Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
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

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      We are all Eloi living on the surface of the leviathan pretending that what we care about in our little lives is what matters for the whole to work -- family, music, jokes, twitter, etc. The small minority who center a search for the actual soul of the beast get tagged villains.

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Yes, there are venal elites, corrupt patterns, oppression, and all that, but all that is STILL human centric. It is peripheral to the way the machine works the way first class vs. coach and legroom issues are peripheral to how an airplane flies at all.

      3 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Roy  😷

      I think trying to make things human-centric and focusing on ideological blame games is the Original Sin of systems thinking. It's as silly as trying to make the solar system geocentric by force. The center is where the center is.https://twitter.com/royking3/status/1341116110498713600 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Roy  😷 @royking3
      Replying to @vgr
      Seems like you bristle at the bad-faith arguments on all sides, do you resent the search for alternatives to ‘greed is good’ & obvious lies of the global capitalist bourgeoise? More Foucault than Marx, aren’t we supposed to make things more human-centric? question our systems?
      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      The human imperative is to always be seeking new ways to decenter ourselves, shed more layers of our anthropocentric conceits, and try harder to discover the true centers of things that concern us.

      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      It is *easy* to diagnose and act on systems in human-centric ways because human brains are wired to work exceptionally well around questions of fairness and cheating. That does NOT mean questions of fairness and cheating are the most important questions.

      1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      To return to my plane example: Is it unfair that some assholes occupy too much overhead bin space? Yes. Is it unfair that tall people have to be cramped in their seats? Yes. That doesn't mean any of it is central to how planes fly.

      3 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      To return to my original point of departure for this rant -- why DON'T we have maps of financial fallout damage the way we do wildfires or bomb damage? Why is our situation awareness of what is actually happening so shockingly bad?

      2 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Why are we unable to place debate about economic damage vs. fatalities on a firmer empirical footing by actually mapping patterns of economic damage on balance sheets even though buildings are still standing? Because we are "human centric" egotists who think we are the center.

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      It's not all bad -- some of the data IS available, and mapping it all IS far harder than mapping geography. My beef is with the attitude that it is immoral to take it seriously and try because of course everybody already knows the "right" answer.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1341118955449028609 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Replying to @theartlav
      Partial views are visible -- the budgets of city governments, the balance sheets/quarterly reports of publicly traded companies, the budgets of many government departments... rates of foreclosure on loans etc etc. It's just very hard to pull a composite picture together.
      2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
      Show this thread
    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Like this recent stimulus bill. 90% of the commentary is on a) the inadequacy of the $600 checks, b) the fact that they shoved in the 3-martini-lunch tax break to get the deal done.

      1 reply 1 retweet 4 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      The fact that they mostly stiffed city/state governments is a footnote. Actual financial bomb damage -- like small airports getting big windfalls and critical infrastructure big airports in the financial ICU, is being ignored because we don't have maps/situation awareness.

      12:36 PM - 21 Dec 2020
      • 1 Retweet
      • 9 Likes
      • Varun Adibhatla T.Cain RichardT emperor of yugoslavia anna adams .petros Trev🙃r Dorian Taylor ollybot 🦄
      1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Yes I understand this is still a triage-style bill. Yes I understand there is a lot of need for band-aids before people can even think beyond their next meal. But there is a deep reluctance to even think about the nature of the damage and what long-term recovery might entail.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          We do not want the development and deployment of the vaccine to be the last heroic thing the crippled global system does for what are essentially its human intestinal biota.

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Dec 21
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          There should be a name for this syndrome of believing "if we built it, we must be the center of it." "Built" does a lot of work in the conceited relationship of humans to the "built" environment they merely had a small role in catalyzing the emergence of.

          2 replies 1 retweet 15 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 24h24 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          "Technology is just a tool," and "markets should serve humans" are propositions that emerge from unexamined, uncritical, self-important anthropocentricity. The artificial world is vastly more emergent than we think. It needs to be studied, understood, and related to like nature.

          1 reply 0 retweets 21 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 24h24 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Herbert Simon/Sciences of the Artificial vector of thing is unacceptably primitive still. That shit hasn't moved since 1970 and vague noises about "weakly coupled systems" and other chart-porn bs from the first pass 50 years ago.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 24h24 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I'm gonna call my new religion Stackocentrism. Things revolve around the stack, not around the humans. Whatever your mental model of the stack, stackocentrism is still a better mental model than human-centrism.

          3 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 23h23 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          If we had a proper map of the leviathan, every balance sheet in the world would show up as safe/burning, and the topology would reveal systemic risk. A financial fire department would descend and put out the fire, do control burns etc.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 23h23 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          The public balance sheet would add an equity stake in the rescued org in proportion to the disproportionate benefit to the “owner.” The less you matter to system survival, the lower your priority, and the higher the stake taken in exchange for rescue if you do get rescued.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 23h23 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Bailouts are not a bad thing. We live with imperfect knowledge in an uncertain world, with complex patterns of risk coupling. We just need a science of bailouts. A financial equivalent of disaster preparedness and response capability. Instead of processing through a moral lens.

          2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 23h23 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          A stupid thing about human-centric thinking is that every failure becomes a moral failure and the calculus of blame, reward, punishment, and justice becomes the theology of system repair. One reason is we use money allocation (both market and planned) as primary fix mechanism.

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 23h23 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It’s not a bad mechanism, but it has the unfortunate property of also being the primary enabler if individual human quality of life. It’s almost like we need different monetary systems for humans vs the system.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 23h23 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Otherwise it leads to thinking Bill Gates lives 120 billion times better than average burger-flipper simply because he has a 120 billion times the net worth of the median person with no assets. Most of that money is Stack fuel. He probably only is 10-1000x happier than you and me

          2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 23h23 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Enterprise money vs consumer money? Not a bad idea actually. Things like food stamps get at that. As do things like earmarked capital equipment grants to industries. Separate power money from survival-and-hedonism money. Bread-and-circus bucks vs. infrastructure bucks.

          4 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 23h23 hours ago
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Financialization would actually be a good thing if it included almost everybody in its logic, and encoded what everybody knows about the system. It’s currently terrible because it reflects a tiny minority view of how the world works. A bunch of 0.1% idiots trading green lumber.

          3 replies 0 retweets 18 likes
          Show this thread
        16. End of conversation

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2020 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Imprint
        • Cookies
        • Ads info