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Most people love the idea of collaboration . . . as long as it promises to do exactly what they want it to do. But that is not how collaboration works. Collaboration (as we talk about it) is not forced or coerced. It requires you to give up control. And because it’s not predetermined, it requires you to give up certainty.

Impact Networks

David Ehrlichman

Why Bigger Animals Live Longer: The Relationship between Size, Energy, and Longevity Summary: The larger an animal is, the more efficient it becomes in terms of energy consumption. This is because the self-similar fractal structure of larger animals allows them to save energy. Bigger animals require less energy proportionally to run their bodies due to the massive amount of tissue per gram or per cell. As a result, bigger animals experience less wear and tear and live longer than smaller animals. The reason for less wear and tear is that bigger animals use less energy and create less damage, reducing entropy. This principle can also be observed in machines, where those subjected to less stress and driven at lower revs per minute tend to last longer. Transcript: Speaker 2 So that's why we don't need to double our metabolism when we double our weight. It's that fractal like self similarity that allows us to get these essentially efficient savings in the amount of energy we need. So it's better to be bigger, isn't it? Because you don't need as much energy proportionally to run yourself. Correct. Speaker 1 So you need massive tissue per gram of tissue or per cell. You need less energy, the bigger you are. And by the way, this has huge consequences throughout all aspects of biology and life. And maybe one just to tie it back to the beginning of this discussion where we started out by talking about aging and mortality. This means that the bigger you are, the less hard your cell is working. The bigger you are, there's less wear and tear the longer you live systematically. So this is the origin of why bigger things live longer than smaller things. Speaker 2 And why is there less wear and tear if you're bigger? Speaker 1 You're using less energy and creating less entropy. That is you're creating less damage the bigger you are because simply you're using much less energy if you have an engine, an automobile and you insist on racing it at 10,000 revs per Minute every time you drive it, I can assure you that car will not live as long as a car that's driven by a little old lady or a little old man like me who keeps the revs at about two or three Thousand revs per minute. So you know, cars and machines last much longer, the less stress you put on them.

Scaling 2 — You and I Are Fractals

Simplifying Complexity

Perspective on Managing Different Projects: Cultivating a Garden v.s. Hacking Away in a Mine Summary: A friend suggested thinking of my projects as a garden, where some ideas will flourish while others won't. It's less predictable but more enjoyable than physically laboring in the mines. Transcript: Speaker 1 I remember one point when I was pretty stressed out, and I was saying to my wife, oh my gosh, I've got all these different projects, and I have to work on this one, and I have to work on that One. I have to go to work in the mines. I have to go chip away at this project. And it might work out, it might not work out. And she said to me, you should think of all your projects as more of a gartan. You're planting lots of ideas. Some of them will come up, some of them won't. That's a little unpredictable. But you should think of it that way rather than going down with your hard hat and your pick and toiling away in the pit to find the seam of truth.

Glen Weyl & Cris Moore on Plurality, Governance, and Decentralized Society

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

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