A lot of misunderstanding and offense online comes from assuming the audience.

When we read posts, we tend to assume we are the audience. When the content doesn’t fit us, we assume it’s wrong.

Whenever I witness this, I think of the scene in Star Wars, “This is not the post you are looking for”. If it doesn’t click for you, move on. It’s probably not for you. Whether positive advice that seems dumb to you, or a negative attack that seems incorrect to you, odds are it’s between two parties you don’t understand and they aren’t writing with you and your situation in mind.

Trying to educate the poster on your situation and let them know they their content doesn’t fit it is almost never a good idea. Because they assume you’re part of their audience too. And if you say, “Hey, I’m not your audience but I don’t agree with this”, it signals a waste of both of your time.

Before you respond, ask yourself who the intended audience is. It helps.

One of the most useful methods I’ve found to get closer to actionable truth is by creating (non-hostile) antagonism.

If I’m unsure about options, I will pick one and act as if it’s true. I’ll argue in favor of it as if it’s the only way. I’ll make the best, strongest arguments for it I can, and won’t hedge. This requires someone else to take up the opposite position, if nothing else just to get it a fair hearing. But I’m gonna come on strong, so they are going to have to bring the strongest arguments to match.

With two people fully going to bat for the two positions, the truth is more likely to reveal itself far faster than if we just dance around the weaker “on the one hand but on the other hand” stuff.

Not only does going all in on one position draw out useful arguments from others for the alternate position, but it lets me test drive being a devotee of my position and see if it resonates with my gut. The most important truths are those you just know with your knower, even if you can’t consciously articulate or understand why. Indecision is when that gut feeling isn’t strong enough either way to cut through the intellectual pros and cons. Examining positions objectively at a distance is an intellectual exercise that doesn’t always help discover the gut feeling.

But putting on a position like it’s true and going all in gives a taste of what it feels like to live in that reality. The gut gets a chance to scream “this feels off” or “Yes, this is right!”

The hard part about this approach is that it can feel shocking or disheartening or overwhelming to people if they aren’t used to it. I grew up in a loud, talkative, interrupting, arguing household. To me, disagreeing is not offensive. There’s nothing personal about attacking each others arguments within a trusted context. But I’ve learned over the years this is not normal and I often end up bowling over people and they just yield to my pigheaded arguments…even if I’m just test driving them myself.

I’ve tried to ease back some, but mostly to collaborate with people who can get down with strong argument as a form of truth discovery.

PS – I find this works really well for action items. I do not like this approach for discovering philosophical, moral, or abstract truth.

It’s a lot of work

To let kids do things for me

Here goes Father’s Day!

Had another great chat with TK about alot going on in the world today.

We chat about his beef with free-market advocates who fail to see when the market is winning and instead fear what it might produce.

We dive into companies responding to social outrage, whether it’s a worrisome sign of mob mentality or a positive process for truth discovery, and a whole lot more.

Audio version here (and on all podcast platforms under The Isaac Morehouse Podcast)

 

Video version here:

 

Read the latest issue and all others here.

I didn’t sleep much last night. I got a late start, not feeling great or thinking clearly, it’s cloudy, I’m behind on my work, and I’m grumpy.

And I love it.

I love it because this is that moment when I get to decide if I want my day to run me or if I want to run my day. You think I feel like writing this daily post when I’ve got stuff to catch up on? Nope. But I’m gonna do it, and I’m gonna own it and have fun with it.

A good day isn’t one where everything goes right. A good day is one where everything goes wrong but you do the right stuff anyway. That’s the kind of good that lasts because it makes you better and you carry it with you into every other day.

Today is mine.

A fun conversation with bitcoin entrepreneur Jack Liu from last Friday.

I love trying out new platforms.

Most of the time, they don’t end up forming into new habits for me, or the network effects are too weak, or they die off altogether. But sometimes I end up loving them.

I’ve switched browsers many times. Currently I’m on Brave and using DuckDuckGo for search. I’ve been a lifelong Gmail guy, but am exploring some other options. I was all over Facebook for years but never do much on there now as I’ve moved to Twitter and now increasingly Twetch. I’ve tried Snap, Instagram, Tik Tok, and others (none of them stuck for me). I’ve also tried several podcast hosting apps.

