Conversation

When you win in a routine way at work, typically who else wins? What’s the broadest useful boundary. Eg. If I “win” with a viral blog post, English-reading middle class wins with a bit of an insight hit. If an Android engineer “wins” with a neat feature, 90% of the world wins.
3
37
If nonzero-sum wins (the most nourishing kind) are innovations, we can expect 95% of value to accrue to others, not ourselves. If you don’t like the people in the 95% zone, you won’t be motivated. Even if you think your motives are Adam-Smith selfish.
2
8
Effectively, only reasonably guessable impact zone matters. Otherwise everything is chaos-butterfly higher-order effects. For example, apparently Josh Hawley quoted me in his book… not someone I want to supply rhetorical ammo to. But that’s normally invisible zone.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
Does the change you made in the experience of the "middle class" (maybe a word is missing there) ripple out with other effects in their lives? So for example, if I come to know an idea as a student in a class later apply that idea to other work, is that a further "win"?
2
3
I think this factor has unconsciously shifted for me recently. I no longer like implicitly “winning” on behalf of English-reading middle class. It’s the default set that wins from there being more good writing in the world. Writing “for” any other set requires more strategy.
2
6
Hypothesis (corollary of bias-variance tradeoff real): the more you want to control the boundary of who wins with you, the smaller the win, and the larger the fraction you’ll need to retain to make it worthwhile personally.
2
8
Eg. In a town if you have to choose between being a cop vs social worker (protect “right” vs “wrong” side of tracks against other side) your net surplus benefit will be lower than opening a store selling something both sides can use, keeping income constant across the 3 roles.