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Newbies tend to wonder why us aging scenesters don’t give each other the benefit of the doubt, and appear to read the worst interpretations into the actions of others. It isn’t best or worst. It’s just that the clueless idealists don’t survive long enough to become patterns.
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You’ve probably heard of Idea Maze. Idea mazes are the best of Silicon Valley. Repositories of deep knowledge. Unfortunately the flip side is People Mazes. Dull, uninteresting, deeply predictable black holes of mutually reinforcing self-congratulatory derp.
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This idea applies to people in tech. The trick to lasting in this scene is to combine deep optimism about idea mazes (VR will work out! Crypto will work out!) with deep pessimism about people mazes.
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The best macro trades combine boundless optimism about technological progress with bottomless cynicism about human nature.
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People seem fine so long as they don’t commit too deeply to a single people maze, and retain a deep streak of non-alignment. But the moment they get owned by a particular people maze, it’s the beginning of the end.
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If you’re new on the scene, take your time to figure out the people mazes for yourself. Not just idea mazes. Don’t just sign up to be in the tribe of the first group to notice or court you. Like Harry Potter said to Draco, “I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks.”
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You know that line about network effects in interest graphs (Chris Dixon I think): come for the tools, stay for the community. All of Silicon Valley and Tech more broadly is an example of that, in both the best and worst senses of the idea.
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It’s wonderfully open as a place, trivially easy for even the most socially inept, or awkward, or misfit types to find a welcoming crowd to hang out with. So long as you like some ideas and can add to the pot in even a modest way, you’ll make friends easily. That’s the danger.
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The shift from being primarily interested in ideas (almost always a good thing) to being primarily interested in other people (almost never better than a mixed blessing at best) is really tempting and easy. About 80% turn into pure people-scenesters at the first opportunity.
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You’d be surprised how hard it is to actually talk technology in Silicon Valley. It’s FAR easier to gossip endlessly about intricacies of raising money, what various VCs and star entrepreneurs are up to, and most easily — what various people mazes are talking about.
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You’ll learn people mazes about 10x faster than idea mazes. More people know the map of who’s who in say AI or crypto than what’s what. And if you have even minor success on any front, it is 100x, because the people mazes will come to you, and try to network you in.
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I’ve now spent a couple of full biz/tech cycles in tech (though admittedly my participation in the 2000 was in provincial Austin) and my suspicion on the “community” side has never been deeper. I’m even (perhaps especially) suspicious of community stuff I’ve helped catalyze.