#137: Scenius, Game B, Atomization & Sick Giants
Hello strangers, sorry for the delay and I’ll do my best to keep these coming every week. Here are your Sunday reads!
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🔥 New On Boundless: The Boomer Blockade and The Dark Side Of Consulting
#1 Scenius
I enjoyed Packy McCormick’s introduction essay to his future longer exploration of “scenius”
Throughout history, sceniuses have sprung up seemingly at random across the globe, based on a confluence of unplanned factors coming together at just the right time in just the right combination. The Scottish Enlightenment, for example, was precipitated by a variety of factors: the British government’s hands-off support of the country, a steep rise in literacy that made Scotland the most literate country of its time, the many taverns that sprung up to serve as the informal meeting places where thinkers could exchange novel ideas.
Looking forward to reading his full exploration and engaging in some potential Scenius’ throughout the year
#2 Why You Don’t See Your Friends
This essay argues that the workforce is splitting into two: low-wage workers who don’t have any control over when they work and high-wage earners who are choosing to work all the time.
Forty percent of hourly employees get no more than seven days’ notice about their upcoming schedules; 28 percent get three days or fewer.
and
For her 2012 book, Sleeping With Your Smartphone, the Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow conducted a survey of 1,600 managers and professionals. Ninety-two percent reported putting in 50 or more hours of work a week, and a third of those logged 65 hours or more. And, she adds, “that doesn’t include the twenty to twenty-five hours per week most of them reported monitoring their work while not actually working.
#3 A Sick Giant
Tim Urban argues that America is a “sick giant” - quite a lot of fascinating information - a casual 80-minute read with fun stick figure charts along the way to keep you entertained:
When the Value Games are working properly, people holding the most extreme views are relegated to the fringes—retaining enough of a voice to effect change when they’re right about something but unable to do too much damage when, more often, they’re wrong. But in the Power Games, it’s often the case that small groups of more extreme people end up with outsized power over others.
#4 Soros’ Theory
George Soros shares his theory of reflexivity, something that has guided his investing for his entire life:
My conceptual framework is built on two relatively simple propositions. The first is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ views of the world never perfectly correspond to the actual state of affairs. People can gain knowledge of individual facts, but when it comes to formulating theories or forming an overall view, their perspective is bound to be either biased or inconsistent or both. That is the principle of fallibility.
The second proposition is that these imperfect views can influence the situation to which they relate through the actions of the participants. For example, if investors believe that markets are efficient then that belief will change the way they invest, which in turn will change the nature of the markets in which they are participating (though not necessarily making them more efficient). That is the principle of reflexivity.
More interesting than I expected and doubles as an analysis on Academia and how the different sciences conceive of themselves.
#5 Game B
Jim Rutt offers a vision for what an alternative to “Game A” could look like.
So what is a civilization level social operating system? For this essay, I’m going to posit that it means that at maturity GameB has become the dominant attractor for a living civilization. Roughly analogous to “Western Civilization” or its competitors. Think at least several hundreds of millions of people across a significant portion of the Earth’s surface.
I’ve been enjoying the creative conversation around these topics and my own experiments with gift economy exchanges and non-doing/non-work over the past few years. If you’re interesting in reading more, its worth checking out Jordan Hall too on Jim’s podcast.
💼Going Nomadic
My wife and I are headed out of Taiwan towards the end of this months. Would love to meet people along the way:
📚 What I’m Reading
Loserthink by Scott Adams - easy short read that serves as a good guide for navigating all the nonsense in our social media worlds now (6.5/10)
Vagabonding by Rolf Potts - rereading this book before starting another long travel journey (8/10). A quote I loved:
Vagabonding is about looking for adventure in normal life, and normal life within adventure. Vagabonding is an attitude—a friendly interest in people, places, and things that makes a person an explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word.
Draft No. 4 by John McPhee - read this as part of trying to continue to get better at writing. The book is readable, entertaining, well-written and actionable. (8/10)
Bonus
Before I took the turn away from full-time work, Clayton Christensen was one of the first books I read that really challenged me to think about fundamental questions. I definitely recommend his essay “How Will You Measure Your Life?”
I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know I’ve had a substantial impact. But as I’ve confronted this disease, it’s been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.
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