alex

san francisco has a strange gravity, attracting people who want to build the future, and also those who want to be seen building the future. the result is a city that can feel incredibly performative, especially within the startup bubble.

a lot of “founders” aren’t actually building much. instead, they’re posting, going from one event to the other,... See more

It is, says Aristotle, the mark of the educated person to seek the appropriate amount of precision for each subject.

Large-scale data collection efforts will likely be useful when they target those qualities that:

Are highly invariant and stable between contexts

Have accessible, mechanical methods for being counted

Do not involve a value decision

One of... See more

In “The Score”, Nguyen highlights the work of researcher Eileen J. Porter, who wrote a lot about the differences between qualitative and quantitative measures:

Qualitative = nuanced and dynamic (can be contoured to the precise needs of a local context)

Doesn’t aggregate well

Travels poorly between contexts

No easy way to automatically add up a lot of... See more

The old is dead, and I don’t know what the new is. The only way to find the new is to start different things and see if there’s something that can come out of experimentation.