Join 📚 Quinn's Highlights

A batch of the best highlights from what Quinn's read, .

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

"What Information Consumes Is Attention" and The Thermodynamics of Communication Summary: Herbert Simon's quote about information consuming attention is a crucial point to consider. Emails can be overwhelming, as there is a limit to the amount of time and attention we have. It is important not to solely rely on the internet as a copying machine, but to acknowledge the real material scarcities and limitations. While there is room for improvement, there are still real world limits to communication effectiveness. Transcript: Speaker 3 Herbert Simon's famous 1971 quote that what information consumes is attention feels like such a crucial point that I made it my email signature you know because like you said earlier Glenn that you know the value is really in in the relationships and there are differentially scalable qualities here I think a lot about the way and Doug Rushkoff and others have pointed Out that you can have at least you know indefinitely many emails a day but you only have so much time and attention to read them and that this is part of the argument for the importance of Not just following the sort of logic of the internet as a great copying machine off a cliff right where we're imagining an abundance that is nonetheless still founded in real material Scarcities you know like David Wolpert talks about you know the thermodynamics of communication and there being a theoretical limit to how effective that can be and while we still Have plenty of room you know orders of magnitude to improve on that you know that there are these real world limits that we're eventually going to bump up into

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

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

The danger, and you see it often in investing, is when people become too McNamara-like – so obsessed with data and so confident in their models that they leave no room for error or surprise. No room for things to be crazy, dumb, unexplainable, and to remain that way for a long time. Always asking, “Why is this happening?” and expecting there to be a rational answer. Or worse, always mistaking what happened for what you think should have happened. The ones who thrive long term are those who understand the real world is a neverending chain of absurdity, confusions, messy relationships, and imperfect people.

Does Not Compute

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