Brookings held a panel on his book’s release with historian Anne Applebaum and novelist Neal Stephenson (yes, that Neal Stephenson). In Constitution he follows up his ideas on liberal science and free speech with further work on institutional decay, social coercion, and disinformation.
I wrote about Kindly Inquisitors and Rauch’s liberal science concept in Res Extensa #9. His work covers critical first principles that we’re gradually navigating away from.
He differentiates what the “waking” mind and “background” mind are good at, which I’d interchangeably refer to as the “at the desk” mind and the “away from the computer” mind:
Waking mind:
Good at critical thinking; analysis, tactics
Prone to finding local maxima
Can feed work to the background mind
Background mind:
Good at making connections
Synthesis; strategy; abstractions and analogies
You can only feed it, not direct it
For anyone in a critical thinking-based market, I’m sure this rings accurate. Think about how we refer to eureka moments popping into our heads — ”shower thoughts”. This idea that we can “only feed it, not direct it” does feel true. For me the most interesting ideas don’t result from me saying “okay, it’s time to think about things” and writing down the result.
When I’m working on something, it’s challenging to get “unstuck” while sitting at my desk. Some days I can get in the zone, but most of the time the zone eludes me. It’s not even the active distractions of Slacks, meetings, and email (though those are never-ending), but temptation from the no-kidding thousands of individual little shiny threads to follow.
But then when I’m out for a walk, a run, or driving somewhere, thoughts and ideas abound. And of course I’m never in a good position to take notes or jump right into writing or doing anything about them at the time. My post from last year on Downtime Thinking looked at my experience with this phenomenon. I’ve experimented with techniques for bringing these modes closer together. Too many interesting ideas are lost in the transition between waking and background brain modes.
Hammock-driven creativity helps the mind jar loose from its normal working context. Environment is a strong contributor to controlling your behavior. For myself, my “normal” work environment — sitting at my desk, keyboard and mouse in hand, multiple monitors available — is associated in my brain with dozens of activities other than creative or critical thinking. I’ve experimented lately with “morning pages” as a mechanism working on the writing habit. Start a timer and do nothing but write free-form for 25 minutes. I’m having mixed success with it much of the time, but occasional sessions lead to solid ideas, and I’ll blow past my time commitment promise.
If I can combine the intentionality of morning pages with a minor change of scenery, the forces could combine into a productive combo.
In a recent interview, Jerry Seinfeld described his writing sessions, a brilliantly simple practice:
I still have a writing session every day. It’s another thing that organizes your mind. The coffee goes here. The pad goes here. The notes go here. My writing technique is just: You can’t do anything else. You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else. The writing is such an ordeal.
I love that: “You can’t do anything else. You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else.”
Setting the table for the writing session triggers the Pavlovian mode: “this is writing time.” Then you’ve got the intention, that you can’t do anything else. And I love how he gives himself the leeway to not even write! But in exchange for the freedom for work-avoidance, your only other option is staring at the wall.
One of my favorite evening activities is watching talks, interviews, and presentations on YouTube. I often take notes on these for myself, so this is an experiment in brushing up those notes and sharing them publicly.
In this 2016 talk, Joel Spolsky presented this talk called “The History of Management” as an internal training session at StackOverflow.
Corporate structure dynamics are fascinating. Groups of people have developed new and more effective ways of cooperating throughout history. We started out organizing ourselves in kinship-based tribal groups with spiritual myth-making to rationalize decisions, and have evolved into the likes of Amazon’s expansive 100,000 person decentralized model or Apple’s global functional org chart.
I like that I this talk Spolsky goes back to the beginnings of group organizing models. He covers this evolution in 6 broad phases:
Archaic
Magic
Impulsive
Conformist
Achievement
Pluralistic
Methods of organization and cooperation are technologies; once we discovered learning through trial and error (particularly through application of scientific methods), we’ve continued adapting and modify them over time.