I’ve never been a big fan of YouTube, but it has such an extensive library! When me and some friends started recording bitcoin chats every few weeks, I uploaded them there because I didn’t know where else to put them.

Now I’m also trying Streamanity, a video hosting platform where you can set the price and viewers pay in bitcoin. It’s still in that early phase with small user base and lots of kinks, but it’s fun!

Here’s a video I uploaded there, which happens to be an interview with the owner:

https://streamanity.com/video/46UsDDNXiPg4VZ

 

I was just discussing with a friend a thought experiment I put together years ago during a debate on whether or not inequality is a prerequisite to economic exchange.

The claim I heard from some economists was that you can’t have trade without inequality. While I believe inequality is inescapable, natural, not undesirable, and an inevitable outcome of freedom and prosperity, I don’t think it is logically necessary in order for mutually beneficial trade to occur.

I emphasize logical, because thought experiments can be useful for finding errors in reasoning, but they are almost never useful for finding better explanations for the real world. I think I can construct a thought experiment that reveals that inequality is not logically necessary for win-win trade, but that doesn’t do much to improve understanding of the world. In the real world, everyone is unequal, period. We differ in taste, preference, ability, biology, etc. Even small divergence leads to different subjective valuations which is the major driver in gains from trade.

The point of the claim that inequality is needed for trade is to reveal that, for from being a danger to be feared, it’s a necessary part of human flourishing. That is true. Still, I don’t think it is logically required for trade to occur.

Here’s my thought experiment:

Two perfectly identical people live on an island. To survive, they need both fish and berries in their diet. Both have identical preferences for types of work, and identical abilities at fishing and berry picking.

In 1/2 a day, one can collect 100 berries, and in 1/2 a day one can catch 2 fish. So each individual splitting the day between berries and fish will end up with 100 berries and 2 fish, for a combined total of 200 berries and 4 fish.

But there are more abundant berries high up on the mountain. The catch is it takes an entire day to get there and back, leaving no time for fishing. And there are more fish deeper in the ocean, but it takes an entire day to paddle there and back leaving no time for berries.

The two identical people could specialize. One spends the whole day fishing in more abundant waters and catches 6 fish. One day one spends all day in more abundant berry bushes and picks 300 berries. They can trade and end up with 150 berries and 3 fish each. Both individuals have gained (50%!) from the trade due to division of labor.

This does not require either individual to become more skilled than the other at one task. They could alternate each day who does which and still win. Division of labor and specialization coupled with trade is a better outcome than self-sufficiency even for two completely equal individuals because of the uneven nature of production itself. Each unit of time does not produce an identical outcome, and duration spent at a task may affect the marginal productivity, even without new skills gained or new capital employed.

See, trade is beneficial even in a world of perfect equality!

The problem is every assumption in the thought experiment is far fetched beyond belief. It can reveal an error in the logic of the original claim, but not its reality. Trade always arises between unequal partners because no two people are equal in the real world. Even identical twins stranded on an island aren’t. Even engineered clones under my scenario wouldn’t be, because in reality they would enhance their skill with more time invested in one task than another.

Thought experiments are not “gotcha” moments for real world claims. They may be mild rebukes of the certainty of the logical necessity, but they are so divorced from the real world, and so stripped of variables that they allow the real world to contradict them all the time.

Just ask those economists who couldn’t imagine any logical way lighthouses could be funded without government even while the very lighthouses outside their window were funded without government.

Thought experiments are fun and sometimes useful, but also often arrogant, blinding, and dangerous.

Update: I just noticed a “Related Post” under this from three years ago. About this exact same thing. I don’t even remember writing it. Daily blogging will do that sometimes. Anyway, here it is.

 

In one hundred years

Current medical ideas

Will seem barbaric

I just watched some guys on YouTube eat a whole pineapple, skin and all.

Apparently pineapple exteriors have an enzyme that digests protein and basically tenderizes the inside of you mouth and later your digestive system – it digests you while you digest it. These guys were bleeding from the mouth by the time they were done.

Of course this looks like a stupid thing to do. But it also has some strange appeal, just like the stunts on MTV’s Jackass. Or climbing Everest for that matter.

