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Re: 1, this is why there are no "first principles thinking" ways to orient in a true people business. The only first principle with people is to relate to them as people, not fungible objects (Buber I-you vs. I-it relations).
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There are other non-fungible people-qua-people businesses, and it's useful to look at edge cases where they are treated as *almost* fungible-but-for-humannness. Like modeling or K-pop bands. Not interchangeable cogs on an assembly line but as close as you can get.
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Twitter is as close to the other extreme as a major business has ever gotten. Firmly in I-you territory. People being as human as technology will let them. And much more so than facebook, instagram, even 4chan etc.
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We use silly pfps and emojis, and run experiments with AI bots to try and replace ourselves, but mostly this product is people being here to connect with other people in I-you ways.
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I don't see any obvious way to apply physics-style "first principles" here. We're not talking lithium chemistry or aluminum welding or inverted pendulum equations to land a booster. If you try to do "commodity stage" first principles, there's only one place it can end: adtech.
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Good social product thinkers fundamentally *enjoy* people as a phenomenon in the universe the way physicists enjoy quarks or black holes. They enjoy figuring them out, and in the best case, find the "I-you" connection at scale. Even if they are on the spectrum and find it hard.
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Elon has famously said something like "I run people in emulation mode." This is not in itself a problem. I know of many people who self-identify as on the spectrum and similarly think about people in unusual ways. Many are great social product thinkers nevertheless.
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And they're good at it because they actually care and want to form rewarding I-you connections and help others do so. It's not about whether they care in a neurotypical way or not. They don't "love humanity" in the abstract. They enjoy the grounded challenge of I-you connecting.
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By the way, if you want to think about the I-you (often written I-thou for some weird German translation reason) and its relation to asperger's and tech mindsets, wrote a great meditation on it on ribbonfarm in 2013
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But in general, I'm really hoping against hope that this is temporary Trumpish insanity that will pass. Because unlike Trump, whom he uncannily resembles right now, I think there's a there there with Elon worth a redemptive third act arc.
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And he's young enough he may live to be a hero again. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself turn into a villain, and then a hero again. Because I really don't want either elon or twitter to go down in the dumbest, least necessary fire in history.