders have to bemonomaniacally focused on the
success of their organization.While certainly at Venture, they
have a little bit more space tobe Fox like. So I think that
being said, there are many VCfirms that would still not know
what to do with me, as Imentioned earlier, but luck
certainly leans into kind of theFox like nature, the fact that
they are willing to have me.
But I do think also, especiallyas an organization gets larger,

(40:55):
they need to create space forboth hedgehogs and foxes
recognize it as such and say,Okay, like, these are both
really important roles. It's notlike, Oh, we need one or the
other, or we need like, only thehedgehogs are the most
important, but occasionallywe'll just kind of throw in some
fox like kind of stuff. Like,no, to really be able to do

(41:17):
everything well under conditionsthat are maybe not changing as
much, Hedgehogs work reallywell. But going back to the
resilience kind of thing, whenthings are changing really
rapidly or there are lots ofunknowns or we can't really
figure out what that directionof progress is going to look
like, then you need a few foxesin there. And being able to have
both of them allows anorganization to adapt well, and

(41:40):
thrive.

And just to double down on this point, change is
hard for large organizations, aswe both know, especially as
they're growing. And it'scertainly hard for them to
incentivize entrepreneurialpeople inside those
organizations in in ways thatthe external market can, as I've
seen time and time again. Andit's interesting because it
speaks to sort of the need thatyou talked about earlier for

(42:02):
outlier roles in organizations.And and in many regards, you're
not only the the first scientistin residence that we've we've
spoken to, but also you've alsoheld the in residence role
longer than anybody that we'veever spoken to. And I think
that's unique in a sense thatyou didn't feel the need to go
anywhere else to to diversifyyour career.
So you've you've built aportfolio career inside of Lux,

(42:26):
doing and tinkering withdifferent things and exploring
different ideas. So I almostlook at your role in three parts
as part ecosystem builder, partinternal r and d almost to to
lux, if you will, and almostpart sort of connectivity to the
ecosystem as it relates tosourcing interesting people and
communities and ideas, whichsort of leans itself into the

(42:47):
the ecosystem building sort ofcapacity. So as you think about
all of these balls that you havein the air and you're juggling
these different things inside ofLuxe, in in the the resident
weirdo role, as you would phraseit, Sam, how do you evaluate,
you know, like, things that arejust way out there, you know,
like, what might be feasible inin in in some time period versus

(43:12):
things that might not be? Like,can you give us a little bit
more around like under the hoodaround how you think through
ideas? And I know you don't havea systematic way of how you do
it, right?
So high level.

I would say one of the things I've realized is that
I'm not very good at predictingthe future. I like thinking
about the future and I havemaybe a vision of what I want
the future to look like, but interms of being able to predict
it or forecast, that's notnecessarily my strength. And so

(43:48):
to a certain degree, and I thinkabout those kinds of things from
time to time, but I'm lessinterested in being able to
forecast where like what isgoing to be happening and more
kind of just finding the thingsthat excite me and sometimes up
upend my expectations. And sofor example, I mentioned this

(44:11):
like poetic web earlier. Thatcertainly upends my expectations
of this kind of like corporatekind of like walled garden
approach to the internet that weoften see right now where it's
like, okay, everything is kindof within like various social
media sites or kind of run bylarge organizations, but then

(44:32):
under the hood there's somepeople just doing some weird
stuff and being playful and thatfeels different.
That feels kind of this likecounter trend to the kinds of
things that I would normallysee. Now I don't know if it's
going to be something that isgoing to take the world by
storm. It probably will not be,but it's still something that
excites me, it surprises me, andit's worth exploring. So I would

(44:53):
say those are the kind ofexamples that I often try to
kind of just take. Another wayto think about this in terms of
trying to find these things isfor all that search engines are
really powerful and LLMs andGenerator.ai are doing some
really interesting things,sometimes one of the best ways