Humans want to know.

We want to see firsthand (or at least secondhand) what happens when you do this to that. Watch kids mess around with household objects. They always eventually do something stupid with them.

This is a wonderful trait. It can lead to tragedy, but it is also the most human, fully alive kind of activity, and it pushes humanity forward.

We want to go to Mars because it’s there. We want to know what will happen. We have to try it.

The kids doing pineapple challenges are channeling the same spirit that drives us forward. When we’re interplanetary, you can thank them. (If they’re still alive.)

This week I talk about the balance between a personal brand and a company brand, how to not get sucked into current events, and why startups can fail due to too much vision and too much money.

Read it and all issues here.

I can’t seem to help turning things into games.

I tell myself I’m going to go for a leisurely swim and just go as long as I feel like. Pretty soon I’m counting laps, counting strokes per lap, and giving myself little challenges to meet.

It’s like this when I shoot hoops, vacuum the floor, wash the dishes, sit by a fire, or respond to emails. It doesn’t matter what it is, I almost always end up gamifying it.

I’m not sure if this is good or bad or a bit of both. I mean games are definitely good sometimes, especially for really monotonous tasks. But the games aren’t necessarily fun. Sometimes they are, but mostly they’re a result of some kind of OCD tendencies I have to quantify and patternize every task and always – always – find ways to do it better or faster, even when that has no bearing on the outcome or when the entire goal of the activity was just to relax.

Occasionally I can just doing things without little sub-tasks and challenges within, and it’s kind of nice to have an open-ended, non-timebound experience, where the activity is one whole rather than a bunch of parts. Writing is one of the few things I can do that way (though I often gamify that too).

I’m not sure if I do this because it reduces the scope of the goals to nearer term, or because it keeps me from getting bored, or for some other reason I should seek counseling for. Maybe this is universal.

Learning to tell stories is an incredible skill. But learning to think in stories is even more fundamental.

A narrative arc is more memorable and impactful than factual bullets. The ability to create narratives is what allows attracting friends, collaborators, investors, customers, and fans.

Storytellers are interesting people who get interesting opportunities. Not just those who tell anecdotal tales, but those who weave all of life into layers of narrative. The price of wheat is not merely an economic fact, it’s part of a story that started somewhere and will end somewhere. And it’s probably nested in other stories.

But telling stories starts with thinking in narrative arcs instead of dots.

I’ve seen this illustration several times (I’m not sure the origin):

These are all different ways to see facts. But none of them weave a story. There’s no narrative in the dots or the colors or the lines or the connections or paths. They are facts with relationships, but they stop short of a narrative arc. Yes, there is wisdom in seeing that point A follows a path to point B. But why? How? For what purpose? What happened when the path was completed? What was going on before?

A narrative thinker will see these facts and be able to construct a story – a beginning, middle, and end – with motivations and purpose involved. Stories have teleology, facts do not.

The ability to see a meaningful story in any person, event, or series of facts leads to the ability to communicate in narratives. You can connect dots for reasons, and show the future if the dots continue to connect.

Thinking in story helps you be more interesting because it helps you be more interested.

When someone tells you, “I’m an engineer”, instead of filing this as a fact in your mental Rolodex, you immediately want to know the story. How did they end up an engineer? Is this the end of a long journey, the beginning of a new story, or the middle? Curiosity drives you to ask good questions, good questions make connections, and connections lead to opportunities.

Discovering, telling, and re-telling your own story is a great place to start. Why are you sitting there reading this right now? What led you here? Why? What does it mean for the future?

I’ve discovered I have the best weeks when I can alternate frenetic days with deep dive days.

Several days in a row of either deep work (writing, thinking, planning) or loud work (people, podcasts, emails, tasks) and quality declines. But If I can have a single day of lots of calls and being “on” with other people, followed by a day doing mostly alone work, I get the best of both.

I can pour myself into the demanding work knowing tomorrow will be a respite. As I’ve gotten older, I definitely prefer the quiet work to the loud, but I need the loud stuff in some minimum quantity, and my work requires it more than that anyway. So I try to carve out days or half days in between the loud work to have plenty of quiet work.

Both types of work require energy, and both can give energy back if done right, but switching between energy states is optimal for me.