What I'm Reading | 2016-06-26 - 2016-07-02

The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority - Nassim Taleb

1. It suffices for an intransigent minority – a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences.

2. Society doesn’t evolve by consensus, voting, majority, committees, verbose meeting, academic conferences, and polling; only a few people suffice to disproportionately move the needle. All one needs is an asymmetric rule somewhere. And asymmetry is present in about everything.

How American Politics Went Insane - Jonathan Rauch

1. The core idea of the Constitution was to restrain ambition and excess by forcing competing powers and factions to bargain and compromise.

2. The political reforms of the past 40 or so years have pushed toward disintermediation—by favoring amateurs and outsiders over professionals and insiders

3. 25 and 40 percent of Americans (depending on how one measures) have a severely distorted view of how government and politics are supposed to work. I think of these people as “politiphobes,” because they see the contentious give-and-take of politics as unnecessary and distasteful.

4. That kind of anti-establishment nihilism deserves no respect or accommodation in American public life. Populism, individualism, and a skeptical attitude toward politics are all healthy up to a point, but America has passed that point.

A Tale of Two Standups - Ryan Clark

1. However, standups have a tendency to devolve into a mundane ritual practiced for the sake of process while serving none of the intended goals.

2. Share what needs to be shared, identify topics for discussion or actions to follow up on afterwards and that’s it.

3. Try to put yourself in your team members’ shoes and think about what they need to hear about what you’ve done and plan to do.

The Moral Economy of Tech - Maciej Cegłowski

1. People who excel at software design become convinced that they have a unique ability to understand any kind of system at all, from first principles, without prior training, thanks to their superior powers of analysis. Success in the artificially constructed world of software design promotes a dangerous confidence.

2. Approaching the world as a software problem is a category error that has led us into some terrible habits of mind.

3. We pretend that by maximizing our convenience and productivity, we’re hastening the day when we finally make life better for all those other people.

4. In our attempt to feed the world to software, techies have built the greatest surveillance apparatus the world has ever seen.

5. When we talk about the moral economy of tech, we must confront the fact that we have created a powerful tool of social control. Those who run the surveillance apparatus understand its capabilities in a way the average citizen does not.

6. The first step towards a better tech economy is humility and recognition of limits. It’s time to hold technology politically accountable for its promises.