I like the Bayesian notion that we must constantly be examining our hypotheses against new information. And, if we take it a bit outside the math context (where I am more comfortable), it is our job to find that data. Because as Steven Landsburg put it, under Bayes' Law "everything that can be relevant is relevant."

A theory about the world or who you want to be - combining Von Clausewitz and Bayes - is a bit like a battle strategy. It doesn't mean anything until it comes under siege. The enemy nor the data cares much for your plans. Success requires a certain prescience, sure, but more crucially, it needs a general that closely monitors the feedback from all sources of information and consistently learns from them.

And I don't mean this is in the generic "can you be flexible?" sense that everyone throws around. We're talking objectively, can you monitor and track your actions empirically? How quickly can you rewrite your operating procedures? Which of your assumptions are firm and which can be shifted? Do you fear new information or do you welcome it? How active is your pursuit of challenging feedback? Have you identified the false positives so you can avoid them?

From Clausewitz, I am thinking that difference between someone who can launch and learn and someone who can't isn't so much a difference in skill level as it is of planes.

" ...someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours-a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God-and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly-not miserably-knowing how to die." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Is knowing how to die any different from knowing how to live?

As the Oligarchs ruled Athens in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, a statesman named Theramenes was caught negotiating the struggle between democracy and tyranny. He gave a speech to the assembly decrying the brutalities of the ruling party - no moral judgment but rather that it was stupid and self-destructive to treat ones citizens as though they did not matter. Dictatorship or not, they ought not use violence as a solution to political problems. In what looked like one of those uniquely Greek moments where an issue is decided on the merits of its public explanation, he was overwhelmed with applause, the clear winner of his case. But when the jury went to deliberate, the ruling tyrant Critias ordered troops to shackle and remove him under a sentence of death.

As they dragged Theramenes through the streets, he screamed the injustice of Critias at every house and home. Him today, he cried, you tomorrow. When guard told him that he'd soon come to regret not silencing himself, he replied "Shall I not still suffer, if I do?" and continued to shame his peers for their inaction.

They handed him the hemlock, which he quickly downed - but not before pouring one out for his homies and saying "Here's to that delightful fellow, Critias." [1][2]

[1] A History of My Times, Xenophon (Penguin)
[2] Pour out a Little Liquor
UD: Pour One Out

I decided to put my money where my mouth was a little bit so I am now running FAIL DOGS

If you saw the site before, you can tell that I stripped off most of the advertising, I'm posting more often and doing all the stuff I tell all new bloggers to try.

It's really fucking funny and you should subscribe. I am going to blow this thing up over the next few months. I'll write about it here so we can talk about what works and what doesn't. (This one's the best)

One of the people I work for put it nicely - "we do innovation, not exploitation." The theory is that most of the big Boomer companies haven't done anything innovative in half a century. And their conservative, publicly traded leadership is incentivized to milk what they already have rather than create something new. But his logic, although it seems counterintuitive, is that it's actually a lot cheaper to be innovative than it is to pour over spreadsheets for extra pennies.

If you do your research, the 80's wasn't the bull market people think it was - mergers and buyouts were just burning off value for temporary stock jumps. Nobody way doing finance, they were just shuffling cards. The only growth came from massive fees which were debited from the accounts of - you guessed it - the innovators of the last generation.

I guess there are some economic explanations for why this is short-sighted and ultimately suicidal. Umair does an amazing job of it. But to me, the debate is deeper than that. Which person would you rather be? The raider or creator? Is that why you get up every morning, to pick up a few extra scraps from an inefficient entrepreneur? You studied six years in college to do someone else's paperwork?

The people who are writing their memoirs or teaching your college classes have a lot to gloss over. Mainly the fact that their entire way of thinking creating a smoke and mirrors bureaucracy that hasn't done much besides institutionalize mediocrity. That system is broken. I think you (I) know which person you want to be. It's also fairly obviously what slots the system wants you to fill. So, do you want to be the host or the parasite? Do you want to innovate or exploit?

In many ways, this was Sparta embodied. They'd embark on a course so convinced it was infallible that they'd never consider the consequences. A simple economic accident - that subcitizens labored while men trained for war - dictated every facet of their foreign policy for almost 300 years. Once it was written, it could not be changed. Brasidas, likely the country's greatest general, was successful almost entirely because he was "un-Spartan." He was clever and articulate and a rule breaker. Their win in the Peloponnese was ultimately an albatross that they could not bear. The military culture they brought crashing against Athenian walls was the burden that slew Greece. Sparta died in the chains they took against others.

There's a reason that the conclusion of the 48 Laws looks at formlessness. Sparta had everything else - the power, the brains, the courage, the money - but it meant nothing because they couldn't think strategically. They could not change courses after they committed.

They lacked the fluidity to survive even in the Ancient world. Today is even faster - you don't have a century to shift assumptions. It's really easy to get locked into a path or a mindset. I know I'm more comfortable with certainty or absolutes. But that just isn't how things work. I don't want to end up tied to the land I was supposed to conquer. I think that means take nothing for granted, consider the alternatives, and always, always avoid the hubris of thinking there is only ONE way.

References/ Further Reading:
A History of Sparta 950-192 B.C - W.G Forrest (very short)
History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides
The Histories - Herodotus (skim)
The Greco-Persian Wars - Peter Green (easy read that explains Thucydides')

So, as well as you can (here or otherwise), what's it like being you?