Most of the substance covers the last 3 stages, each of which you’ll still find in operation today. Here’s the talk, followed by my notes below.
Notes
Just as with technological advancement, governance, and many other things, we’ve moved through each new stage faster than its predecessor. Let’s go through each stage and describe its time period and relevant details about what made it unique.
Archaic (100,000 — 50,000 BC)
From an age before people could classify things
No specialization or division of labor
No hierarchy, elders, or chiefs
Bands capped out at a few dozen people
Magic (15,000 — 0 BC)
People had no understanding of death
No ability to form abstract concepts
Still no specialization
Cause and effect was poorly understood — wherever there was any attempt to understand, spirits and magic were attributed as causes
Tribes could grow up to several hundred
Impulsive (8,000 BC — 1900 AD)
Might makes right — power and control is derived from physical strength and dominance
The weak have to submit to authority
Leaders have a lack of awareness and empathy
No value placed on the individual or individualism
Black and white worldviews were dominant
Rewards and punishments well understood, but violence was commonplace (it was the primary means for asserting and proving your authority)
Ego and role differentiation — meant we could differentiate roles and responsibilities, leads to some specialization
High levels of instability
The chief must:
Continually demonstrate power
Spread myths about absolute power
Surround self with family to insulate from challenges to power and control
Buy loyalty
Only keep incompetent aids and advisors — if advisors are too capable, they could challenge authority
Examples
Failed states, places with no rule of law
Gangs
Mafia
TV and movie plotlines
The first three are obsolete — you only really see them appear in movies, fiction, or history books. The final three are still in common existence today.
Conformist (4,000 BC — present)
Huge advancement over “Impulsive (8,000 BC — 1900 AD)” systems
Examples: US Army, MTA, Catholic Church, East India Company
Defined by rigid, unchanging bureaucracy
Understand time as finite and linear
Cause and effect
Farming (plant now, eat later)
Caloric surplus
Surplus energy means we can do “extra stuff” — administrators, craftsmen
Understanding other people’s points of view
People will seek approval, leaders want approval from followers
Adopting group norms and conformism (us vs. them)
Fitting in requires self-discipline, can’t be all impulse
We develop moral codes assumed to be universal and immutable
Do right ⢠earn rewards; do wrong ⢠get punished
Values improving conditions within their suppliers
Eliminating wasteful packaging
Extraordinary working conditions provided for team and selves
Pluralism is not anarchy
Discarding hierarchy completely doesn’t work for any meaningful amount of time, or with large groups
Is there a relationship here with [[Dunbar number]] and how many people can collaborate in a group successfully?
Decentralization is a tactic deployed as much as possible to empower those local to a problem or project to identify those issues and formulate solutions
New technologies enable pluralistic management styles
In this talk, Balaji Srinivasan lays out a number of places where pseudonymity is decentralizing identity on the internet. Pseudonymity is distinguished from anonymity through maintenance of a sense of accountability and reputation associated with the entity.
A discussion among physicians on how oncology is changing and will likely continue to evolve in the wake of the coronavirus. Testing, chemo, and other treatment steps currently considered to be standards of care will change, and things like telemedicine will change what options doctors have in working with patients.
I’ve got a set of scans and a follow up this week, so will see how Mayo Clinic has adapted their approach in response to this crisis.
Here are the slides from my talk at the first ever Ignite Tampa Bay. It was a blast to watch all the great talks from such a varied set of interests and passions. Great turnout, too — we drew a sellout crowd out to watch.
As difficult as it is to prepare for Ignite (20 slides, 15 seconds each, autoadvancing), I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve essentially done zero public speaking, so it’s nerve-wracking for me to stand up in front of 100+ people and talk at all — but it’s something I’ve always wanted to get better at, so I just jumped in. Now that it’s all over, I’m glad I did. So when the videos are edited and live, I’ll post that, too.
Thanks to all the organizers and presenters for a smashing first Ignite!