(45:15):
to understand a topic or tolearn about new people or new
ideas is through people searchand just talking to other
people.
And so I definitely thinkthere's a lot there's a great
deal of power in just findingsome of the most interesting
people you know and justchecking in with them or seeing
the things that they're excitedabout and kind of using that as
a way of navigating and crawlingthrough a space. Sometimes it

(45:35):
can be used in a moreutilitarian way, like when I'm
trying to learn a new topic orunderstand a new space, having
people recommend who else Ishould talk to, and at a certain
point, hopefully, they'll startrecommending people I've already
spoken to. And then at thatpoint, I'll say, okay, I don't
necessarily understand thistopic really well, but it kind
of I I I have a sense of theboundaries of this space and
kind of the shape of it, and sothat kind of people search can

(45:57):
be very powerful, but also justfollowing the other people that
you know that have reallyinteresting tastes and are
thoughtful about things, thatalso is a really good way to
kind of explore some of thesekinds of things. So even yeah,
so I would say, certainly myapproach is not systematic and
more undirected, but there arecertain heuristics you can use
to kind of begin to think aboutthese kinds of things.

You know, I'm wondering if I remember early in
my entrepreneurial career, therewasn't really kind of as much of
a placemat on how that worked.And I found that it really was
more of an apprentice sport, butnobody ever mapped out where the
apprentice programs were. And soI remember I was sitting down
with sort of one of the smarterearly A. I. Entrepreneurs I knew

(46:41):
and kind of talking through, youknow, how do you make a career
out of this entrepreneur thing?
And he's like, Oh yeah, this issuper doable. Know, here's the,
you know, kind of walk throughthe but as you know, I
essentially spent a good chunkof my life training to be a
scientist and was still prettynew to the entrepreneurial
thing. And so I just didn't knowwhere some of that is. I'm

(47:01):
wondering if there's a littlebit of that in sort of this
nontraditional role beyondentrepreneur land as we talk
about it. And then maybe onething would be interesting.
You kind of as we were kind ofpreparing for the episode, you
talked about sort of your darknight of the soul moment. Know,

(47:23):
kind of You probably got achance to think about that a
little bit, so would love to digin a little bit on that topic
with you.

Yeah, sure. I mean, so certainly, so I'll
start with kind of like how Ikind of thought about the
scientist in residence role andkind of the career, and then I
can kind of step back and kindof even before that and then
kind of like a dark night of thesoul or whatever. With the like
when I first around the time Istarted as a scientist in
residence, I actually reachedout to a number of other people

(47:53):
who had somewhat similar titleskind of in the venture world. I
think that there was like somedata scientists in residence,
maybe like chief scientists, andjust to kind of get a sense of
what they were doing. And itturns out we all did completely
different things.
Like we all it was like it wasone of these things where,
especially with these outlierroles, oftentimes what is like
what it says on the tin does notnecessarily match the contents.

(48:16):
So like so so that was oflimited value. But I would say
oftentimes the way to thinkabout these kinds of roles is,
yeah, sometimes to find otherpeople with somewhat similar
titles or somewhat similar rolesand kind of see, okay, how are
you thinking about these kindsof things? But oftentimes it
could be useful to almost lookat because often these roles

(48:39):
don't really exist, like there'snot like a huge cohort of these.
One way to think about this, andI'm not really sure to what
degree I did this, at leastconsciously, but you take a few
different people who maybecombined would kind of do some
percentage of what you do andthen try to interpolate and then
kind of say, Okay, how did theyget to where they were in their

(49:00):
career?
Or kind of how do they spendtheir time? How do they think
about these kinds of things? Andthen use that. And so that maybe
could be one particularapproach. It's pretty high
level.
But in terms of like my owncareer trajectory, kind of how I
got this and kind of thoughtabout this, so after I left the
Kaufman Foundation, and so I wasworking on my book, or my second
book, this book Overcomplicatedabout complex and