When you accept that very rarely will any idea be original and forgo rights to ownership, you free yourself up to do the important part - complete understanding. I think that means a huge thank you to the people who allow me to get close enough to hear theirs. As we try to absorb, make sense, compile, discard, destruct and create, confuse, iron and simplify, we're left with one big mess where authorship is a little murky. And that's how it should be. Hopefully, I'll be able to return the favor.

If I could end with stealing someone else's - and they probably know who they are - it'd be that the more you care about credit, the less you'll actually be able to accomplish.

You never know where a relationship can happen. Brian Clark commented on the 3rd post I wrote for this site because I'd linked to a CopyBlogger article. By the end of the week - almost 15 months later - he, TheExecutive and I should be wrapping up a deal where will be working together with one of the biggest young actresses on cable.

I've only been formally employed for two years now but I am constantly withdrawing from things I did on the internet long before a paycheck compelled me to do it. Articles I read and remember. Sites I used to have accounts on. People I've heard of or talked to. Something I taught myself when I was trying to figure out how to get music without paying for it.

So how can anyone expect these things to happen without actually being involved? Brian can't leave you a comment if you don't have one. You can't chance across some new business opportunity if you're not actively seeking new things in general. And you certainly can't begin to build a name for yourself if you haven't bothered to put it out there. You have to set yourself up for good things to happen. There is a reason why when I stop and look around I don't find many competitors - most people don't do anything.

I've said this before, I know. It doesn't matter. Whatever it is that you want to do, you can be doing it now. You can be laying the groundwork to be better at it than anyone else. And specifically if new media is what appeals to you, that stuff is so easy it's laughable.

Note: Evan (Charlotte's husband on Sex and the City) sent me the best PR email I have ever seen anyone send. Ever. He did exactly what you're supposed to do - he researched and made a personal connection. Not that he needs my help, but he was cool about it so I had no problem reading it. The book is pretty good too. The middle essay "My Life" is a perfect illustration of why Tucker is doing his movie the way that he is. At the very least, I am buying his other book.

Articles:
In the future, we'll all be art students
Just-enough, a new trend in the works (or, why Paul Allen's Octopus is really an Albatross)
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

You don't want to be the person that has no control over how they act. You certainly don't want to be the person that isn't even aware of the fact that they're not in control. Sitting in meetings in Hollywood, you can see that most people are horribly guilty of this. That's why they name drop, make ridiculous predictions, and scream at their assistants. They just get away with it because they only deal with their own kind.

Hollywood's biggest problem isn't structural or economic, it's cultural. People are sickeningly oblivious and insecure and just generally awful. The emails I've been cc'd on make me want apologize on other's behalf. And it's not that they're evil or malicious, they're just insulated. It was always a seller's market. But it's not anymore and the internet has permanently shifted that power. It's over.

So more than anything, I'm trying to to figure out what my actions say about me as a person. They either match who I want to be or I shouldn't be doing them. That involves asking a couple questions - always Why? What for? and What Happens if I Don't?

It's not just that it ineffective. There is a reason that things are getting worse daily. The final question is that if it were effective - if there monetary incentives for being an asshole and for being uninformed - would it be worth it?

"After a few months practice, David lamented to his teacher, "but I can hear the music so much better in my head than I can get out of my fingers." To which the Master replied "What makes you think that will ever change?" - Art & Fear

I am starting to think that maybe greatness comes not from transcending that disparity but from embracing and accepting it. Running wasn't any easier yesterday than last April. I was still way more excited about the 'idea' of it than actually going out and doing it. It took 4 discarded posts until I fell into this one. I'm not still quite there yet either.

He eventually got it, or at least close enough to be satisfied. Then we moved onto the next thing and started the process over again early this morning.

The difference between he and I, I think, is that he's spent the last decade well aware of the fact that it'll always look better in his head than when it comes out of the factory. But that hasn't changed him at all. That doesn't stop the factory. I'm sure it kills him when something doesn't come out perfect or he just can't get it right. If we want to talk about Turning Pro, maybe the real mark is someone who understands the odds and does it anyway.

A firm will tend to expand until the costs of organizing an extra transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction by means of an exchange on the open market or the costs of organizing in another firm.

What we're talking about today is not marginal fluctuations in transaction costs but almost a complete collapse. That's why a terrorist group that has made almost no effort to organize can function at least comparably to the most powerful army in the world. Or blog can sell more books a month than a medium sized bookstore as a secondary revenue stream.

I can't really tell you what it is that I do because I don't have job descriptions. I'm not even formally employed by two of the people I work for - if I was it would create more problems that it would solve. Which is why the idea of hustling is so important. You have to be able to function independently or you're not worth anything. So the whole notion of scalability is being turned on its head because what you do might not need to be scaled - you might be enough.

But that takes time, effort and constant experimentation.

Other reading:
The Rule of Five - John Robb (blog post)
Dreaming 5th Generation Warfare (blog)
RMMB: John Boyd 2.0 (discussion)
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations - Clay Shirky
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations - Ori Brafman
Charlie Wilson's War: How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times - George Crile
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source - Eric S Raymond

At least, asPalahniuk wrote, Doc's people have taken some control over their fate. At least they've got an inkling that something might be wrong. I don't think you can say the same about the graduating Law class of 2008 or the queen of the crazies. I don't want to be one of them.

They are two totally separate pursuits - production and peace. And the former will not create the later.

I am so unbelievably bad at this. Something to shoot for.