- For the internet (TCP/IP, HTTP, etc), most value was captured by applications
- For blockchains, the value of the protocol encompasses any single application value
- Information isn't siloed, but shared across all parties (assuming not encrypted; original intent was to be shared)
- Forces competition (functionality, reduce costs) on application layer
- Tokens create a feedback loop based on market speculation
- Token value continuously swings up and down based on market speculation; early investors and enterpreneurs are initially attracted by appreciation, they later become stakeholders and build their own products (some funded by their own investment)
- Bubble situations are beneficial to technological innovation (on a holistic sense), based on historical justifications: boom creates interest, bust creates financial affordability for long-term adoption and incentivizes initial stakeholder effort; new applications create boom (hopefully)
- "The market cap of the protocol always grows faster than the combined value of the applications built on top [assuming applications are built around a single chain], since the success of the application layer drives further speculation at the protocol layer"
- Information isn't siloed, but shared across all parties (assuming not encrypted; original intent was to be shared)
- Maybe this is just a function of time, as blockchains are still new and valued on potential?
- Higher value-adding apps could cross-function across multiple blockchains?
- How does disrupting traditional "winner-take-all" markets mean to those trying to create monopolies (i.e. Zero to One)?
- What are the new rules regarding businesses built on this model?
- "Because we didn’t know how to maintain state in a decentralized fashion it was the data layer that was driving the centralization of the web that we have observed."
- Tokens create incentives to work on protocol layer technologies; they allow creators to retain and sell retained tokens at a different price later (to the extent it's adopted and used)
- "Noise is what you are supposed to ignore; signal what you need to heed." -- Nassim Taleb
- "The more data you get, the less you know what’s going on" -- Nassim Taleb
- Bottlenecks our thinking; frames our perception
- Be careful with more data; when you intervene because of it (possibly for the sake of intervening), double check your thinking (and ponder potential consequences)
- Make a distinction between knowing something vs knowing the name of something
- Ask why, to get to the bottom of if they're bullshitting
- "True experts recognize the limits of what they know and what they do not know. If they find themselves outside their circle of competence, they keep quiet or simply say, 'I don’t know.'" -- Rolf Dobelli
- "Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire." -- Charlie Munger
- "If you want to win an argument, ask the person trying to convince you of something to explain how it would work."
- "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." -- Richard Feynman
- "The life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it" -- Seneca
- "Life is competition"
- Although we may cooperate to form groups, groups are still competing
- "Life is selection"
- Inequality is natural, and only increases with the complexity of civilization
- "Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way"
- "Life must breed"
- Nature is "more interested in the species than in the individual"
- Despite certain advances in productivity, breeding will always follow to nullify them until curtailed by something drastic (e.g. war or famine)
- Three major buckets of time:
- Geological (13.7 billion years) for laws of physics, chemistry, math
- Biological (3.5 billion years) for biological nature
- Gradualism; slow changes over time produce large effects (e.g. evolution)
- Everything is changing, albeit perhaps some of it is at a pace we can't detect
- Some things change slow enough we can take them for constants (e.g. biological human nature)
- Laws of competition; long-term sustainability
- Human (20 thousand years) for human nature
- Political and economic systems try to provide order and fairness between humans (resulting from internal competition)
- Human history, stripped down, is simply competition and survival
- Some things in lower (younger) buckets don't follow the laws of higher buckets, e.g. everlasting ideas from notable humans
- Ideas and knowledge compound; having more grows more; spreading more spreads more
- Ideas go through natural selection via competition (for propagation -- the most enduring are those that are best propagated, not those that are best)
- Get better at probing other's thinking and understanding
- E.g. Ask what information would cause someone to change their current thinking
- Probe yourself: do you really know? What are your limits?
- Slow down to make sure you've had enough time to think things through
- "The successful thinker is an integrator who can quickly and effectively abstract the best qualities of radically different ways of seeing and representing" -- Roger Martin
- "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Our minds are habitual and pattern-match aggressively; try to notice it and stop to think of other models to apply
- Interesting thought: "In what circumstances should logical depth dominate informational breadth and, vice versa? In what situations is more thinking better than more foraging or more asking, given that one can only think (or forage) more if one forages (or thinks) less?" -- Roger Martin
- Make an effort to deliberately think, rather than intuitively
- "If you want to think differently, first learn to act differently" -- Heinz von Foerster
- Two types of value:
- Acquisitional: value of actually obtaining something
- Transactional: value of winning or losing in negotiating
- Early 2000s: one hour of online bargain hunting was worth $15
- "Online consumers do not comparison shop as zealously for cheaper items as they do for expensive ones"
- "'The madness of doubt': there’s a finite amount of uncertainty we can absorb (and how much we can keep checking it before we stop caring)"
- Idea: prices set by auction (similar to backend deals in advertising auctions)
- Idea: decentralized, crowd-sourced low price marketplace