(49:22):
incomprehensible technologies,when it was kind of in good
enough place that I could beginthinking about my next step, I
began looking around. And Iinitially had this realization
of, Oh my god, I've beenspending my time doing so many
different things that I've kindof painted myself into this
corner, that I've become thisweird, like hyper generalist

(49:45):
that is so far removed from anyspecific expertise that I no
longer have any value to anyorganization. Now eventually
that passed, but it was one ofthese things where it can be
very worrisome, because Ithought on the one hand, like
the kinds of things that I thinkabout and do could be very

(50:07):
valuable and very interesting,but I also felt like I didn't
fit anywhere. Since I've andsince like in the decade since I
since I've joined Luxe, I'verealized increasingly not only
is there a need for the kinds ofroles and kinds of things that I
do, but there are ways ofcrafting these.
But one of the things that mademe realize is that it involves a

(50:29):
much more sort of proactiveapproach to career building.
Like there are no job postingsreally for the kinds of things
that we're talking about here.You kind of really have to have
a relationship with anorganization and kind of craft
something together or be willingto kind of just go out on your

(50:50):
own and say, I'm going just dosome weird thing because I know
it is actually valuable. And sofor me, I'm not really sure I
have kind of any deep wisdom ofkind of how to think about this,
but I do think the world isrecognizing more and more the
need for these kinds of roles. Iwill say one of the way to think

(51:12):
one of the ways to think aboutthis, though, is oftentimes the
more you have to convince anorganization that you are a fit,
the less likely you're going tolast there for a long for a long
time, because, like, you mightjust have a patron who kind of
buys into it and then theychange their mind or there's a
downturn or they leave theorganization.
You don't necessarily want to bedependent on that kind of thing.
And so you want an organizationthat understands it and like

(51:37):
deeply recognizes the need forsomething as opposed to
constantly trying to have tojustify your existence and your
fit with an organization becauseone, that takes a big emotional
toll. But even separate fromthat, like there's probably just
a good chance it's not going tobe a long term fit.

Well, it's funny because I think that actually
aligns really well with whatwe've been talking about. You
need to be an effectiveentrepreneur in residence. We
sort of break it down into threethings. One is know what your
secret sauce is and what you cancontribute and be able to
enunciate it to a group ofpeople that may not understand
what you're talking about.Right.
So make it relatable, you know,because some folks on the

(52:14):
entrepreneurial side have reallygood sort of go to market or
really good technology or reallygood kind of empathetic design.
But for somebody that hasn'tbuilt anything new, maybe none
of those things are valuable.And so thinking about how is
that useful? You know, how areyou differentiated from sort of
the bunch of folks that theycould be interacting with? The
second one is, you know, find anorganization that's already done

(52:36):
some of the work and declaredthis is their strategy, put
budget behind it, leadershipsupport and sort of have a
financial and risk posture thataligns with all that other
stuff.
And then the third thingactually came a little bit later
in a bunch of conversations asmost entrepreneurs are not, you
know, good spiritual leaderswith deep understanding of like

(52:57):
large organizations. And sothere's a little bit of like a
reskilling that has to happenon, you know, understanding how
do you sort of become aspiritual leader and sort of
understand the pieces. Andthere's probably some version,
you know, because like and it'sthe same thing you said, if
you're not able to communicatewhy you can contribute in a

(53:18):
positive way or in a meaningfulway to the organization, then
you're probably not going getvery far. If the organization
hasn't bought in and is movingin a direction that's aligned,
then you're pushing a boulder upa hill, you know, and that
boulder will run you over. Andthen ultimately, you know, kind
of that, you know, you'reconnecting with a lot of people
and a lot of moving pieces.

(53:38):
And if that's not sort of yourbackground or your strength,
there's a little bit of a Ithink there's at least the
things that rhyme in that frameto to the way that you're
describing it.

