Thread by @balajis

Actions speak louder than words. But do they? Words are explicit and often public. Actions are often implicit and unobserved.

This may be why many are "action-blind", analogous to colorblind. They see only the words someone emits, without weighing their track record of actions.

A concrete example is something we take for granted, which is that a politician's promises are non-binding. They can say anything to get elected, then do what they want. Compare to a product that does what it says on the tin.

A convincing actor vs a substantive action.

One way of thinking about this is to make actions more visible. There are sites that do political report cards, though the scores aren't placed next to tweets or ballots.

Relatedly, it is interesting that we have decent book and movie reviews, but not newsmedia reviews.

Actions are in general more costly than words, but not always. In communist countries, there were plenty of things you couldn't say without punishment, but that you could act on, kind of. Public lies, private truths. amazon.com/Private-Truths…

When words are expensive, Straussianism?

"Strauss is famous for almost shouting that great thinkers have characteristically had secret or esoteric teachings. What they really think is true is found between the lines & often contradicts what they seem to say in the actual lines."

This is why I find things like poap.xyz interesting: a proof of attendance protocol.

Crypto-resumes make actions more tangible, provable, visible should you decide to reveal them.