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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 15
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      14. Uberrationality https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1294757871863787520?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1294757871863787520 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Can’t recall where I saw this (help?) but rideshare drivers typically don’t work longer during surge to maximize revenue while there’s more money to be made. They just work till they hit their daily income target and go home. I think I’ll call this uberrational economic behavior.
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 18
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      15. Memetic r/K theory https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1282193892687806465?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1282193892687806465 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      So... I’ve been trying to find supporting arguments for my intuition that even though death rate is far lower than Spanish Flu (2%) and European Black Death (25-30%), the civilizational damage is comparable. I’ve found a pretty good one...
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      2 replies 1 retweet 3 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 18
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      16. On Zoomblesse oblige https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1267315054451408896?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1267315054451408896 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Been thinking a lot about the API as a metaphor and the peace above vs the war below (both Covid and protests/riots/looting) API as storefront glass: read-only aspirational life API as great filter on social mobility API as defensive perimeter against viruses and violence
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 24
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      17. On independent researchhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1195789557465153536?s=20 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      I was briefly calling myself an independent researcher: somebody who self-funds spec R&D on their own ideas. In theory it’s something like indie-research : academic research :: blogging/self-publishing : traditional publishing. But the idea doesn’t really work.
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      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 24
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      18. More on independent researchhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1195937380210921472?s=20 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Thinking about my thread this morning on why independent research is hard, and what it would take to make it possible, and whether it’s within the reach of private investors who ALL complain endlessly about how they have far too much capital and don’t know where to put it. https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1195789557465153536 …
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      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 24
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      19. On the perils of having an uncalibrated brainhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1297743621777580034 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      The longer I spend online, the more true this feels. A big consequence of social atomization is that increasing numbers of people lack a sense of how their thinking stacks up against others. They are either very impressed with themselves OR ridiculously underestimate themselves. https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1266118677537026050 …
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      1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      20. Financial lensing effecthttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1256739322780241921 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Very large quantities of concentrated capital can bend truth rays and warp epistimology and ontology. There is a financial lending effect by which you can detect the presence of large cold masses of money that otherwise can’t be seen
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      2 replies 1 retweet 8 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      21. Beliefversehttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1302083532022362112 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Doubt-impedance matching. To persuade smart people, you have to start from a posture of genuine doubt that matches theirs and work both of you into belief together. Belief is a relationship variable, not an individual one. It is founded on mutual information, not private.
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      1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 14
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      22. Uncertainty regulation as a basic drivehttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1305573930334208000 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      I've heard of 3 hypothesized "basic drives" for living things: seek pleasure, avoid pain, minimize energy. I don't know that any of them is based on anything more solid than Freud-level hand-waving, but I think there's a fourth one: regulate uncertainty.
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      1 reply 1 retweet 4 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 15
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      23. Judging people by the topics they choose to talk abouthttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1074890050213621760?s=21 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      You know that line about judging people by their actions rather than their words? What about people whose only non-trivial output is words? (assume their actions are boringly uncontroversial, like say living basic middle class life funded by job at paper factory) Here’s a way.
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 20
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      24. Extended brain stuffhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1125119314611171328?s=21 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      A megatrend hypothesis inspired by several microtrend that I think are related: a) waldenponding b) rise of heavy duty information management methods like @fortelabs BASB (build a second brain) c) conversational media eating authorial media d) "hivebrain" jokes/references
      Show this thread
      4:53 PM - 20 Sep 2020
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        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 20
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          25. Nerdos vs thymoshttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1307846068445478913?s=21 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          If something is worth doing for free, it’s worth doing nerd-out obsessively-compulsively for free. “Free” implies the purest kind of surplus leisure energy. It should be unshackled from ordinary ROI thinking. You’ve *already* accepted zero returns. So why hold back?
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 27
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          26. Cargo-cult selection hypothesis. Civilization is the process of turning sociopathy into good mannershttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1309988191114416128 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Observation: psychopaths are often charming/reassuring and can put you at ease in a trusting, vulnerable state. Hypothesis A: Psychopaths learn to fake norms of trustworthiness and reassurance Hypothesis B: Societies evolve to normalize psychopath behaviors as norms for all
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 28
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          27. Verb for doing sciencehttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1310692412537225217?s=21 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          We need a verb meaning “doing science” in elemental, non-institutional, non-bureaucratic sense. Something like “investigating” Not “research” since that’s overloaded with methodological baggage from professionalized publication-oriented science. Small-s, no exclamation point.