Absolutely. And you have to unlearn a lot of
things, right? I remember when Ibecame an entrepreneur in
residence at SAP, right? I waslike, oh, I just can't email the
CEO like if I have a question.You know, it was sort of like,
no, you don't you don't do thatin this environment.
Right? And in in in my world,you know, why not? They have the
answer to the question that Ineed. Right. So and and, okay.

(54:09):
I guess not. You know? So beingthe weirdo in the organization,
trying to navigate those muddywaters is very fascinating in
every regard. But thank goodnessI wasn't a scientist in
residence. Their heads wouldhave blew off, Sam.

Yeah, no, I think, you know, we're already kind of
into it. I think maybe one thingthat's worth jumping into a
little bit is just thinkingabout how this role and these
types of roles evolve, right? Wedefinitely have spent a lot of
time on the podcast thinkingabout how entrepreneurs jump
into residences, what thatmeans. It's interesting because

(54:46):
I think you opened up ouraperture here a little bit from
the perspective of what ascientist or a researcher or
data scientist in residencecould do, at least your version
of it. Where do you see kind ofthat role going and evolving, if
at all, right?
Just you've thought about thisprobably a little bit more than

(55:08):
I have, but just curious onyour, you know, speaking of
talking to people and whatexcites and how they're thinking
about it. What's your thoughtthere?

To be honest, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I have a
good sense of kind of how thesethings evolve. I would love to
see more roles like me.Certainly when I first joined
Lux, I initially thought, oh,deep expertise in lots of
different scientific fields,that's going to be kind of the
true differentiator. And it wasvaluable, but I also realized
that the real coin of the realmin venture is kind of the depth

(55:42):
and breadth of your network.
And so for me it was realizingthat the fact that I had played
in all these different realms oflike philanthropy and different
scientific domains and academiaand now I, then I was in the
venture world, that network wasthe thing that was actually
probably in some ways morevaluable than just kind of the

(56:02):
content inside my head, which Ifound very interesting. And I
imagine so that kind of thing Ithink will continue to be
valuable, especially in theventure world. For me, one of
the things I've done also Lux,in addition to kind of the core
role that I've been talkingabout, is I'll often try

(56:22):
experiments kind of throughoutmy tenure at Lux. So in addition
to kind of all the differentthings I was doing, for example,
I spent a little bit of time atone point connecting science
fiction authors to startups andlike connecting them to founders
and like, because one of thegroups that can think very
deeply about the societal,ethical, legal, regulatory

(56:45):
implications of technologies inkind of this very holistic way
are science fiction authors. Andso and I have to admit, it was
the result was very hit or miss.
Even when it missed, was still alot of fun. We had a great time.
Not really doing that quite asmuch, but like, but then like
beginning last year we starteddoing this podcast where I've
been doing a lot of just talkingto interesting people, everyone

(57:06):
from novelists to scientists topeople who are people I actually
talk to a graphic novelist andtalking to like all the science
fiction, just kind ofinteresting I spoke to someone
who wrote about the historywrote a book about the history
of SimCity. There's kind of allthese different things. And so
that's another I'd like to thinkit's more of an experiment.

(57:29):
Hopefully this will be a very,very long term project. But I
think so I think the only thingin terms of, like, the direction
is just a constant willingness,not necessarily to reinvent
yourself, but just constantlyexperiment and try new things,
because that's where kind of theinteresting new unexpected
directions come from.

