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Jimmy Soni

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2024-06-26
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2024-06-26
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  1. “And he actually does what so many people don't do. Like if you have a successful paper or a successful book or successful anything in modern life, most people just like to ramp that up. They did 25 versions of that, right? It's like, oh, fast and furious is successful. We should make 12 of them. It's like, let's do that. Everybody get on the bandwagon. And you have this temptation and he rejects it wholesale. He says, no, this is like information theory. It needs to be further developed. There needs to be more research, more work. I understand the that work is valuable, but he says, let's keep our house in order is what he says, right? To me, it was like, it was super counterintuitive. It's not what you would want to, like, it's not what a lot of modern people would do, right? You have one viral song hit about finance bros. And now you're like, you're like signing a deal and Shannon has his viral scientific hit. And instead of doing what everyone else might have done, he leaves Bell Labs, goes to MIT, builds a workshop.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Ways more interesting, and I think it's more relevant for an age of like TikTok and Twitter and meme. All of these people look at information theory and they're like, oh man, I could use information theory to explain everything. I could use it to explain bird song. I could use this, that, and the other. So you have all these people jumping on the bandwagon. And Claude Shannon actually publishes this very short piece. I think it was like 340, 350 words called The Bandwagon. And it's to his people in his field. It's to other electrical engineers. And what he basically says, I'm paraphrasing, is he says, listen, I know there's a lot of enthusiasm about information theory, but we have a lot of research left to do to take the work I've done and turn it into practical technologies for people and to write new proofs and to design new technologies and everything else. So basically it's effective. It's like everybody's slow your role. This is cool. It's not the theory of everything, right?”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Like Claude Shannon has done something significant here, so he's put on all these lists of like the most promising scientists. He's given a profile in Vogue magazine. This famous photographer comes and shoots photos of him. And he has this moment where he's like a scientific celebrity for like a hot second. He doesn't enjoy it. What he wants to be doing is he wants to be in his workshop tinkering. He wants to be building machines. He wants to be thinking. He wants to be writing. And he kind of just like turns out like he just doesn't embrace the fame that's coming to him. People would send him letters and he had literally a folder that was like letters I've waited too long to respond to, right? He would just like stuck it in there. He wouldn't give talks. He didn't say yes to invitations that he got to give talks unless his wife wanted to travel to the location that they were going to go. So like he gets invited to give prestigious talks around the world and it's only on the urging of his wife Betty that he's like, all right, fine. I'll go give the talk so we can travel to Japan. But he wanted to keep to himself and do his own work. The other thing that happens that is in some way.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Mathematical equation that can predict the pattern that would be created by you dropping those two things, right? Another story in this vein, when they would decide how to do dishes instead of just assigning the roles to people like, hey, Andrew, it's your night to wash or hey, Claude, it's your night to wash. They had a multi-sided die, like a 16-sided die or something, and they would roll this dice and every person had a series of numbers. Like that was the game of chance that they would play to see who had to do the dishes that night, right? So there are things like that that were in the ether in their home. It wasn't the case that he was the parent. You asked him, your first question was about fame and like his relationship with both fame and a claim, like just by being a claim for this information theory. Here's what happens. Actually, kind of a great story. This paper is published in 1948 in two parts. And almost right away, his world of electrical engineering and mathematics and communication technology notices. And everybody's like, oh, this is a big deal. Like it.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Our parents were very seriously interested in the stock market. And they would tell you like we had the Wall Street Journal at the table. We were always talking about it. They had people over that were talking about investments. So sort of in the air in that way. And that was interesting. I don't know that it shaped those kids profoundly in any way. I mean, maybe it did. It wasn't anything I got into because I was actually writing the story of Claude Shannon. But I found it interesting that all these things became a part of their family life too, right? It wasn't like work was separated from life. There was this just to give a story on that. There's this great moment where they're hosting some dinner party or something and Peggy Shannon is carrying toothpicks, like a box of toothpicks from one place to another. I think it was toothpicks or pins or something. And she's walking. Something happens. The box of toothpicks drops on the ground. And she looks up. Her dad's there. She thought her dad was going to get mad or like a parent might get upset that she was like, made this mess. And her dad looks at it and says something along the lines. It's been a while since I looked at this. But her dad basically looks at it and says, did you know there's like a math?”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Yeah, so I'll do the first one first and then the second on the actually let me tackle the investment because that one's easy. No, actually he was the parent. Here's what happened. So in their later ages, like when I think they were around 50 or 60, Shannon leaves Bell Laboratories for MIT and the family settles in a town called Winchester, Massachusetts, one of these bedroom communities outside of MIT. And they start to get interested in the stock market. So this is like in the 70s and 80s. So they buy a stock ticker. They start reading the quotes. They start buying copies of the Wall Street Journal. And I interviewed Peggy Shannon and Andrew Shannon. Peggy and Andrew were son and daughter of Claude and Betty Shannon. And they told me about how we grew up with a lot of weird stuff happening around the house because our dad was Claude Shannon. I said, well, give me some examples. And they were like, well, not everybody's had like juggles. Yes. Not everybody's dad has like a two-story workshop that's filled with like toys and robots and chess playing computers and stuff. And they said the other thing is.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

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    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

