On Dumbing Down

I’ve been considering the simplification of language. There is an interesting angle of self-censorship culture-enforced newspeak, but that is not where I’m going with this. I am thinking more about each person’s individual inner dialogue. If how we speak influences how we think, then dumbing down language dumbs down our thought. This is a problem … Continue reading On Dumbing Down →

More about barriers to entry: How people get rich

This post will follow up on a previous one about anti-trust. In that post, I allege that the best (if not only) way to become aggressively rich — to have “passive income” — is to abuse some “barrier to entry.” A barrier to entry is essentially some leverage that makes it very difficult for someone else to compete with … Continue reading More about barriers to entry: How people get rich →

A proposal for a better standard of anti-trust

Anti-trust origins Anti-trust regulations are called that because they were once considered generically anti-corporate regulations, like what tough-on-corporation politicians expound today. Think the trusts are oppressing the workers? Hit them with some regulations! But eventually, anti-trust would come to by synonymous with curbing the power of monopoly. And with good reason. Market power is the … Continue reading A proposal for a better standard of anti-trust →

Path-Dependence and Bottlenecks

Dates and Keyboards Have you ever wondered why clocks are seemingly base 12? Or why we use the Imperial system over the metric system? Or why we know degrees instead of radians? These are harmless, but here are some things that are not. The Gregorian calendar is bad. The QWERTY keyboard (which I’m using right … Continue reading Path-Dependence and Bottlenecks →

Irreversible Fads vs The Precautionary Principle

Of the two greatest sources of knowledge for how society should function, the first is tradition. After all, if a norm has has been practiced for countless generations, doesn’t that count for something? The modern man may scoff at this. Why should we defer to the way people have done things in the past? Tradition … Continue reading Irreversible Fads vs The Precautionary Principle →

Speech: Peter Thiel on predicting the future

The penultimate speech: You Are Not a Lottery Ticket by Peter Thiel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw The question of luck Thiel believes there are two forces of progress. First, globalization (horizontal progress), copying things that already work, or "doing more with more". Second, technology (vertical progress), doing things a different way, or "doing more with less." Globalization is mathematically represented … Continue reading Speech: Peter Thiel on predicting the future →

Jumping the Valley: How to Innovate Like No Other

Pick a game you can win.

Again, pick a game you can win.

You may think work = success, like a linear equation. The more work, or investment of any sort, the more success.
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@tferriss @cgpgrey The Adaptive Valley
How to innovate like now other can

The errors with Bret Weinstein’s four-part test of adaption

A biologist I admire, Bret Weinstein, employs a four-part test to determine whether a trait is the product of evolution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtdOhBoZfNg Is it complex? Does it have a cost? Is there variation in the amount of cost that is spent? Does it persist over evolutionary time? If a trait has all of those characteristics, then … Continue reading The errors with Bret Weinstein’s four-part test of adaption →