moneyball

A charismatic brand includes a dedication to aesthetics. Why? Because it’s the language of feeling, and in a society that’s information-rich and time-poor, people value feeling more than information.

It's scary to admit that you can't control the future; it's a lot easier to distract yourself by trying to optimize every decision, no matter how insignificant.

he does see trouble in the glut of franchise and comic book entertainment that currently makes up much of what you can see in a theater. “The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” Scorsese said. “Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those—that’s what movies are.”

I think people already think that.

Applying universal logic gives our experiences a certain weight and our lives a certain order. I assume this is why we’re so drawn to recasting our life stories into tidy narratives and lessons to be shared with others. But in doing this we risk underestimating chaos, nuance, idiosyncrasy, and the occasional dose of self-delusion.

The data informs and influences us, but we choose based on the totality of our experience

The key premise of algorithms is efficiency. Algorithms optimise data for decision-making that we previously did not have before. But humans are not efficient. We are messy and inherently flawed, which makes us human. We value serendipity, community and experiences, which may not be efficient but is impactful.

There’s an irony here: Algorithms were once believed to untether us from the masses and offer paths for personalization. But “For You” is not about pushing the limits of our artistic palates, but a device to serve us what the platform wants us to be satisfied with, herding us into perfectly predictable siloes that can be targeted with more... See more

We’ve created an acceleration and an explosion of choice, which will permanently leave us feeling fundamentally unsatisfied or under-optimized.

That environment doesn’t produce “nihilism.” It produces rational repositioning.

If the expected value of the traditional path collapses, people move further out on the risk curve. Not because they’re delusional, but because they can do basic math.