You can't tell me you think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk (!), etc., have "normal" brains.

Whether that should count as a disability or a superpower is subjective. ADHD and Autism often present as strengths in one arena, and weaknesses in another. Speaking overly broadly: An aptitude for hard facts and logic, with a difficulty with emotions and social cues.

That's not to say that everyone who presents as such should be given the same accommodations. It's probably being abused. But that doesn't mean they're lying about their brains. It took a doctor to diagnose it. What more would you want to see beyond "a doctors note"?

But it's possible we're in agreement. So here's my take:

(1) If I'm trying to make something as good as possible, that's craftsmanship.

(2) If I'm adding features because I think it will help the product sell, I could see how that would be salesmanship. I don't think it's inherently wrong if it truly makes the product better, but it's dangerous territory, because the driving force isn't my own taste or expertise, but rather my perception of what people want. We've all seen great products turn to garbage because of this process going wayward.

(3) Even with the best of intentions, however, there is always a trade-off. Take carpentry for example. The more time I put into working on a cabinet, the better the cabinet may be. But the cost goes up too, because time is valuable. So a cabinet that is otherwise better in every way but costs 5X more should be at least 5X better in some way. I think what you're alluding to when you talk about excess, and please correct me if I'm misunderstanding you, is it's easy to spend so much time and money on a project that it becomes 5X more expensive but is only marginally better. For example, I'm a fan of traditionally-built furniture (in my neck of the woods, almost only offered by the Amish or Mennonite communities), but IKEA flat-packed furniture costs a fraction. Is it worth it? Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Depends on context, how I plan on using the furniture, how long I need it to last, how much money I have, etc.

Did that capture what you're saying? Or am I completely off track?

Any chance you know of a good article on this? (I could ask ChatGPT, but I'm trying to let go of that crutch.)

As in: I agree with your sentiment and ideas. Out of context, you're bang on correct.

But I don't think paying attention to details (like pluralization) is an indication of obsession with the customer, at least not for me. It's about caring about the craft.

When I'm building something for my own use, I care about every aspect of it. I care about the unseen parts. I care about the process. It brings me satisfaction. And when I'm buying something, I like to know that the person who made it cared as much about their craft as I do.

I don't consider than pandering. It's respect: Respect for the craft, for the craftsperson, and for the end recipient/customer.

But maybe I missed something. What was it about the original post that felt like excessive customer obsession? Genuinely curious and open to being mistaken here.

A couple anecdotal things I've noticed in my own life that align with his conclusions:

(1) I work in advertising. I've long bemoaned that my industry has turned to producing high-production low-creativity work for decades now. In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, people relied on creativity to get a message across. But today, it's all polish and no substance. I assumed it was because technology made it easier than ever to to do so, but maybe it's part of a wider trend.

(2) I used to love the variety of car designs. Every car was unique. Some were crazy. But today, take the logo off, and I'd be challenged to tell the difference between any two pickup trucks or any two sedans or any two vans. Every manufacturer has converged on the exact same design. (We see this in every industry, I just happened to be a fan of cars back in the day. But if you look at housing, clothing, computers, phones, tablets, etc etc, I can't think of any category that has real variety in design.)

(3) The author mentions book covers. Up until today, I was mistaking all those designs as meaning those books were part of the same series or something. I hadn't dug in to realize they were actually unrelated.

(4) My own kids have played it incredibly safe. I'm proud of them for being more responsible than I ever was. But I'm also worried they don't know how to take risks. I'm strongly of the belief that anything worth doing involves a healthy dose of risk. Could it really be that as a society, we've just abandoned risk?

I'm not saying the article is necessarily 100% correct. But I think it does pose what may be one of the most important questions of our era. Yeah yeah, I know that sounds bombastic: we have increasing global conflicts, a climate crisis, the apparent rise of neo-fascism, etc. But I don't know how we're going to solve those problems if we're all driving into the middle. How can 8 billion people be more homogenous than the 7, 6, 5, 4 billion that came before?

> Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!

> Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!

> Brian: You're all different!

> Crowd: Yes, we are all different!

> Man in crowd: I'm not...

> Crowd: Shhh!

But how many other people had similar luck and did nothing with it?

Luck is another word for opportunity. Some people are really good at leveraging opportunity for all it's worth. Most of us (myself very much included) are not.

Case in point: I'm the same age as Mark Zuckerberg. Many people say his age is why he was able to be at the right place at the right time to create Facebook. Much like they say about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and every other "self-made" billionaire.

But he still had to choose to do all the right things that I chose not to do in order to be able to experience that kind of luck.

At some point we gotta own up to our own role in guiding our lives.

Canada doesn't have nukes and has long advocated for nuclear non-proliferation. We're still not looking to have any nukes of our own.

Trump is openly calling for the annexation of our country, and has started a trade war that no Canadian political leader of any stripe wants.

Seriously just put yourself in the shoes of a Canadian. We've supported the USA in everything they've done other than the Vietnam War, and history proved us correct in taking a pass on that one.

The USA called for Free Trade. We said OK.

The USA called for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We said OK and agreed to never have nukes of our own, taking the USA at its word that it would never violate our sovereignty. Now the so-called Leader of the Free World won't shut up about taking over our country.

The USA called for NAFTA, we said OK. Then Trump tore that up and forced a new trade deal on us. We said OK again. Then he said whoever negotiated that was an idiot who did harm to the USA, to which we still say, "Ok, that's weird, it was your deal, Donald. But let's talk."

And now we're in a trade war that no one wants on our side of the border, and that a vast majority of Americans don't want either.

So yes, driven by one person: Trump.

