Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out - Ivan Vendrov \ stacker news ~mostly

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Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out - Ivan Vendrov nothinghuman.substack.com/p/shallow-feedback-hollows-you-out

1371 sats \ 8 comments \ @Scoresby 9h mostly_harmless

The best remedy is to write to the single smartest person you know who cares a lot about your topic of interest.

This is good writing advice.

In order to do good work, scientists must retain a separate status hierarchy where prestige flows to the most innovative ideas, not the most popular ones

I'm thinking of this in the context of the arts, as well. It often seems that the great artworks of tomorrow are among the weird artworks I don't understand today.

Taking it further, is this also true for Bitcoin development?

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171 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury 7h

There's something really important in this. I had a Gurwinder post on audience capture here someplace that gets at a similar idea, though this one has some more threads to pull.

The idea, regardless of what you call it, is one of the biggest influences on my thinking in the last five years. Hard to think of one that's had more impact.

101 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 6h

Back when I was writing a lot of fiction (which I used to do some years ago) I was very conscious that there was never such a thing as a character, but only relationships. So there is no Yossarian, but there is Yossarian-Nately and Yossarian-Milo and Yossarian-reader.

Put simply, in order to be someone, we need someone to be someone for. -Gurwinder

Characters need other characters even if just a reader. While Taleb isn't a character, he's no less reliant on his audience than Yossarian was on me or Orr.

Perhaps this is what I find interesting about artists who make work that isn't what their audience wants. Finnegans Wake is, on the one hand, preposterous and arrogant and unpleasant -- but it certainly wasn't audience capture. (although, I am now wondering if Joyce's success with earlier works actually led him to try more and more outlandish things until he ended up with Finnegans Wake...which really is impossible. Did Joyce's audience create Finnegans Wake?)

one of the biggest influences on my thinking in the last five years

Has it had more influence on how you act or how you view the actions of others?

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 2h

Has it had more influence on how you act or how you view the actions of others?

Both. I view it kind of like a law of social physics, or socio-biology. I see it unfolding in myself intimately, and others coarsely.

But I think I'm not exaggerating wrt its power, and its pervasiveness in this new online reality.

102 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b 6h

Taking it further, is this also true for Bitcoin development?

I suspect consensus muddies this up. Popular and innovative have to coincide more than in science or art, else the innovation dies in obscurity, because it requires a threshold of popularity with the right people and then economic nodes. In a field like science or art, a niche can have patrons.

I suspect this is also why bitcoin is plagued by influencers more than other fields. We need them to "just repeat variations on the same five time-tested ideas over and over again" and "exaggerate or embellish a bit" and make the right things popular (accepting most of them, in the best case, tastefully sellout), because the hurdle of popularity is so high that innovators can't reach popularity on their own.¹

This is one reason to be sympathetic of sidechains or more expressive scripting - we might rid ourselves of these popularity middlemen. ↩

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby OP 5h

popularity middlemen

is a really good term. I need to start a list of all these little nuggets people are sharing that I want to think about.

Upon reflection, I'm wondering if my question wasn't naive: what I wanted to ask was "are there bitcoin developers who have strong, interesting ideas for bitcoin, but as they get involved in the process and get recognition for their contributions, slowly merge towards an average?" but it is also true that Bitcoin development has to please its users or they won't use it.

204 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 5h

Oh, bitcoin devs get audience captured too. I often wonder if I am, although I’m more of an app guy I suppose. Maybe we should be using liquid somehow? Maybe we should KYC people? Is my bias away from these things my bias?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 5h

whatever bias you have that says stick with sats and don't kyc is the good kind of bias.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 5h

Or perhaps you’re captured by the same audience I am? :)

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