333 entries under "article"

A Story of Stories

[Viable story viruses need to be teachable and understandable for simplicity, hard to disprove and specific as absolute truth for conviction, and applicable to a wide range of people for spreadability.]

[To drive behaviour of its host, story viruses needs promises of pleasure or pain to create incentives, claims that your behaviour will be known to facilitate accountability, coverage of the spectrum that humans believe for comprehensiveness.]

[Story evolution favours the hosts who survive.]

[Dehumanization adds superglue to the story to make it not only okay but one's 'duty' to kill the other.]

[Having a supreme leader and identifying yourself with the story ('I am a [story]ist') creates the tribal mindset that enables larger groups of humans to act in concert.]

[A tribe's military fights external threats. The police fight cancer.]

Money through the eyes of Mowgli

[The Tarzan suite analyses from the fully-formed individual onwards: the nodes make up the network. The Mowgli suite starts from interdependance and a child that needs to be cared for: the network makes the node.]

[The idea of passing a random stranger on the street did not exist in the past, as survival implied being a part of tightly-knit groups.]

[Nation states are only about 5000 years old and have dissolved the boundaries between smaller collectives to create 'the public', which we are vaguely connected to but do not know.]

[The image of 'prehistoric wilderness man' we consider today is a caricature. Primitive life was not 'solo men creating shelter and hunting' but intensely group-oriented collaboration, as can be seen in photos of indigenous tribes.]

[The myth of self-sufficiency assumes that interacting with others and trading is optional, as opposed to a mandatory means of survival.]

[The natural mechanism of 'life' is a sort of credit, where people give you things to help you survive without any immediate or precise expectation of return. You might pay it back informally or pay it forward.]

Adumbrations Of Aducanumab

This is Yagmuk. He lives in Ipmulaakiituk with his wife and children and eighteen moose. Since 2004, every single bill in the American health care system has gone to Yagmuk. He cannot read English, so he tears them into little shreds and burns them in the winter to keep warm. One day providers will realize he’s not paying, and the whole medical system will collapse.

[Q&A #02] Bombs vs. Bugs

[Banning code exploits itself can hurt efforts to counter DRM for autonomy.]

[Software exploits can be more dangerous than bombs because they are more likely to be used.]

[When exploits are used, we don't find out immediately; sometimes only years later, wheras bombs will be reported on the evening news.]

[Like viruses, exploits can be spread: using it is a risk of losing it.]

How To Build A Massive, Pacific Ocean-Sized Differentiation Moat

[Lever 1: radically different benefit for a radically different problem. To not market the features but the outcome.]

A growth masterclass with Judd Legum of Popular Information

[Create a thread to condense key thoughts from larger texts.]

[Threads indicate you are a more thoughtful person and more likely lead to new followers.]

How Abigail Koffler grew her email list from scratch

[Each week is something to cook, something to order, and something to read.]

[I ask a question every week and include the responses in the following week.]

Languaging: The Strategic Use Of Language To Change Thinking

[Viagra had to invent a disease called erectile dysfunction to avoid saying 'impotent.']

[Whoever frames it and names it can claim it. You can become an authority by defining a category.]

[A grande is preceived to be more expensive than medium.]

[All great languaging involves one of the four arithmetic operations: what does it add? subtract? multiply? divide? The result can be longer, or in seconds, or an order of magnitude different.]

How Toastmasters has survived—nay, thrived!—for 100 years

[There is a counter at each meeting for both grammar mistakes and filler words like 'um', and a timer helps speakers fit into the allotted time. People keep coming back to improve their skills.]

How I write

[After grouping fragments of your idea, and before writing a draft, bring it up when talking to smart people and try to get their feedback or disagreements. This is part of allowing time to work in your favour and helps you find the right words or way to express in more permanent form.]

A cellular theory of communities

[Communities grow less like linear software products and more like multi-cellular organisms. If the conditions aren't conducive, the entire structure can collapse.]

[It's easier for cells to stay alive when they are smaller. Multi-cellular organisms grow by producing more cells.]

[Might be more strategic to build a large community by connecting many smaller, more intimate micro-communities. Enlarging small groups destroys the qualities that make it potent.]

To scale a community, build lots of special, one-of-a-kind places for a few people at a time, and then work with the most active members to build fast interconnects between them.

Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods

Greater scale should mean greater good as valued by an increasingly wider set of people: the creation of positive externalities.

pay it forward

[The coolest thing to say when receiving gratitude is not 'you're welcome' but 'pass it on'.]

being smart vs being kind

[Nourishment leads to more growth than coddling.]

[Like babies, challenge ideas not when they are fragile but when they have grown legs.]

Michael, Dwight and Andy: the Three Aesthetics of the Creative Class

[Upper class proles project 'I am winning'; Middles project 'I am serious'; Upper middles project 'I am at ease'.]

[Upper class proles show they are 'winning' by talking about daytrading, fantasy sports, and other publicly abailable information that is really about them. This is in place of ticket stubs and receipts that in the past would have been whipped out of their wallet to prove something.]

[The middles show they are 'correct' by discussin talking points and everything that's wrong with the world as an obvious contrast to themselves.]

[The upper middles show they are at ease by not pretending, as the middles do, but by gossiping hints about the secret context that no one else knows.]

[When the conversation turns yo real estate, the upper proles talk about prices, the middles talk about demographic and social issues, and the upper middles talk about renovation.]

Digital Sovereignty.

[All maps are projections, imperfect representations of space.]

On Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners and Theft.

[Pioneers build the first prototypes of new technologies. Settlers make it accessible profitable. Town planners make it a commodity that enables new pioneers.]

[Create incentives for each group to steal from the other.]

[Each group has a different culture. Not to be subsumed under 'company culture'.]

Participation Inequality: The 90-9-1 Rule for Social Features

[Help counter participation inequality by making it easier to contribute; making participation a side effect of other things they did; offering templates to avoid intimidating blank pages; rewarding participation with badges or discounts; showcasing great contributions.]

8 tips for converting free newsletter readers to paid

[Conversions don't happen on first contact. People need repeated exposure before taking action.]

App Store Arguments

In this world you don’t need 1,000 true fans to make a living; you need 1,786 — 536 fans to pay Apple, 253 fans to pay Twitter, and only then the 1,000 that make it possible to create something new. It is inevitable that some number of businesses never get started, because of this deadweight loss.

[Apple strategically launched on 2nd or 3rd tier carriers to maximize their control over the experience, and then used the leverage from market dominance to force larger carriers to accept.]