I love this sort of out of the box thing that you
did with the science fictionauthors. I think that's, like,
super interesting. What theyused to do at Techstars is they
used to bring in people who weregood at acting or took acting
class acting classes or theaterand would send the founders to
that, right, to help them withpitching and to, like, be
animated and to keep the sameenergy every single time they're

(58:10):
in front of, in front of aninvestor. And it just sort of
made me think about the sciencefiction thing that you just
talked about, which wassometimes hit or miss, But
oftentimes, it made them reallygood storytellers along the way
about the business or the futureof the thing that they wanted to
build for the world and why itwas the right time to do it. And
I think it's something to besaid, for your second point

(58:30):
around relationships andnetworks make the world go
around.
You know, sometimes you can knoweverything in the world, but if
the right person don't know you,then, it's it's hard to, deploy
that knowledge in a place that'smeaningful. And and you found a
residence that was meaningfulfor you to deploy your
knowledge. What what advicewould you give people? I'm gonna
flip it on his head a littlebit. What advice would you give

(58:52):
a GP at a firm, you know, that'sthinking about they're on the
they they invest in frontiertech.
They're doing deep tech, andthey want to try to find or
recruit somebody like a Sam.Right? That's very weird. What
two or three pieces of advicewould you give them to be open
to try to attract people likelike you to their firm?

I mean, certainly a lot of firms think in terms of
like scouts or people who kindof have very broad deal flow and
things like that. And I thinkthe the equivalent for something
like my role is like idea flowor kind of like being a scout
but just for like interestingweird stuff but not necessarily

(59:33):
needing it to cash out inimmediate like deals and
companies. In terms of wherethose people are, I don't
necessarily think they have tojust come from academia. I mean,
certainly, I was actuallytalking to, this is years ago, I
think soon after I started EdLox, a scientist in residence, I
was talking to one of ourfounders and he said, What are

(59:57):
the like, what are your friendsfrom graduate school kind of
like think about your path? AndI'm like, I gotta be honest,
like, I don't think anyone issurprised.
Like, this is like actually, Iremember, I think I was talking
to a friend of mine. He and I,we overlapped in grad school, we
shared the same advisor, andapparently they had he and my
and our advisor were having aconversation. They're like,

(01:00:17):
Yeah, we don't know where Sam'sgoing to end up, but it's going
be somewhere interesting. And Ithink fine and so oftentimes
when I have conversations withacademics, scientists, we'll
talk about their research, andat the end I'll say, And by the
way, I know there is at leastone or two people in your lab
who don't necessarily know whatthey want to do or don't
necessarily want to continue inacademia, send them my way.
Because if I can kind of helpthem think about their path And

(01:00:39):
I think talking to a GP, likethat's the kind of people you
want, like the people who arejust who are the kind of like
the round the round pegs in thesquare holes or whatever it is,
like the people who don't quitefit in whatever they're doing,
those those are going to be thereally interesting people and
worthwhile people to at leasttake a look at.
It's great to find these, like,monomaniacally focused

(01:01:03):
undergrads who have alreadyaccomplished huge amounts by the
time they're 20 or whatever anddoing all these things. I think
those people might be top notchentrepreneurs or founders or
other kinds of things. But interms of the kinds of people who
are going to be good at pursuingtheir curiosity or kind of
having this broad approach toexploring different ideas, you

(01:01:25):
kind of have to optimize fordifferent things. And it's going
to be, yeah, the people whodon't necessarily fit or are
thinking about, I don't know,ancient Near Eastern mythology
one day and then thinking aboutcellular automata the next day.
Like those are the people thatare worth looking at.

Ilya Tabakh (01:01:43):
You know, I'd love to spend a little bit of time.
You know, you have a book comingout, The Magic of Code, and in
some ways sort of thinking aboutthings computationally. We've
kind of crossed this theme ofland, orient, figure out what's
going on, connect things,understand where you are. I

(01:02:03):
would love to have you spend acouple of minutes talking about
the big concepts and sort ofwhat you're excited about in the
book as it's getting ready tocome out here.

