Monthly Links, March 2024

Res Extensa #61 :: The Linnaean instinct, taking action, nurturing strong foundations, and the unpredictability of working with big companies

Mar 28, 2024

📋 The Linnaean Instinct and List-Making

, I'm a list-maker. He suggests that humans have an innate inclination to categorize and create hierarchies to understand their environments — a "Linnaean instinct" (from Carl Linnaeus, father of biological taxonomy):

This Linnaean instinct—at least as I view it—is also a halfway point between hedgehogs and the foxes, as per Isaiah Berlin (and Archilochus before him): those who know one big thing and those who know many things. Creating a catalog or a list involves frameworks and organization, but it is also at peace with the grab-bag and the miscellaneous. It is a means for creating order while still being wary of too much order—or at least comfortable sitting with a bit of a mess.
It is also a means of learning from what has come before us, for to create a meaningful catalog involves knowing the history of a domain.

There’s a thread here back to the work of Brian Arthur in The Nature of Technology, parallels between the lineage of biology and innovation. Taxonomies help us see pathways of prerequisite discoveries.

⚖️ In Politics, the Truth Is Not Self-Evident. So Why Do We Act as if It Is?

Dan Williams

has an interesting piece on what he calls "naive realism", a phenomenon where people form overly simplistic views on why complex problems actually have easy solutions. I think we’re all familiar with this pattern in contemporary political discourse. The article digs into some interesting theories on where this naivete comes from. Is it “adaptive” in an evolutionary sense? What incentives cause people to think this way?

For these and many more reasons, the political beliefs we develop are highly fallible. At best, the mental pictures that make up our political outlook—what Walter Lippmann called our “pseudo-environments”—are selective, simplistic, and distorted representations of a more complex, ambiguous, and disagreeable reality. At worst, they might be completely delusional. After all, it is painfully obvious that other people—people who endorse mistaken political views—are unaware that their views are mistaken. But then how do we know we are any different from them?
Many people never reflect on the fallibility of their political outlook in this way. Even when it comes to highly complex topics where well-informed experts disagree—economics, geopolitics, social justice, crime, gender, race, immigration, and so on—many treat their political beliefs and preferences as self-evidently correct. They are what psychologists call “naive realists”.

I’m a big trade-offs guy — the world is complicated, good things sometimes come at the expense of other good things, contradiction is a law of the universe, disagreement and compromise is a sign of a healthy system, not a flaw. Naive realism has always been a thing, but the always-on transparency enabled by the internet supercharges this bias.

💡 The Terror of Inaction

Tim Campbell

points out the anxiety caused by only thinking, never taking action:

There are things we know in our heart we can do and there are things we know in our heart we should do. We all have the potential to perform. To heed the call to adventure. To take action. And when we don't, a tiny part of the universe falls out of balance. These dreams are a reminder to always strike while the iron is hot. Because at some point, we'll have all the energy, motivation, and willingness to dance, but our old bones won't allow it.

Critical thinking and debating with oneself where to spend time is healthy! But without periodic steps into the unknown, anxiety can climb to a fever pitch.

🏡 Small Spaces

Simon Sarris

writes about the value of the forgotten, backwoods, small spaces, lost in our modern attention and (over)attention on big cities. How "scenes" can spawn even in relatively disconnected places.

It is tempting to think of culture — and new ideas, and all the spirits of genius — as something created in big places. The common map points out only the principal cities. It is also tempting to summarize the history of the world as the product of a handful of capital cities. These sentiments are, I think, a mistake. The largest cities do amass greatness, ideas, machines, culture, etc. But the materials necessary for these are often found, and created, elsewhere. To uncover the spirits of genius, it is worth looking farther.

🐋 The Moby-Dick Theory of Big Companies

Marc Andreessen

’s useful insights on what it's like, as a small company, to work with a large one:

Moby Dick might stalk you for three months, then jump out of the water and raise a huge ruckus, then vanish for six months, then come back and beach your whole boat, or alternately give you the clear shot you need to harpoon his giant butt. And you’re never going to know why.
A big company might study you for three months, then approach you and tell you they want to invest in you or partner with you or buy you, then vanish for six months, then come out with a directly competitive product that kills you, or alternately acquire you and make you and your whole team rich. And you’re never going to know why.

Massive bureaucracies operate by their own incentives. Each constituent individual's incentives bear no resemblance to the company as a whole. The reasons for a big company's behavior are completely opaque from the outside — and, turns out, often the inside.

🌿 Building Healthy Soil

Sam Sager

draws an interesting analogy between cultivating healthy soil and nurturing strong foundations in other arenas. He writes here specifically about exercise, but I see equivalents in habit-forming, skill-learning, study, and many others. Resilient, robust systems require a patience to develop sturdy bedrock on which to build. There's a power in gradual layering.