Theory & Arbitrage

Thoughts on Culture, Enterprise & Academia.

The Biology Bias

The actor/observer bias states that all of us unconsciously assume others to be more responsible for their negative actions than their environment, and for ourselves to be less responsible for our negative actions than our environment.

For example, if you are at an intersection and someone runs through the red light and almost hits you, you think, “Wow, what a shitty driver. That guy is an idiot.” But when it’s YOU who runs the red light and almost hits somebody, you think, “It’s not my fault. The guy in front of me was driving slow and the light changed too quickly for me to stop.”

When it’s us, it’s not our fault. When it’s someone else, they’re a shitty person.

From the Department of Unresolved Inner 5-yr Olds: the impetus for learning how to think. From the Department of Travis Corrigan: some solutions.

Monday Metal: Haste the Day - Mad Man

We are our choices.

rwuebker: From the Department of Working Precisely As Designed: Income gains at the top dwarf those of low and middle income households.

rwuebker:

From the Department of Working Precisely As Designed: Income gains at the top dwarf those of low and middle income households.

Business is beginning to look a lot like science.

—Bill Howe, UW

Friday Essay: Working as Designed

So much for the vaguely romantic notion of startup-founding as being somehow qualitatively different from interchangeable drones in a cubicle farm. Different farm, same metaphor. - Forbes
 
Entrepreneurship for the sake of entrepreneurship belies a disconnection from the core function of entrepreneurship: to solve problems that large firms are not currently solving or solve existing problems in a way that creates a superior competitive position (usually done so by having a 10x better product).
 
Any support structure (incubator, interest group) that exists for a reason other than helping entrepreneurs get closer to accomplishing one or both of the above is not necessarily bad but may be serving (explicitly or implicitly) someone other than the entrepreneurs.
 
Systems generate outcomes exactly as they are designed. Observe the outcomes, consider the design. This is why being explicit about what the objective you are trying to accomplish and - more importantly - the metrics you choose to know your progress towards that objective matter: they prevent you from being confused about the evolving design of the system that you oversee.

TBT.

TBT.

Nichols has brought to the film Twain’s understanding of a boy’s best qualities—a love of adventure, an instinctive loyalty, and a generous chivalry.

—“Mud”- New Yorker

You Don’t Have to Pander

The reason you don’t have to pander is that you’re not in a hurry and you don’t need everyone to embrace you and your work. When you focus on the weird, passionate, interesting segment of the audience, you can do extraordinary work for a few (and watch it spread) instead of starting from a place of average.

Go ahead and make something for the elites. Not the elites of class or wealth, but the elites of curiosity, passion and taste. Every great thing ever created was created by and for this group.

- Seth Godin

Monday Metal: It Dies Today - Threnody for Modern Romance