Sam Arbesman (01:02:11):
No, thank you so much. Yeah. The book, The Magic
Code basically takes, well oneof the ideas that I've actually
discussed earlier, kind of thisidea that it's not kind of an
either or when it comes tocomputing of just like either
boring utilitarian things orkind of wonder. These things are
deeply intertwined and we needto be able to appreciate both of

(01:02:35):
them. But kind of more broadly,it's this idea of, like,
exploring that undercurrent ofthe wonders and weirdness of
computation.
But from the perspective ofcomputing is not just an
engineering discipline, but whenproperly viewed, it can almost
be this, like, humanisticendeavor or liberal art that
when you so when you think aboutcomputing, you're not just
writing computer programs. Youare also thinking about the

(01:02:57):
nature of language or how wethink or aspects of biology or
philosophy or the nature ofreality. And and so the book
looks at these different ideas,starting with the nature of code
itself and the ways in whichit's similar and different to
magic and how we think aboutlanguage and the features of
machines, but then spirals outto thought and how we think

(01:03:18):
about the world and then realityitself and kind of simulation
and biology and physics and allthese different ideas and tries
to give this kind of likerekindle this sense of wonder in
computing, which, I mean, codingis constantly changing, with

(01:03:38):
LLMs coding is continuing tochange. But despite all of these
changes, there are still theseunderlying deep ideas that
affect kind of how we thinkabout the world. So for me, when
I think about kind of this likerekindling this wonder.
And so I mentioned mygrandfather who was who loved
science fiction. So when theiPhone first came out, I went

(01:04:02):
with my grandfather and myfather to the Apple Store. And
we went and we're kind ofplaying with the iPhone, we're
looking at it, and at a certainpoint my grandfather says, this
is it. This is the object I'vebeen reading about for all these
years. And it was like, oh, thisis a thing dropped from science
fiction, from the future, and wenow have it for real.
And then very quickly as asociety, we started complaining

(01:04:23):
about camera resolution or howapps don't work or the apps or
whatever it is. And we kind offorget that we are living in
this age of wonders. And so forme, the book was kind of this
approach and this attempt torekindle that that wonder and
almost kind of like re weirdenand, like, get us I don't even
know if re weirden is a word,but, like like, get us to make

(01:04:46):
become more aware of how deeplystrange and exciting all the
different things that not onlycomputing can do, but how it can
lead us to think about thesethings. So it's very far from a
tutorial from programming. It'sdesigned to create an
appreciation and reintroduce itas this liberal art.

Well, just love, you know, kind of if you take
your writing together, right,sort of the quality and input
and half life, you know,ultimately the shelf life of
knowledge, right? Then sort ofthe understanding of complexity
and then sort of deployment ofboth of those things and kind of

(01:05:31):
connecting the dots. It's sortof a I won't call it an opus,
but it's a it's a cool set ofthought that fits together. And
I think then when you look atsome of the stuff that you do in
the orthogonal bet on thepodcast and also on your
substack, I think in many wayswe're very lucky to have you

(01:05:51):
helping us think through some ofthese kind of exciting,
interesting, seemingly notconnected, but in many ways
related issues. I wouldencourage kind of our network to
go check your content and thethings that you're putting out
pretty broadly.

(01:06:11):
And I'm excited to get my handson a copy of the book as well. I
have a couple of books behindme. It'd be cool to add your
book to that collection. Youknow, we always like to ask
before we let folks go, what cansort of the EIR Live and the
community of entrepreneur inresidence that we're putting
together due to sort of supportand engage. So I would be remiss
if we didn't ask you that samequestion.

I appreciate it. Of all, thank you for your kind
words about my work. I reallyappreciate that. Yeah, certainly
check out The Magic of Code.It's coming out in June.
And certainly I have anewsletter called The Cabinet of
Wonders, my podcast, TheOrthogonal Bet. And if you go to
my website, arbisman.net, thathas links either directly or

(01:06:53):
indirectly to all thesedifferent things. And but, yeah,
more broadly, would say, send meyour weirdos. Like, interesting
people, interesting ideas,things that don't fit. Like,
send them my way.
This is the kind of stuff that Ilove. This is this is my catnip.

