Weekly Review #125: The worst mistake in history, Snapchat's Gambit, and Suicidal Children
I finished Sapiens by Yuval Harari this week - an absolutely superb history of homo sapiens and the 3 revolutions that shaped it: Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific. Expect a big summary blog post soon.
Most interesting note from it - shared myths that exist only in the minds of humans: gods, law, money, LLCs. These are the tools that allow humans to cooperate with strangers - something no other animal can do.
Also, he notes that foragers were probably happier than modern people - due to more leisure time, days with known friends, and a more varied diet. Jared Diamond goes further and calls agriculture 'The Worst Mistake of Humankind'.
Tech
Facebook is the new Excel | Alex Muir — alexmuir.com
“if you’re building a service for consumers then Facebook is your biggest competitor. B2B: Excel, B2C: Facebook."
Snapchat's Ladder - Stratechery — stratechery.com
Snapchat fought its way into the US just like Netflix. It started as an orthogonal need (ephemeral photos vs no late fees), then slowly pivoted its way into the gorilla's space (non-SMS texting vs original content). It did so slowly over many years, with an update here and there. Brilliant!
You have to wonder if it was on purpose, or if they just made something shiny and then figured out how to make it last.
Techies — www.techiesproject.com
Sharing the stories of under represented people in the tech industry. Worthy project! So many fields for the 'Humans of New York for X' to work in!
Lifehacks
Crazy long article from the ever excellent Slate Star Codex going deep into Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the dark side of civilization.
"A basic principle unites all multipolar traps. In some competition optimizing for X, the opportunity arises to throw some other value under the bus for improved X. Those who take it prosper. Those who don’t take it die out. Eventually, everyone’s relative status is about the same as before, but everyone’s absolute status is worse than before. The process continues until all other values that can be traded off have been – in other words, until human ingenuity cannot possibly figure out a way to make things any worse." - cough*capitalism*cough*cough
So we are left with a world where all bads are human created and therefore human solved. Why not just be peaceful? Why not keep Las Vegas a desert? The system doesn't optimize for that - it optimizes for profit and war.
Fun
Asymmetrical 2 player videogame where a clueless dad tries to prevent his hapless infant from killing itself in a suburban home. Talk about a clever premise!
Crazy awesome Star Wars fan film drawn in 80s anime style - with a killer guitar soundtrack. Shouldn't Lucasfilm be funding stuff like this?