We live in strange times. Or perhaps all times are strange.

Giving something a name grants magical hypnotic power. “Coronavirus” or “Covid” are names that immediately occupy all attention and short circuit normal brain function.

I imagine newsrooms today:

Editor: “Any tragedies to report?”

Lackey: “A few sir”

Editor: “Shoot”

Lackey: “An airplane suddenly veered off course and crashed into a mountain killing all 200 people aboard”

Editor: “And…”

Lackey: “None of them tested positive for the Coronavirus”

Editor: “Meh. Not a tragedy. Run of the mill. Anything else?”

Lackey: “An elderly disabled war hero was driving home from saving his daughter’s kitten when he got stuck on the train tracks and suffered a horrible collision”

Editor: “And…”

Lackey: “His car burst into flames and he died a very terrible death as onlookers couldn’t reach him in time despite heroic efforts”

Editor: “And…”

Lackey: “He tossed a hand scrawled will out the window just before he perished, revealing a secret fortune he donated to the poor”

Editor: “And…”

Lackey: “We can’t be sure because we can’t verify he was tested, and the tests are ridiculously inaccurate, and he had no symptoms, but he may have had Coronavirus”

Editor: “MY GOD THE HUMANITY!!! Why didn’t you tell me we had a lead story!”

I first came across this Hugh MacLeod illustration in a booked called, The Gervais Principle, by Venkatesh Rao.

Rao’s book is one of my all-time favorites and it’s packed with cunning. It’s a breakdown of workplace and social politics using this pyramid applied to the show The Office.

Sociopaths know the game is all made up and rules are for suckers. They also know they must perpetuate the illusion of rules of the game. They need the Clueless to believe fully in the rules and carry them out as they manage the Losers. Losers are cynical and streetwise enough to know the game is bullshit, but lack the motivation (or perhaps have the scruples) to try to change it by becoming Sociopaths.

This pyramid applies to political reality as well as corporate.

The Sociopaths aren’t often in the limelight and can be hard to identify. The Clueless encompass nearly every politician, pundit, protester, or activist. They rally and debate endlessly about details of the political and legal process, sincerely believing it’s not all just made up. They believe in the Myth of the Rule of Law, and treat justificatory pieces of paper as if they are truly binding on anyone. The Losers are the great mass of people who know politics is bullshit, roll their eyes at the Clueless, but lack the ambition (or have the scruples) to try to become a Sociopath.

Losers may be cynical, sometimes nihilistic. But they aren’t being played for fools. They have the ability to carve out some scope of a day to day life that puts up with the game, sometimes bending or breaking the rules. Sociopaths may do things that harm or benefit others, but their main drive is winning. Clueless are used and made fools of by both Sociopaths and Losers. Losers put up with them because they would rather not have the terrible jobs that the Clueless take such pride in. HOA board? Township Supervisor? Losers laugh. Clueless treat them as solemn duties and take pride in acting out what they fail to see as a farce.

I can’t tell you what it’s best to be. None of these options sound very appealing to me, so I try to imagine somehow being outside the game entirely, whether or not it’s possible. But the framework is useful and entertaining. Once you get it, you can’t unsee the world this way.

If your philanthropy involves the use of force, it’s not philanthropy. It’s force.

I’ve never been a big fan of detailed measurement and data tracking.

Not because I don’t think it’s useful. It can be incredibly useful. But it is by far the easiest way to be deceived. Bringing about a desired end in a complex world of autonomous individuals requires the ability to recognize patterns. Patterns in motivations, words, behaviors, actions, and reactions.

Gathering data does not reveal patterns. Analyzing it rarely does either. But it’s almost impossible to not think you see patterns from the data. Data tends to make people draw conclusions and most of the time they aren’t warranted.

At its best, measurement is done based on a pattern already spotted by some other, more direct and less aggregated means. To measure the veracity of the pattern, or check its conditions, data is gathered and assessed. Ideally, the data is used to falsify a hypothesis. It works better at falsification than verification.

Case in point: I had a strong hunch recently that users of Crash were dropping off because of where the signup page was in the product flow. But we looked at the numbers and what I thought was the biggest roadblock was stopping almost no one, and they trailed off later in the flow. The data was only useful once I had a specific – falsifiable with data – hypothesis. Note the data did not tell us whether we needed to improve the signup page. It can’t tell us that. It only revealed that my assumption about the signup page being the most frequent hurdle was incorrect. The signup process may be flawed in myriad ways, and no data can reveal exactly how and why.

Data can work well as a way to narrow in on insights, as long as the data gathering is a genuine effort to increase understanding and not just a way to slap numbers on a decision you’ve already made.

It’s exceedingly rare to be collecting data for no particular reason, scanning it with no particular question, and discover a genuine and valuable insight. But we all kind of pretend that happens, which is why data can be dangerous.

It’s important to be able to recognize and admit when the data don’t provide any clear patterns or insight. This is most of the time. Just because you have numbers doesn’t mean they tell you something and you need to act on it.

Doing things you want

Not what you’re told people need

Is best for the world

The least popular freedoms are the most important.

When liberty is the most feared it is the most needed.

The time to fight slavery is when slavery is most appealing.

