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Venkatesh Rao
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Grifts feed what was called the politicians syllogism is Yes, Prime Minister:We must do somethingThis is somethingWe must do thisUsually the utter mismatch between problem and supposed solution is obvious
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Grifts are undertheorized, and too often conflated with long cons, scams, frauds and other more blatant soft crimes. Lemme offer a definition.A grift is a scheme that profits from the
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Culture war wrangling has unfortunately become a key element in my consulting. It is now the 4th, and youngest manifestation of bullshit jobs.Bullshit jobs evolve in one of 4 ways:
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There’s a persistent community of taste emerging around sensemaking of noisy social media around developing events. It’s like fandom, with connoisseurs of the play by play getting snotty. Things like
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Next pandemic live read, Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, a history of the 14th century through the life of a single minor nobleman whose life was coextensive with the main
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Doubling down on narrative rationality. I buy into the most compelling story I can find at any given time and navigate by it, whether it is apocalyptic, utopian, or in
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Weird how people are letting their guard down. My guard level is steadily trending higher. Risk seems to be increasing steadily rather than decreasing to me. Map people: “things must
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Depression is like pollution. The optimal amount is not zero. Having had zero bouts of depression by age 25 is probably a worse mental illness than having had 1-2 mild/moderate
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The earth is a ball of solid rock with a molten core ~6,500km in diameter, with a thin, layer of air of about 10km sticking precariously to it. Beyond, it’s
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Fact checking is a worse-than-useless approach to counter programming bullshit. Brandolini bullshit assymmetry principle —“It takes 10x more effort to refute bullshit than to produce it” — applies doubly to
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I think I have my tactical ducks in a row now, but still missing the coup d’oeil. The problem with a virus as an adversary is that it makes for
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Mob minds could do with some psychological distancing. I’ve pondered the Thielean anti-democratic turn for a few years now. Trump’s victory in 2016 struck me as both the most democratic
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