Terrance Orr (01:07:07):
And one question for you. Where can people find
you? Where should they sendthose things? Can they find you
on LinkedIn or what's the bestplace to reach you?

So if you go to arbisman.net, I have my email
yeah, my email address is there.That's probably the best way to
reach out.

And number two, I can't let you go with this
massive amount of books in thebackground. So I have to ask
you. You've it's not your yourfirst book. It's not your second
book. It's your third book, andand it's gonna come out in June.
And clearly, you're an avidreader. You grew up that way,
right? This is second nature.It's in the fabric of your your
life and in your family. Whatare you reading right now?
What would you recommend to ouraudience?

So I'm currently reading I'm in the midst of this
fantastic book. It's called,Inventing the Renaissance by Ada
Palmer. So she's a historian,she's actually also a science
fiction author. And so the bookis about the not just the
Renaissance itself, but kind ofthe idea of the Renaissance and
how the Renaissance was created.Because on the one hand, we have

(01:08:03):
this very positive vision of theRenaissance, like art and the
nature of the human and certainkind of maybe like the first
hints of enlightenment ideas,but also at the same time, it
was incredibly violent and therewas lots of turmoil and it was
like this kind of horrible timeto live, depending on where you
were.
And so people were still tryingto kind of grapple with what

(01:08:25):
this was. And so she's trying toexplore what the Renaissance is,
kind of how this idea wascreated. It's fascinating. It's
really well written. It's a fastread.
So I'm reading that andcurrently also at the same time
rereading The Baroque Cycle,which is a series it's a trilogy
of novels by Neil by thenovelist Neil Stevenson. It's

(01:08:46):
sort of this, I mean, they'rehuge. Like, each one has got a
thousand pages long, so it'slike you're reading like 3,000
pages. I'm not necessarily sureI would recommend it, let alone
rereading it like I'm doing it.But it kind of takes place a
little bit later than theRenaissance, kind of around the
scientific revolution and sortof the it's about scientific
revolution and the dawn of themodern monetary system, but it

(01:09:08):
also is just kind of fun,gripping, massive story about
the world.
And so that's yeah, so I'mreading that a lot and really
enjoying it.

Incredible. Thank you for sharing with the
audience. And I have to get thisone more thing because I'm so
intrigued. Okay, Sam, I got toask you this one more thing. So
outside of EIR Live, in your ownpodcast, recommend one podcast
where people can listen to weirdthings and interesting ideas and
topics.

I'm not sure how much he's still updating it, but
there's there was a there's apodcast called Idea Machines by,
Ben Reinhardt where he looks atorganizational structures and
the ways in which theseorganizations are used to create
innovation. He'll talk to peoplefrom DARPA, but also other
people who are inventing newtypes of organizations. And I

(01:09:52):
find that fascinating and reallyinteresting as well.

Incredible. Thank you. Thank you, Sam.

Thank you. Always, we went over time. Could go
another hour and a half. We'renot going We really appreciate
sort of the open dialogue andallowing us to connect seemingly
disconnected topics even on thepodcast here.

Just the way I operate. That's how

it's Yeah, no. And to a certain extent, same with
us. It's a good fit from thatstandpoint, but really want to
thank you for your time and sortof introducing a pretty
interesting, unique and maybeimportant perspective in the
sort of broader in residencefamily. So thank you.

Thank you so much. This is a pleasure. I really
appreciate you both.

