from Patrick McKenzie | by Patrick McKenzie

Both for investment returns and intellectual interest it is quite positive to learn to appreciate the beauty that lurks under (almost) every bit of human activity.

Ever wondered how beer arrived at the local supermarket without freezing, despite sometimes traveling in trucks without temperature control? The answer involves specialized professionals and software. (Stormpulse/Riskpulse which was my first Angel investment and was acquired.)

Logistics, infrastructure, etc suffer from a want of people skilled at telling their stories; they do not suffer from good stories to tell. See e.g. booming YouTube genres where non-expert young’uns narrate over footage of e.g. water treatment plants. I could lose days.

The multi-party multi-national precisely orchestrated symphony with a performance budget denominated in milliseconds that happens every time a credit card gets charged is heard by far too few.

I think there’s something trainable here, some sort of “eye for the general factor of infrastructure.” I had sometimes surprisingly good intuitions for how systems that were novel to me (and in some cases to world) worked last year, and successfully improved them for vaccines.