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 28
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          28. Dead-end historyhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1310635395005071360?s=21 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          I can no longer remember what the topline narrative of the NYT was like back in 2014, before the current creeping mix of trump-kremlinology and woke clickbait took over. What was the narrative back when people like Friedman and Brooks were still in charge of it? Anyone remember?
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 28
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          29. Smugismshttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1310769794665177088?s=21 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Starting a thread of my most annoying one-liners, selected for smugness and self-satisfaction 😎 https://twitter.com/vgr/status/530754536625815553 …
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 10
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          30. Free moneyhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1314983875546767362 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          It really is very hard to care about money past the point it stops being a source of immediate anxiety. People capable of caring enough to solve for money past their personal anxiety point have a kind of superpower. It might even be the defining trait of entrepreneurs.
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 13
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          31. Doing only 1 thinghttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1316168198866132992?s=21 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Prioritization is the communism of attention management 😖 Do or do not. There is no priority. Once you make a list of things that need doing, and prioritize them according to any metric at all, you can guarantee you will want to do something that’s not in the list at all.
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 17
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          32. Memory genreshttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1175999844101439488 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Here’s a spectrum of “memory” genres 1. Autobiography 2. Family history 3. Personal memoir 4. Subcultural history 5. Public life memoir 6. Participant history Prediction: All of it is in trouble. Our cultural memory processes are breaking.
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 21
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          33. Long-arc narrative recessionhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1318411552098111489 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Hmm. Can any long-arc extended universe type stuff be traced to the 1920s? Especially in genre fiction? Considering a hypothesis that it was a slump decade for EUs.
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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          34. Long-term thinkinghttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1319819179491381248 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          long-term thinking makes people unhappy because it almost necessarily means they’re thinking about big problems the only future thing you can be fairly sure about is that the big problems of today won’t go away miraculously and will last as long as you expect, probably longer
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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          35. Pandemic live-reads meta threadhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1246565978021842944 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Pandemic live-reads meta-thread. I have reasons I’m reading these right now and finding them useful for current headspace, but I’ll save those for a blog post. First one was history of Astounding, the legendary sci-fi magazine. https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1233210973793574912 …
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 1
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          36. 4 types of communityhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/971454478825046016 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          1/ I’ve concluded there are 4 types of relationships meatspace communities can have with digitization, which I call a) Circled Wagons, b) Resurrected, c) Atomized, and d) Precipitated.
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 20
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          37. Reading the Astonishing Stories projecthttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1329875894605758464 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          The Yak Collective @yak_collective has been doing a futures project called Astonishing Stories, led by @SachinB91 and @WabiSabiFutures to explore near-future scenarios. The output is a series of short stories being published as an evolving anthology https://www.yakcollective.org/projects/astonishing-stories/ …
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 24
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          38. "Thinking for yourself"https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1056603055309778944 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          In practice “thinking for yourself” = Being redpilled: Leaving large, loose tribe for small, tight one (60%) Ignorance-veiling: Maintaining composure and 50-50 bothsides priors about everything (30%) “Critical thinking” Ritual, absence-of-evidence skepticism (9%) Real (1%)
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 24
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          39. Trying to have both sides of a conversationhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1330917074500141057 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          People really like to have both sides of conversations. You’d think this is a sort of stylized performance element but it isn’t. Many people have a real style that a,punts to: have both sides of a conversation, get mad when live counterparty goes off script, to force them back on https://twitter.com/leftistexe/status/1330386159176982529 …
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 25
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          40. Id theory of narrative animationhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1331673021367480320 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Plot and character are in some ways the commodity elements of fiction, and how-to books spend 90% of their words on those. But good genre fiction usually seems to center a non-basic element: LOTR: fake languages Culture: names of ships Star Trek: species This seems important.
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          41. Futurecast 2071.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1333473709659570176 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          US history as synecdoche for world history really begins in 1854. Not coincidentally that was peak UK too. Everything before that is mostly provincial backwater prequel stuff. Bleeding Kansas, Perry in Japan, US tech at London world fair (1851) were the turning points.
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 13
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          42. Data personhoodhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1338237296164814850 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          See also... this idea is becoming more popular by the decade. https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-understand-cells-tissues-and-organisms-as-agents-with-agendas …
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 24h24 hours ago
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          43. Rant about lack of covid-fallout financial damage maps leading to the mooting of a new religion, Stackocentrism.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1341099812687466496 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          wish there was a way to see financial damage the way you can see maps of forest fires or bomb damage from wars... covid is such a physically bloodless catastrophe it's really hard to see the extreme invisible damage
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          0 replies 1 retweet 4 likes
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        21. End of conversation

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