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    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “And so the book has become kind of a cult hit among, particularly, I can say, investment professionals, but many others because they actually want to know more about him. And I didn't know that going in. Ironically, it's like the thing Shannon would have liked least, like being sort of pseudo-famous now, right? And so it's like he passed away many years ago. But like he actually particularly avoided this kind of fame and interest and whatever because he just wanted to do his own things all the time throughout his life.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “But on the whole, one of the remarkable things about Shannon's life is he's basically like a playful genius throughout his life. And it's why I call the book of mine to play. And it's what people can take from him that's bigger than just like, hey, there's this scientist. It's really, if you read the book, I think the way that I intended, what play...”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “That's right, and I would add two disclaimers for your audience because it's sort of important to get some of this stuff where people are listening and they're like, why should we keep listening to this? The other thing that Claude Shannon has is an incredible IRR as an investor. People don't know this, but he's actually like a very gifted investor and got super obsessed with the stock market, wrote a bunch of papers and ideas and concepts in this space. He was friends with Henry Singleton, who Warren Buffett admires. And Warren Buffett, I think, once called Singleton, like the single best capital allocator in history. Shannon served on the board of Teledyne, the Teledyne Corporation. And there were all of these things in the investment world, too, that Shannon did that, again, nobody knew about. And I only discovered them later in my research. I would say the other interesting thing about Shannon's life is he wasn't a tortured genius, right? Does that make sense? We have this vision of like, if you're going to do something great in the world, then you need to have like deep scars. And like you didn't hate yourself. And there were definitely times in Shannon's life that were hard.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “But Claude Shannon actively avoided becoming famous. And so it made his story in some ways more interesting, but it was the reason that no one had done a biography. And so that's the kind of story that led me to writing the book. I was just like, I mean, really, if you boil it down, I went on Amazon to try to buy it. I couldn't find it. So I decided to do it. And obviously there's a lot of steps from there. But I found him curious and inventive and interesting and super important. And it was kind of like somebody should do this. And then I just sort of dubbed myself with somebody.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “And so I was like, so those are key ingredients for a biography. One is the person interesting to read about because otherwise it's just like watching Paid Dry or doing your homework or something. And the other is, did they do something important? And I kind of had both of them in this subject. And I also got the sense that Richard Feynman became famous and became a personality. Albert Einstein became famous, became personality. This is someone with the same IQ points, the same contribution scientifically. At the same level, we should say.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “right because all of a sudden you have this new field information theory that's invented basically out of whole cloth and he does it and he's super interesting he like invents the world's first chess playing computer all of these things i'm reading in this book the idea factory so i go on amazon this is market research for authors and i'm like all right let me buy my book about this guy i type in his name and i can't find anything and my friend had actually suggested the friend who sent me to book said hey you should really look at this claude shannon guy he might be a good subject for you to write about And I realized I was like, there's just like a space on the bookshelf where his story should be. And he's more than just some scientist. He's like a wildly interesting person in the way he lived his life.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “In that book, there's one section, a tiny section, about this guy who worked there. His name is Dr. Claude Shannon. And they talk about this guy who's like unicycling in the hallways, I'm chess in the cafeteria. He's kind of weird. He's like sort of a loner, but like with really smart people, he becomes really good friends. And in 1948, while working at Bell Labs, he publishes this paper in the Bell Systems Technical Journal. And that paper really is one of the reasons why modern digital life exists the way it does. And he didn't collaborate with anybody on it. I call it the ultimate side hustle because he like did it on the off hours, nights, weekends, et cetera. And this paper will one person describe it. It sort of came like a bomb.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “And the idea factory is about Bell Labs. And the reason there should be a book about Bell Labs, frankly, more books about Bell Labs, is because Bell Labs was arguably like one of the highest concentrations of just pure innovation ever in history through all time. They win six Nobel Prizes. They invent the transistor. They invent touchtone dialing, make improvements on the bazooka. They invent communication networks. Like they invent satellites. So it's basically like the entire underpinning of modern life.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “And the idea factory is a really close look at Bell Laboratories. So for your listeners, like they might know the name Bell Labs, they probably know the name Alexander Graham Bell, and they know that Bell invented the telephone. Fast forward a few decades, six, seven decades, and the Bell Systems Telephone Company is this massive enterprise. I mean, it is basically, I think, like the second largest employer in the country outside of the defense department at one point. Because they run the phone system, the phone system at that time is everything. Within the Bell system, they create this organization sort of like what Google did with its Moonshot factory, where they created Bell Laboratories. So the idea was like, we have this Labs arm, right? They do all this kind of interesting research to advance the company.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “It's a great question, and I really appreciate the kind words. This was one of those projects, like, I am not an electrical engineer. I am not a mathematician. I was in sort of foreign territory here, right? Like I was trying to figure this out. And make sense of it for myself so that I could make sense of it for other people. Because I had the same instinct that this was this hugely interesting, complex, important person. And like nobody had written a biography of him that made me sense. But I'll rewind the clock a bit to tell you how it came about. A friend of mine sent me a copy of a book called The Idea Factory by this author, John Gertner.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Well, I appreciate it. I mean, Shannon's having a moment, and he keeps having these little moments, so I'm excited to dive in. It'll be a lot of fun.”

    2024-06-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC188: Claude Shannon and Information Theory with Jimmy Soni (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT