business management

AMA with Ali Beiner. Wednesday 2/4 at 11:00 AM CT

Kainos host Alexander Beiner exploring cultural sensemaking around psychedelics, popular culture, philosophy, psychology, alternative economics, and spirituality.

Leave the country or stay? There was a time period where my friends and I were getting invited to these new exciting community projects in the Central America and Asia and Europe. Crypto millionaires and retired billionaires trying to bootstrap whole new civilizations and villages and large retreat centers.

Yet, all of us felt a certain affinity and even responsibility to stay in the States.

Which is a little strange considering probably all of our families also have immigrated here at some point.

How does one assess whether to establish a new home abroad and call it quits on the homeland? Or stick it out and try to make it work?

It reminds me of the dilemma that's often posed around do you try to reform an institute as a player within or do you go off and establish a brand new thing? Does staying in the current system doomed to be corrupted and compromised? Or is going off naive and doomed to failure as a retreat from life?

As I'm writing this, I could see the same dilemma in deciding whether to stay working for a corp or start your own business. Or stay in a currently challenging relationship or call it quits to find a new partner. Or even try to be a lay person in the world or go off to be a monk in the mountains.

I suppose the answer is ultimately context is what matters most.

And I've yet to see a really compelling abroad experiment that seemed actually integrated or likely to deliver on the promises.

I, myself, have been increasingly interested in building out more of the physical and social infrastructure locally to create the new type of village community in AVL. But, those billionaire communities or even rural Portugal tiny communities do tempt me at times.

Deliberately Development Orgs are bullshit? I expect others here read and were influenced by An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Kegan and Lahey?

I remember first being introduced to it in a circling retreat probably 8 years ago or so. One of the example orgs they use is Bridgewater Associates with Ray Dalio at the head.

I loved their believability-weighted decision making algorithm (nod to Uptrust's setup here) that would score people's expertise in different fields. I loved their radical transparency and recording of meetings. I loved their "baseball card" feature for all employees showing where they're strong and weak.

But then I read The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates and The Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend. The author peels back the surface and basically shows Dalio ran essentially a narcissistic cult in his hedge fund. The algorithm was hard coded so that Dalio was ranked highest in every category. The recordings were highly edited to make him look good and his targets bad.

I haven't spent time looking at the other examples in the DDO book yet but I question maybe a for-profit huge corporation is going to be fighting really uphill to be a virtuous company in today's systems.

Deliberately Development Orgs are bullshit? I expect others here read and were influenced by An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Kegan and Lahey?

I remember first being introduced to it in a circling retreat probably 8 years ago or so. One of the example orgs they use is Bridgewater Associates with Ray Dalio at the head.

I loved their believability-weighted decision making algorithm (nod to Uptrust's setup here) that would score people's expertise in different fields. I loved their radical transparency and recording of meetings. I loved their "baseball card" feature for all employees showing where they're strong and weak.

But then I read The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates and The Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend. The author peels back the surface and basically shows Dalio ran essentially a narcissistic cult in his hedge fund. The algorithm was hard coded so that Dalio was ranked highest in every category. The recordings were highly edited to make him look good and his targets bad.

I haven't spent time looking at the other examples in the DDO book yet but I question maybe a for-profit huge corporation is going to be fighting really uphill to be a virtuous company in today's systems.

Deliberately Development Orgs are bullshit? I expect others here read and were influenced by An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Kegan and Lahey?

I remember first being introduced to it in a circling retreat probably 8 years ago or so. One of the example orgs they use is Bridgewater Associates with Ray Dalio at the head.

I loved their believability-weighted decision making algorithm (nod to Uptrust's setup here) that would score people's expertise in different fields. I loved their radical transparency and recording of meetings. I loved their "baseball card" feature for all employees showing where they're strong and weak.

But then I read The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates and The Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend. The author peels back the surface and basically shows Dalio ran essentially a narcissistic cult in his hedge fund. The algorithm was hard coded so that Dalio was ranked highest in every category. The recordings were highly edited to make him look good and his targets bad.

I haven't spent time looking at the other examples in the DDO book yet but I question maybe a for-profit huge corporation is going to be fighting really uphill to be a virtuous company in today's systems.

How are so many high budget movies so bad? . (Eg all DC movies and most Phase 4 & 5 Marvel movies)

#quicktakes 

American aristocracy could learn some things from the old world. A big American founding myth is that we eliminated the aristocracy from our government, but the real American innovation is making it much easier to join the aristocracy starting as an outsider. 

Sure, great. A little closer to meritocracy, one hopes. 

But governance is complex enough that you’d ideally want to be trained from birth to do it. Programs of similar intensity to olympic training, for example. 

That was a potential upside of the previous method. You had a limited set of preselected kids who were almost certainly going to rule one day, so you could put them through the training to do so. It often worked pretty well.

Now anyone who is good at twitter can ostensibly rule without knowing anything about how to do it. 

Remember Boaty McBoatface? Our current timeline is the spiritual equivalent of running an internet poll to determine who is in charge of a nuclear reactor. Except orders of magnitudes more reckless and dangerous than that. 

 We need a better synthesis. 

#DeepTakes

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, probably via use of the word "optics" ;) . I've been reading the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (abridged*, of course, at least to start with!). New to the topic, and I’ve never identified as a history buff, but I’m really loving it. I wanted to write a short post about it, but couldn’t quickly figure out how to say what I wanted briefly, so here’s a long one!

It feels like a bird's-eye view of modern politics, in many ways, but especially regarding "The American Experiment." I'm sure this comparison isn't new--it's probably a huge part of what makes Decline and Fall popular today, despite being published in 1776. Since there's a whole trope about Rome buffs, I imagine many of you have hashed over all this a ton previously.

The early part of Decline and Fall starts with how amazing Rome was. Of course, it built on other civilizations and governments that came before it, but I think we these days have a hard time imagining just how surprisingly modern it would seem to us, if we were transplanted to the Roman Empire in its heyday. Of course we have tons of hard tech they didn't. But on the social level, I think a lot of it would feel spookily familiar. (I’m sure the author and I are both missing or leaving out huge ways it’s different. But I think there’s still a lot we can learn from it.)

Widespread assumption of and dedication to: rule of law, trial by peers, market-based economy. And somehow the start of the Roman Empire manifested a deep dedication among citizens and leaders to a Republic as the form of government. No nepotism, no monarchy, no might makes right. Government of the people, by the people, for the people, at least in spirit--my sense is people and government and military were all aligned in their dedication to that spirit. 

And peace! Peace, for centuries, throughout a huge swath of the known world, where that hadn’t happened before. There was a kind of national religion they inherited from the Greeks, but they seem to have been even more dedicated to religious tolerance than to their religion (prior to Constantine and the Christians taking over). Sure, there was kind of constant fighting on the edges of the empire, including always against the pesky Gauls and German barbarians, who really hated the idea of being part of the big empire. But mostly, and especially compared to times before in much of Europe, you could live safe in your home with your family, for generations even, protected by law-abiding and law-enforcing local authorities, backed up by the Roman army when needed, truly answerable to the people through the representation of the Senate, such as it was, and it was pretty great as far as I can tell. 

Now, the bird's-eye view of the modern USA comes in when, generation after generation, leader after leader, eventually monarch after monarch, the common-knowledge shared dedication to being a Republic and to all the ideas above, faded over time. First, one or two leaders came along who had enough sway over the army and enough popularity with the people that they were able to, against the grain of all Republic dedication, declare themselves effective leaders of the empire. First humbly, as first-among-many. Then with time, openly and pompously. Then with more time, it became obvious to everyone that the Republic was only a Republic in name, that it was just obviously "the way things worked" that the army effectively got to decide who became emperor, and that as soon as the army switched loyalties, you'd better be ready for a change, including probably a bunch of people getting killed for being on the wrong side. 

The thing about Decline and Fall, wrt this kind of degradation, is you get to read real human stories of this happening, again, and again, and again, and again. The same patterns, the different humans with unique circumstances playing them out. 

Why did the dedication to the original ideals degrade with time? I think the same natural processes, and lack of opposing processes, have led the US and myriad other democracies down similar paths over time. People and groups learn to subvert the system to get more of what they want in the short term, sacrificing the common-knowledge dedications and ideals that support the good things they have in the world. They pay less attention to the whole than is needed to maintain it. 

I'll name what I see today as one instance of roughly this kind of degradation, and I hope it's a little spicy. I have been part of many, many conversations in organizations where, when discussing some strategic question for the organization, the word "optics" comes up. For the uninitiated, the word "optics" in this context means: people could see what we're doing and have interpretations of it. We don't want those interpretations to have bad consequences for us. So let's be sure to include in our strategizing some component of consideration for trying to get people's impressions (the public, journalists, stakeholders, or etc) to be at least neutral. I can understand that. But I want to live in a world where we're creating the whole we want, not mostly attempting to persuade or convince or if nothing else not be noticed by parts of society that IMO we ought to relate to as peers. If we all practice distrusting our peers' sense-making processes in this way of strategizing about "optics", we'll all end up with a society with worse and less sense-making. So what do I want instead? I want us to take actions with integrity. Yes to being aware of our reputation (individually, organizationally, etc) and acting with integrity.

(*The abridged version I landed on, after some back and forth about versions with Claude, is the Womersly version. I love it. You get 100-200 pages of the above, which was just right for this first-timer.)

#DeepTakes

Timeline of Events in Brian Thompson Assassination. On December 4, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated outside the New York Hilton Midtown. The suspect, later identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, shot Thompson multiple times before fleeing on an e-bike. Thompson was pronounced dead shortly after. Mangione, who stayed in NYC for 10 days prior, was arrested on December 9 in Pennsylvania and charged with second-degree murder. The attack is believed to be a symbolic act targeting the healthcare industry.

November 24, 2024

• 10:11 p.m.: Suspect arrives in New York City on a Greyhound bus from Atlanta, Georgia.

November 24 – December 3, 2024

• Suspect checks into the HI New York City Hostel on the Upper West Side using a falsified New Jersey ID and pays in cash.
• He stays at the hostel for ten days, checking out on December 3.

December 4, 2024

• 5:30 a.m.: Suspect leaves the hostel, likely by bike.
• 6:15 a.m.: Suspect exits the 57th Street F Train subway station.
• 6:17 a.m.: Suspect purchases coffee, water, and granola bars at a Starbucks near the New York Hilton Midtown hotel.
• 6:30 a.m.: Surveillance footage captures the suspect walking while talking on the phone.
• 6:39 a.m.: Suspect arrives in front of the New York Hilton Midtown hotel and waits.
• 6:44 a.m.: Brian Thompson leaves his hotel. The assailant shoots him multiple times, then flees northbound via a pedestrian walkway.
• 6:46 a.m.: Police respond to a 911 call reporting the shooting.
• 6:48 a.m.: Officers find Thompson with multiple gunshot wounds. He is taken to Mount Sinai West hospital. The assailant is seen riding an e-bike into Central Park.
• 6:59 a.m.: Suspect is seen riding a bike on West 85th Street.
• 7:04 a.m.: Suspect enters a northbound taxi at 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
• 7:12 a.m.: Thompson is pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West hospital.

December 9, 2024

• Morning: Luigi Mangione, 26, is arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in connection with the assassination.
• Afternoon: Mangione is charged with second-degree murder and other related offenses.

December 11, 2024

• Mangione appears in court, contests extradition to New York, and is held without bail pending a governor’s warrant.

Attempted Trump Assasination- Was he actually hit by a bullet? (meta commentary: I imagine the future of uptrust will host more conversations of this nature… so let’s see how we navigate it)

On Saturday, former president Donald Trump was the target of an attempted assassination.

Two things I want to talk about–

1. Was Trump actually hit by a bullet? I’m skeptical that a bullet grazed his ear, and think it’s more likely that a piece of shrapnel clipped him. I’m not intending to minimize the fact that someone definitely tried to kill him, but rather I am irritated by his spinning and inflation of the story if there is a truer thing to be said about what happened.

2. The secret service really fucked up. How on earth do they miss a lone sniper on a roof that many of the bystanders identified before them? I don’t think there is a conspiracy theory here, but do believe someone should probably be fired for their oversight.

I’d like to hear others’ opinions on this + where your credibility comes from. Name your news source or experience that leads you to believe what you’re sharing.