As for the "new world order" comments, Freeland isn't talking about some conspiracy. She's literally referencing that Trump has set aflame to the existing world order (that was largely engineered by the USA) thereby creating a "new" world order. It's a poor choice of words, but I hardly take this as sufficient evidence that Canada is the belligerent nation in this trade war.

I mean, seriously, what are you even trying to say?

> Throw a baby in water and it can swim, no naiveté anywhere.

Are you suggesting I'm doing something akin to intentionally throwing a baby in water to see if it drowns?

> 1) Putting out a bet that a vulnerable person will take is immoral. But that’s not what we are discussing.

Agreed... I'm just asking if Polymarket can effectively be used as an assassination market, and if so, isn't that a bad thing?

> 2) How would putting out such a bet, a call option, lead to hedging?

I fully admit I'm not an investment expert, so maybe I'm not using the term correctly. But in my mind, "hedging" is putting in place some type of mechanism to benefit or at least limit your losses in the case of your preferred outcome not working out. So in this scenario, a business person could simultaneously make decisions on the assumption of an ongoing trade war, as well as make other decisions that would only be beneficial in the case of the end of the trade war due to someone's demise.

(For clarity, I'm NOT advocating anyone's demise. I'm a peacenik and am not cheering for harm to fall on anyone. I'm simply discussing hypotheticals in an attempt to understand IF Polymarket could be used as an assassination market, and purely because if it could, I feel that should probably be regulated.)

> 3) This can turn into a long ass discussion that I’m not sure you wanna go on.

You're probably right, but I'm not sure where you feel this conversation is headed.

For example... let's say I bet a trillion dollars that the Canadian Communist Party (a party on the extreme fringes that few Canadians even realize exists) would NOT win the election. How would that incentive lead to them winning? What could anyone do to make that reality happen in order to claim the money?

That's not to say there aren't other ways to use money to influence an election. Of course there is. But you need to spend it in the run-up to the election, not offer it as a prize afterwards.

Am I being naive? (A: Probably. Wouldn't be the first time.)

For example, I'm in Canada. There's a trade war going on. Every business in Canada is now having to hedge their bets for whether and how long and how bad the trade war is going to be. And we all know the trade war is being driven by one person. So yes, "what are the odds of a change in who is running the country?" is part of that risk assessment.

That's not the same thing as saying, "here's $100k if something were to happen to the man in the funny hat".

Technically, you could construe both as hedging your bets. But in the first scenario I'm just making a decision for my business. In the other, I'm offering a reward to make it happen.

Now, that being said, I could see the water getting murky for a publicly traded company that positions itself in such a way that it would truly benefit from such an event, because then a violent member of the public could buy their stock and benefit financially from commitment that violence. But that's not what we're talking about with polymarket.

Polymarket is all about tying a specific financial outcome to a specific real world event that people could choose to influence. It incentivizes outcomes. Some outcomes would be hard to influence this way. For example, I don't think any bet of any size would influence who would win an election. But if the bet was "It would be terrible if someone did X, I'm betting $$$ that no one will", then the only question is whether the $$$ is worth it to someone with the ability to commit X.

Is there any similar mechanism with Polymarket for detecting, shall we say, unethical bets?

I'm being vague because I don't want to put the idea out there about any specific individual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market

This may be an obvious thing that everyone else has caught onto, but... if I were to place a bet against someone dying this year (say it was someone powerful), wouldn't I essentially be offering a reward for someone to prove me wrong and make that death happen?

And isn't that exactly what's happening when people are betting on a new pope in 2025? Doesn't that heavily incentivize some violent individual to take that bet and commit murder?

One is not more important than the other.

Entrepreneurs are cowboys in this analogy. But it's more than just being willing to figure things out on the fly. An entrepreneur sees something that doesn't exist yet and breaks all the rules in order to bring that thing into reality.

Think of any successful startup. Or think of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. They're bullshit artists with a penchant for finding talent who can make reality match their lies so that they're not lies anymore. Without them, the word would be a very stagnant place.

But, for every successful Jobs, there is a Tim Cook. For every Bill Gates, there's a Paul Allen.

The problem with the visionary entrepreneurs is they make for terrible managers (drones). They're great gamblers, great at taking big risks, but they just keep doubling down until eventually things blow up in their face, unless they're constrained by an excellent manager.

Look at SBF or Liz Holmes. I truly think they're cut from the same cloth as Jobs and Gates in terms of being willing to bullshit their way to the top. But they never appreciated why they needed "drones" (talented managers) to keep things in check and tell them "no" when their visions were truly batshit.

I'm not sure anyone is truly great at both. Being great at one tends to blind you to the other.

By all means, if the science has advanced on this, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. But I've yet to see anything come close to explaining the phenomenon in a testable and falsifiable way, placing this entire subject outside of the realm of rational science in the meantime.

(At least, no one I'm aware of.)

The claim is about artificial intelligence that matches or surpasses human intelligence, not how well it evolves into full-fledged humanity.

But there's misrepresenting, and then there's "What the hell does this have to do with the movie I just watched?"

Good advertising (and I speak as an advertiser) sets up your expectations appropriately so that once you've experienced the product (in this case a movie) you leave satisfied.

Bad advertising promises you something completely different so that you leave the experience disappointed, which results in bad word of mouth.

Honestly, what none of the advertising for Civil War accomplishes (and I really liked the movie) is telling you that this is a movie about war journalism more than anything else. Yeah, there's a "this could happen here" message. But the core experience of the film is what it's like (presumably) to be a war correspondent. Didn't expect that at all going into the theatre.

Also... I loved Happy People. But yes, it's depressing. Beautifully so, but not a comedy.