Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
My anecdotal evidence generally seems to support the idea that group sizes will usually plateau at a number lower than 150 participants. This comes from 20 years of doing facilitation both on and offline, running several software companies, and running various forums at America Online. In particular, many online communities provide good evidence fo... See more
Christopher Allen • The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes
Manias and Mimesis: Applying René Girard’s Mimetic Theory to Financial Bubbles
Tobias Huberdeliverypdf.ssrn.comMuch of our seeming intelligence actually comes not from raw brainpower or a plethora of instincts, but rather from the accumulated repertoire of mental tools (e.g., integers), skills (differentiating right from left), concepts (fly wheels), and categories (basic color terms) that we inherit culturally from earlier generations.
Joseph Henrich • The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
As Matt Clancey points out that “the benefits of knowledge spillovers from being physically close to other knowledge workers have been falling and may no longer exist in many domains of knowledge.” This is a controversial claim, but Clancey provides a detailed review of multiple studies that address this matter from different directions.
Dror Poleg • Dror’s Substack | Substack
view. For instance, in the mid-1700s David Hume wrote a lot about the “natural benevolence” of human beings. And a century later, even Charles Darwin himself attributed an “instinct of sympathy” to our species. But
Dalai Lama • The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living
The first is that customs, traditions, and the like are subject to Darwinian selection. Henrich is not always clear on exactly what is being selected for—is it individuals who follow a tradition, groups whose members all follow the tradition, or the tradition itself?—but the general gist is that traditions stick around longest when they are a... See more
Tanner Greer • Tradition is Smarter Than You Are
Andy Bromberg: The wisdom of crowds is giving way to the “wisdom of communities.” In a world of ever-greater complexity, no one person can possibly make sense of all the signals and all the noise — from a single, static vantage point. A networked group is required to adapt to this new world... People are no longer being polled in isolation but rath... See more
future.a16z.com • 21 Experts on the Future of Expertise - Future
Hamish McKenzie: On social media, posers are often given the most status points, and so we’re left with a misleading idea of authority; it seems the people who are loudest in their claims to be experts — the ones we hear from most on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — are the ones to be most wary of. When self-proclaimed experts are ultimately reveal... See more
