A short summary of The Meridian of Her Greatness by Lou Keep.

This is about how we can reconcile economic prosperity with increasing discontent, what capitalism really means, why social protections hurt the economy & society and cause bigger problems

samzdat.com/2017/06/01/the… Reconciling economic prosperity and discontent is difficult. People point to Trump/Brexit/Occupy as examples of anger. This fails to explain anything.

How do we explain their economic motivations? Is income/wealth inequality really the problem?

Never thought my reading on the Himalayas and business will collide but given the recent Everest traffic jam image going viral, I'm going to do a thread explaining the evolution of the market for climbing Everest and some of the unintended consequences (e.g. traffic jams) The race for climbing Everest coincided with the end of WW1 and the first expedition to recon Everest began in 1921, followed by a first attempt in 1922 and a second attempt in 1924.

Information wants free, a thread: Information like any other life form wants to reproduce and live. It does so via legibility.

Information is free only to the extent that it is legible by hosts.

Software eating the world is basically how information is forcing us to make legibility functions for everything.

In a post truth economy where there are no facts, people are free to choose narratives that help them avoid any dissonance.

People have always chosen self consistent beliefs and ego preservation over factual information but the lines are getting extremely blurred. Going forward, everyone will be free to choose their own realities, echoed back to them by members of the in-group they choose to inhabit.

So much easier to do that now.

Megathread on Girard and his ideas. With this, hopefully I'm ready to inhabit a new idea cloud. 1/ Why should you read about Girard and his ideas?

https://twitter.com/Rahul_Ramc/status/1067272710760423424

https://twitter.com/Rahul_Ramc/status/1067271627795300352

Mimetic desire (or triangular desire) and influence run the show at elite universities.

An object of desire becomes desirable by virtue of being desired by someone.

Add a pinch of scarcity effect, risk aversion and throw some money - you've got the perfect bait. Aversion to failure (and more generally risk) is magnified in middle class indian kids because failure is associated with extreme shame.

The result - a risk averse generation that doesn't know what to do and thus follows the herd.

Founder as victim, founder as God.

A brilliant application of Girard's theory of mimetic desire, violence and scapegoating to startups.

blakemasters.com/post/245786838… I knew there were class notes available for zero to one but this is like finding a small treasure.

Excited to dig in.

Finally managed to extract my pocket data.

A thread on reading stats from my pocket: 1/ Stats for 2017

Number of articles added: 2014
Number of articles read: 870
Number of articles favorited: 25

This is a great article on the NPC meme doing the rounds. There's a lot more substance here than most memes.

Courtesy @EvanPlatinum and @jacobitemag

jacobitemag.com/2018/10/02/emp… 1/ “NPC” is an acronym for “Non-Player Character.”

As the name implies, NPCs are counterparts to the Player Characters (PCs), the protagonists controlled by most of the participants.

They exist to facilitate the narrative’s flow and give it a sense of immersion &verisimilitude.

Riveting read on advances in sex robots and what it would mean for society.

Courtesy @sentientist

jacobitemag.com/2018/04/24/unc… 1/ Courtship is costly (by design, since it is supposed to check for fitness).

This is an important idea - thinking in dynamics not statics.

A thread on thinking in systems and inequality (all Taleb inspired)

https://twitter.com/econtalker/status/1055239759776374784

1/ Measuring quintiles at two points in time does not give you a correct picture of how the system is evolving.

'Who' constitutes quintiles needs to be taken into account.

As long as inequality is dynamic and class mobility is not zero, inequality is fine (feature not bug).

This is a great piece on why external validation makes for insecure people (works the other way round as well)

Too real.

medium.com/@wgalyean/advi… The pursuit of accomplishment is most healthy when done without a need for external validation.

A few quotes/notes from Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project (The story of Daniel Kanheman and Amos Tversky)

Thanks to FB memories. “It’s hard to know how people select a course in life,” Amos said.

I implore anyone with a basic understanding of Girard's mimetic desire and having an interest in technology and culture wars to read this masterful essay on mimesis, violence and Facebook.

thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/20… 1/ Mimetic desire: we desire objects because others desire them.

Radical vs disruptive innovation and why companies die.

A thread: Understanding what counts for innovation is crucial for businesses.

This post does a great job of distinguishing between 'disruptive' innovation and 'radical' innovation.

ribbonfarm.com/2007/07/23/dis…

A thread on the two axes of innovation:

A thread on Bloom's two sigma problem in education and how advances in technology can help scale effective learning: 1/ Benjamin Bloom in his research found that one on one tutoring can enable students to achieve 2 sigma improvement over conventional teaching.

His objective was to find practical methods that scale to achieve the same two sigma improvement (tutoring isn't scalable).

The Centre for Sustainable Employment @working_india released a detailed report titled 'State of Working India' last week.

Some highlights and what it means for India's future below:

You can download the full report here: cse.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/state-of-worki… 1/ The foreward by Wipro CSO Anurag Behar has this bleak paragraph:

A major theme in the report is frustration at the lack of growth in jobs given the positive sentiment around India's growth story.

I'd really like someone who's knowledgeable to comment on this.

An absolute treat. Thanks @farnamstreet and @tobi 😄

I dare say this is on the same level as the one with @naval

Some highlights below:

https://twitter.com/farnamstreet/status/1042033384069902336

1/ All founders probably know but few talk about systems thinking and why it's an extremely important mental model to have. Cause and effect are difficult to ascertain(sometimes absent)epiphenomena are everywhere. Thinking in systems gives everyone a common language to build on.

A thread on money, cash flows and why restaurants are not good businesses (for most people).

Not sure what prompted this train of thought but perhaps the opening of a new restaurant right next to my house has got something to do with it. “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation.”

I love the content and style so much that I actually copied it when I was starting my own newsletter.

I've also read almost everything Anand has written because he's a damn good writer.

Even if it's just to see how impactful a newsletter can be you should subscribe.

https://twitter.com/asanwal/status/1041728834255704064

Let's just make this a thread about what I've learnt from @asanwal :

1/ Catch your reader's eye. A small increase in open rate is significant at scale (more $$).

2/ Look at the cadence of your conversation. This newsletter mixes insights and conversation in the best way.

forbes.com/sites/randalll…
Lots to unpack here: 1/ Nevertheless, Bezos talks about Amazon like it's a giddy startup that just closed its Series A. "For all practical purposes, the market size is unconstrained," says Bezos.
Wow.