Read it here.

When we first went live with Crash, we did a Product Hunt launch. It was awesome!

Many of you lovely readers helped make it a big success.

Well we’ve changed Crash so much it’s almost an entirely different set of job hunt tools, so we decided to do a Crash 2.0 launch on Product Hunt today.

I would love comments, questions, shares, and votes!

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crash-2-0/

There’s a lot of great content out there on every topic. One thing that prevents a lot of it from spreading or causes it to get hijacked by weirdos is that it often ends with an altar call.

If you grew up around evangelical churches, you know what that is. It’s the part after the message when the pastor invites everyone to convert to Christianity.

Calls to action can be great, but they tend to be best when you’re preaching to the choir. People who aren’t new to the ideas and want action anyway. It’s insider stuff.

Altar calls at the end of first time intro stuff usually sucks the life out of it and turns people away. An article about how the body processes fatty acids is great right up until the point when it demands you convert to some specific dietary cult.

So much great info comes from people who just can’t resist asking you to join their movement. I’m sure I’ve done it too. I wonder if more and better ideas would get exchanged with fewer altar calls?

There is no action item with this post.

I’ve been playing with a draft of a longer post for several months now. The post is about curiosity as the master impulse behind all human progress and good things. It’s also about how every dominant belief and political structure are optimized as the antithesis of curiosity. Curiosity is the greatest threat to concentrated power and prestige, so those who have power and prestige labor endlessly to create the mind-killing opposite of all curiosity. Consensus. Obedience. Being seen as “normal”, “in the know”, “respectable”.

Curiosity doesn’t care about reputations and rules. That’s why it’s the only impulse with the power to cut through the human bullshit matrix and create progress and discovery.

The least respectable ideas often have more curiosity behind them than the most respected. It doesn’t make the specific ideas any better or more true, but you can be sure that the curious impulse behind wacky ideas is more beneficial to humanity than the obedient prestige-seeking behind consensus.

We’ll see if I ever finish this larger article. I rarely write anything longer than a thousand words. But there’s so much to say about the unpredictable power of raw curiosity unencumbered by the need to be seen as serious.

I am a very minimalistic guy. I like simplicity. I don’t want multiple of anything I can get away with one of. I don’t want anything I can get away without. I am constantly purging, consolidating, deleting, and reducing.

I also like optionality. The ability to be flexible, have several courses of action open to me, and a large degree of freedom in any situation.

These compliment each other more than you’d think (for example, having fewer things to worry about makes jumping on a last minute opportunity or changing direction easier). But sometimes they are in conflict.

Keeping everything in a single asset class for example, like cash, is simple and clean and low mental overhead. Cash is highly liquid as well, so it preserves optionality. Except when it doesn’t. Say a big inflationary period is going on. You want to preserve or grow your wealth so that you have maximum feature optionality. Lack of diversification can reduce long-term options by making you vulnerable to cash devaluation.

So preserve more options, you could own some land, some precious metals, some stocks, etc. This increases complexity. Increased complexity reduces optionality in some ways (harder to make quick changes, mental and physical resources locked in many places, high cognitical overhead) even as it increases it in others (hedging and preventing lock-in if one thing goes bad).

I think a lot about the zone of maximum freedom through time. Not just present simplicity and optionality, but extending it as far into the future as I can. I try to make things as simple and minimal as I possible can, but no simpler. The no simpler part is the challenge for me. Adding complexity to increase optionality is neccessary for my goals at times, but it’s mentally taxing. I’m a low-maintenance kind of guy. It requires some maintenance.

In my neighborhood

Smiling and camaraderie

Don’t tell anyone

One of my favorite things is rallying and recruiting great people around a vision.

The thing about great people is that they have great trajectories. That means I can’t expect most to intersect the things I’m working on forever. They have other places to go next. (This is especially true of great people recruited before the world knows they are great.)

A key for me has been to take genuine interest in their success and trajectory, beyond just when it intersects my own. When I do this, it creates an ever expanding pie of opportunity and excitement, instead of feelings of loss or frustration when good people move on.

The greatest compliment to my team building skills is seeing great teammates go on to do great things elsewhere as they grow. Maybe that sounds narcissistic (and maybe it is slightly, don’t judge;-), but I only mean it in the sense that it’s a compliment to my team when others seek to recruit them.

It also forces me to continually look for more great undiscovered talent all the time. Healthy teams are living, breathing, changing things.

Here’s to the future success of all the good people I’ve had the pleasure to work with who moved to the next adventure!

I talk about the world, the company, my personal battle with health issues, and my resolve to never give up or give in.

Read it here.

When times are good, there are a lot of people to learn from.

When times are dire, there’s almost no wisdom to be found.

It seems when the world is humming along and freedom and prosperity are abundant, there are many experienced hands in many fields with a lot of interesting and useful advice and input.

When the shit hits the fan, prosperity ceases, and freedom and strangled, nearly everyone ceases to bring wisdom or insight to the table. People who seemed smart and creative in prosperity become dull and reactive in a pinch. People who seemed free and courageous become groveling quick.

And some of the people that seemed the least insightful and the most crazy in the good times appear among the remnant of insightful and courageous in crisis.