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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.
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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.
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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.
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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"?
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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.
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Replying to
I’ve not lost my love for humor (and still make up jokes in my head and let the occasional one slip out on social media), so my guess is I want a more meaningful audience. Still figuring out the exact details of that but I know what doesn’t bring me joy anymore.
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