Introducing: The Pole | #0
Useful takes from first principles. Experiments and lessons learned. Personal and impersonal anecdotes. Memes and lolly-gagging. Community.
Oooh, tell me more. What’s with the name?
To get philosophical and pedantic for a brief moment, let’s talk about truth.
Truth is what’s consistent with reality. The most consistent thing with reality is reality itself. So reality is truth is reality.
But that doesn’t get us anywhere. Most of reality is unimportant. Most of the universe is empty space. Most of everything is boring (e.g. Sturgeon's law).
But some of it is highly relevant to our interests. Some stuff, when known, helps us get things we want and avoid things we don’t want.
We never mean “the entire universe and all reality” when we talk about the truth. We’re talking about a small part of it that is important to us. Not “our” truth per se, since the truth belongs to no one and shouldn’t vary person-to-person. More like the truth… but, for us. The relevant, useful parts. In other words, knowledge.
With knowledge, we can understand the past, predict the future, and generally better ourselves. We then leverage this knowledge to create businesses, processes, rituals, habits, and protocols.
Sometimes we’re wrong, though. Sometimes we make an incorrect assumption and end up paying for it (e.g. Theranos). Sometimes we do the opposite: not trusting something and missing out on mad gainz (e.g. Bitcoin).
These two primordial types of mistakes pop up everywhere:
In science they’re called false positives and false negatives.
In investing, they’re called greed and fear. The black swan vs the white moose.
In finance, over vs under-leveraging.
In psychology, Dunning-Kruger syndrome and imposter syndrome.
In marketing, the vapid chain with a huge ad budget vs the hidden gem hole-in-the-wall.
In romance, coming on too strong vs being too shy.
In machine learning, it’s the bias-variance trade-off. Over-fitting vs under-fitting.
In system design, efficiency vs robustness.
In programming it’s DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) vs WET (Write Everything Twice).
In reinforcement learning, the explore-exploit dilemma.
Everywhere, I tell you.
Our past experiences create our model of reality. Sometimes we rely on that model too much (false positives). Sometimes not enough (false negatives).
But, when we get it right (i.e. true positives and true negatives), it’s amazing. We save time. We make money. We put people on the moon. We cure diseases.
I dare say everything good comes from true negatives (not doing the wrong thing) and true positives (doing the right thing).
Hence, my modus operandi (M.O.):
to add value to society by following my curiosity
This means thinking, experimenting, and sharing knowledge with others - thereby maximizing true negatives and true positives for everyone.
I would name this newsletter something like “true negatives and true positives”
... if that weren't way too boring. Nobody says those words in a casual conversation.
So I thought back to some copywriting advice I read somewhere:
“Don’t tell them the features of your product, sell them on the difference it’ll make in their life.”
Or something like that.
It’s the result we care about: positive or negative.
We have some measurement for all the possible results (e.g. how tasty is the cookie).
We use that measurement to identify the most positive result (e.g. does this cookie taste better than all the others).
Then we do the thing to get the result (e.g. eat the cookie).
That measurement is our compass. And the poles are Good Result and Bad Result.
Hence the title of the newsletter (“The Pole”) - named after the Good Result that we seek. (Plus, pole.substack.com was available!)
I’ll be writing about what is a good/bad result, how to obtain good results, and what tends to prevent us from obtaining good results. That doesn’t tell you much, so here are some more granular categories of what to expect:
self-awareness
how to better understand what’s a positive and negative result for you so you know what to optimize for
how to better understand what you’re good and bad at so that, given two positive outcomes, you can pick the path you’re more suited for
game theory
what is positive and negative for other people so you can better create transactions, deals, and protocols to benefit everyone at once
what outcomes are zero sum (i.e. when you win, other people lose) and what outcomes are positive sum (i.e. you winning doesn’t imply others lose)
epistemology
how to know what you don’t know so you avoid making assumptions that lead to negative outcomes (i.e. false positives)
how to know what you know so you can safely make assumptions that lead to positive outcomes (i.e. true positives)
communication
how to write and say things so that what you meant to say is what they actually hear (i.e. so that you can achieve positive outcomes more consistently)
how to write and say things people actually want to read and listen to (i.e. so that you can convince people to hop aboard your plan to achieve a positive outcome)
investing
where can you put your capital (time, money, etc) to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative ones
what combinations of capital to invest and in what order (e.g. invest money here, then more money here, then some time here…)
sociology
common patterns where we, as a society, tend to model reality incorrectly (leading to false positives and/or false negatives)
common ways we tend to be aligned on what is a positive/negative outcome and ways we tend to not be aligned
network effects
in what areas does value tend to cumulate quicker as you put more effort? in what areas do you run into diminishing returns?
what areas have “winner-take-all” patterns? what areas do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?
morality
in what circumstances is it okay to do things that affect other people negatively?
how do we come to an objective conclusion about what’s positive and what’s negative? what rationale do we use against people that disagree that we can feel good about?
education
what’s the most efficient way to spread knowledge?
how do we deliver knowledge in a way that’s enjoyable? scalable?
engineering
how to design systems that lead to positive outcomes
how to measure your measurements
I’ll be experimenting with the format a lot, but I expect to this newsletter to be ~monthly-ish (I won’t send one until I think it’s good).
I’d love to hear from you as well! Tell me what’s on your mind. Working on a blog or video? I’d love to review it and help make it better. Want to gush about an idea or recent success? Hit reply and let’s set it up!