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76. Big frontiers
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By analogy to “Big Data is when it’s cheaper to store data than decide what to do with it,” (George Dyson) you could say “Big Frontier is when it’s cheaper to experiment with something than determine if it’s a scam”
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78. Experts trilemma
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The expert’s trilemma Express doubt you feel and get lynched now Express certainty you don’t feel, turn out wrong, get lynched later Express certainty you don’t feel, turn out to be right, get celebrated, be expected to be right forever about everything on pain of lynching
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79. Keep Twitter Mediocre thread
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Football stadium is a better metaphor for twitter than public square. It’s just that the field itself is shrunken to nothing and the spectator sport is watching the stands across from you. National Sousveillance League.
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80. Creative procrastination. 2 tweets is still a thread right?
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Creative procrastination is when you feel deep internal urgency to do a thing, but manage to delay and delay because your approach doesn’t feel right. When you finally find the right approach, the first reaction is utter relief that you didn’t succumb to earlier sense of urgency.
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81. Step by step
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Tagging an interesting microtrend that also looks important: a “step-by-step” ethos developing momentum. A general interest in break-king illegible learning processes into their component steps and refining them. A kind of process skill mindfulness. Like 6-sigma but for learning.
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82. Bonus mentality in delivering work
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A thread on cultivating an ‘unexpected bonus’ attitude to work that catalyzes actionable insights, discoveries, inventions, and spillover societal value. Interestingly enough, the trick to this lies in a dilemma within the mundane, everyday problem of valuing effort for pay.
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85. Commentary on evolution of publishing
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So ebooks vs print books have been a wild ride in the last 15y. Don’t have the numbers on hand, but after initial rapid rise, print book empire fought back. cnbc.com/2019/09/19/phy
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75, corrected QT. Internet of Refugees
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Woke up this AM with a weirdly well-formed idea: “Internet of Migrants” based on routing pack(et)s of 2-10 people point-to-point in humane, conflict-free way that uses an IP-like protocol between cities rather than visa regimes between nations (which suffers border buffer bloat).
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86. Conscientiousness vs half-assery and deciding to live with problems rather than solving them
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My week at 33: nominally work 9-5, 5 days a week, chores on day 6, R&R day 7 My week at 46: 7-day cycle - Shitpost and warm-up day - Writing day - Part-work part half-ass-something day x2 - Tinkering day - Outing day - Recovery day Chores only in crisis mode
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87. Stakes vs. costs
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Feels like Sayre’s law increasingly applies to the world at large. “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s
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88. Return on risk
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What’s percent of your income is return on risk as opposed to compensation for effort? I don’t mean in a tax sense of capital gains. I mean any part of your income that’s due to a risk you took with uncertain return that could have been 0. I think mine has been ~15-30%.
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89. Death of insight
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The insight industry has been running in zombie mode on pure momentum for the last few years. Insights without a grand narrative context are like throwing random spices into a mystery pot without knowing what’s cooking in it.
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90. Bureaucracy is good actually
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Bureaucracy at its best is the art of ensuring work never flows backwards in a system where nobody can see very far, by overengineering the output at every stage. It’s the essence of good fat.
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