What are considered to be the best guides for finding a non-technical cofounder as a teachnical person? Almost every guide I've read seems to treat this as easy, yet I found it almost impossible when I tried.
The target audience for Soylent is people for whom the pleasure of "eating tasty food" is weaker than it is for you. If you think of a use of time that you theoretically approve of but rarely feel inclined to choose over other activities (looking at paintings is an example of this for many people), you have a good approximation of what "eating food" feels like for many people.
"* Two is learn to code enough to bang out a prototype -- this will also make you a better engineering manager if you can appreciate the technical craft and can empathize with engineers. And there are tools like Balsamiq that can help create reasonable mockups that can convey your idea without writing code."
I've always been confused by how this is meant to help - could you explain further? I've always been a technical founder, but I've never had any idea how to find a technical co-founder - as you correctly say, good technical people will have their idea they're excited about! So I'm always skeptical that "make a prototype" would work to convince anyone, but perhaps it would - is there some hidden pool of good engineers who exist in some weird fugue state of "show me a cool semi-working website and I'm on-board", outside of, like, 1st year CS?
A sincere and non-troll question - I'd be really interested in hearing from people who have a major use for speed reading. I'm finding it difficult to visualise the material such readers are encountering - are they reading for pleasure or work? Presumably, if the former, reading speed is unrelated to enjoyment (in fact, a slight negative correlation), while, if the latter, isn't the time spent actually reading a vanishingly tiny portion of digestion? It takes me (and I'd imagine most people?) around 5 minutes to read a menu, for instance, of which time my estimate would be that around 5-10 seconds were spent actually reading the words. But this technology is clearly of great interest to people - what am I missing?
Aw! This was super kind, and I like the idea of stressing proportionality. It's nice to be told that the abstraction can wait - I've felt like I should be abstracting more at times, but it's not my natural instinct, so it's nice to be told I'm doing things right on that front! I feel the same way about anyone who can teach older (or younger!) mathematicians - keep on keeping on.
One fun parallel - not to literacy, but to another skill at which artsy types are often better than mathematicians - is the oft-repeated, and completely acceptable, "I can't read minds".
Lots of people can read minds. Not literally, of course, but they've put in the work (and perhaps it was work that they found easy and pleasant, much as many programmers found math) to be able to essentially tell what people want, don't want, are implying, will be offended by, etc. Yet I've certainly heard plenty of people, and especially STEM-types, making a point of pride about lacking this skill: "I'm a straight-shooter" and the like. There's aspergers and there's dyscalculia, but many STEM types who happily admit to lacking this skill are just like those whom the author bemoans - they find it difficult and uninteresting. And that's okay! But it's no truer, really, than "I can't do maths".
I may be missing something rather obvious here, but I've read the article three times, and can find no reference to 'coaching' or 'after-school tutorials' at all here. Are they mentioned elsewhere?
As a former teacher, here is an example lesson plan:
AGE GROUP: Year 5
TOPIC: Introducing prime numbers
STARTER: Mixed multiplication table questions on board.
MAIN ACTIVITY: Write the number 92 on the board. Ask students whether '92' appears in any multiplication table. When the answer '2' is received, stress that multiplication tables do not end at 10 or 12, but continue on indefinitely. Repeat for the numbers '999', '186', and '495'. Next, write the number 71 on the board. Students will conclude that it does not appear in any 'tables'. Explain that it does, offering a reward for the first correct answer. With or without hinting, get the answer '1' or '71'. Offering a second reward, get the second of the pair. Explain that every whole number is in the 'one' times table and the 'itself' times table. However, such numbers are called 'prime' if those are the only ones. Ask students to name other prime numbers below 50, discussing suggestions.
Complete is_it_prime.doc. Students who finish quickly should attempt is_it_prime_2.doc.
That's not meant to be particularly inspiring or anything, just representative. As a teacher, you have a legal obligation to have such a plan for every lesson you teach (this was true in the UK, can't speak for other countries).