It's been an absolute privilege. Thank you.
Oh my goodness. My head is stillringing from that episode. So
many insights, so so many gemsthat that Sam was able to to
walk us through.
And what what's really stickingout to me is the how how early
influences of of family andfriends, in his case, his

(01:10:58):
grandfather and his father, and,you know, them being into
science fiction and having earlyaccess to to the Internet and a
number of other differentthings. That exposure, that
access, you know, sort of ledto, you know, Sam growing up and
working on interesting things,weird things as he would as he
would call them. And those weirdthings just happened not to be

(01:11:19):
the traditional path. And hecarved out his own path and has
had a very, very fruitful careerthat is filled with curiosity
that he can deploy day in andday out. And I think that is is
something that most peopleaspire to.
So even though you're working onweird things like Sam was, it
can lead to other interestingthings like becoming a scientist

(01:11:41):
in residence or something thatyou never even heard of before.
Lastly, you know, I think waswhat's true in a lot of the
people that we talked to in inan interview on the podcast is
that networks are key.Relationships matter, and and
they matter in the sense of, youknow, how you discover new
knowledge and new things and andnew ideas. And he leaned into

(01:12:06):
that a little bit around, yes,science matters and the things
that I know matter, but alsorelationships, you know,
adjacent to those things alsomatter. And it continues to be a
theme.
And building valuablerelationships lead to things,
when you're working on andtinkering with things early on,
just like Sam would. So so manyother things that I could talk

(01:12:27):
about. But tell me, what's topof mind? What did you take away,
Ilya?

Yeah. Mean, just to lean into that network piece, I
like that we kind of framed upthis idea of instead of deal
flow having idea flow for thescientists and residents. And I
think that's sort of aninteresting way to start to
frame up a conversation becauseI actually think that there's
probably, you know, very muchlike in VC, there's a power law

(01:12:54):
distribution for kind of thecompanies that win. It's
interesting to start to thinkabout what's the kind of
distribution? Is it power law?
Is it something else for kind ofthe gravity of ideas? And so as
you think about your idea flow,you know, are there, sir, you
know, kind of bigger ideas thathave met their time? Or, you

(01:13:16):
know, how do you think aboutthat? And I think we didn't get
to dig into that so much, butit's always fun when you, you
know, sort of go out looking forsomething and you're like, oh,
that's curious. Like we shouldscratch on that some more.
So I think that's something thatI think is the probably
beginning or maybe even middleof an interesting conversation

(01:13:36):
I'd love to kind of keeppursuing and dig into. I think
the other thing is, you know,from kind of engineering
education days, kind of my timewhen I was training to be a
professor, one of the thingsthat people were really
highlighting and encouraging wasas as kind of part of your early
education, encouraging kids totake things apart and put things

(01:13:59):
together, you know, sort ofdisassemble computers, for
example, because that builds areally good understanding of
kind of interconnectedness andhow sort of systems fit together
and the fact that, you know, acertain change will cause a
system to behave differently.And I think, you know, kind of
Sam's background with Legos andHyperCard and sort of all these

(01:14:23):
things where he got to putthings together, reshuffle,
experiment, probably had apretty big impact on, you know,
him from kind of a very earlyformative, you know, as as you
were talking about kind of thatthat access and exposure,
especially in kind of earlyyears is really important. And
so, you know, it's reallyinteresting to sort of think a

(01:14:44):
little bit and at leasthighlight that, you know, those
two things seem to be a good wayto highlight each other.
So, you know, very much likeyou, there's a lot of sort of
topics that we had to pull backa little bit on and we could
have done another hour and ahalf. But I think it's a very
rich episode. Lots of sort ofcontent and ideas and kind of

(01:15:06):
free flow interconnecting themtogether. So I just loved how it
came together.

Likewise, man. Can't wait for this one to come
offered you valuable insightsinto the entrepreneurial
journey. Remember to subscribeso you don't miss out on future
episodes and check out thedescription for more details. Do
you have questions orsuggestions? Please reach out to
us.
Connect with us on social media.We really value your input.

(01:15:31):
Catch us next time for moreinspiring stories and
strategies. Keep pushingboundaries and making your mark
on the world. I'm Terrance Orrwith my co-host, Ilya Tabakh
signing off.
Let's keep building.

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Episode 10 - Resident Weirdos & Computational Curiosity with Sam Arbesman

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 10 - Resident Weirdos & Computational Curiosity with Sam Arbesman