2025-06-16
mictlāntēcutli
Tina He on how systems function, possibly inspired by the POSIWID debates recently sparked off by Scott Alexander. One of the points she makes here is that while this isn’t usually true, there are certain circumstances when defaulting to the maximally cynical take might be adaptive. Somewhat related, there was an interesting talk by David Chapman and Emmet Shear at LessOnline about leadership, where they noted that once you enter in a position of power, it is difficult to maintain your sense of reality as everyone starts managing you in an attempt to direct your power towards their own ends. Much of the talk was about how to continue to access reality, but it seems to me that there’s some sort of Chesterton’s Fence here, because by convention the CEO is both the boss and the lead pitcher: it doesn’t make much sense to combine these two roles unless you are actively trying to force your founders into reality distortion fields. If you want to make the most optimal efficient decisions, you need to be able to access reality, but perhaps the VC-startup ecosystem has a different purpose, one it cares more about1.
Georgia Ray reviews Airborne, by Carl Zimmer, as well as disease transmission mechanisms more generally.
Micah Cash in the Republic of Letters about the search for the next great novel. There’s an interview on the Orthogonal Bet with Anna Gát about Interintellect2 where she mentions the idea of “scenius” and the benefits of “talking about economics with musicians and music with economists”. At the same time, there’s the sense that the truly great novels are completely unique, and so are more likely to come from lone geniuses, uncorrupted by social performance and backscratching. I’m reminded of Dorothy Parker’s remarks on the Algonquin Table: “Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were.” I wonder if this line was intentionally trying to channel that: “Sometimes, when the whole situation tests my capacity for despair, I think of my heroes: Don DeLillo, Donna Tartt, and Paul Beatty (just to name the living ones). None of them has a Substack”.
Andrew Gellman on generational shifts, in both names and games.
Noah Smith on the “No Kings” protests.
As for what the founder themselves should be doing, this is probably one of those things where the levels cycle. If you are autistically focused on truth, you can’t even play; if you believe, then you can play, but it’s them who will win. Somehow, you need to get in a position where you appear to be drinking the kool-aid, while still making any decisions that matter with a sober take from reality. I wonder if the popular belief that CEOs have higher rates of sociopathy than the general population are true. (Edit: see relevant tweet).
I’m not a member, since it feels too highbrow for me, but maybe I should be.