9 Comments

I have to agree with Noah that Genghis Khan is perhaps the prime example of a zero-sum mentality. Keep in mind that his armies effected the slaughter of about 20 - 40 million residents of Eurasia. This was at a time when the world population was substantially smaller and this loss of life was close to 20% of Asia’s population at the time.

Victory for him meant absolute defeat for his enemies. I truly hope the world has moved on from such a mindset of raw conquest. However, it is like we are getting a taste of it in the Ukraine war.

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Thanks! I got to know you a bit via Rohit's interview and learn some new things. As a consequence of collaborating with some Japanese engineers and visiting Japan several times, I have more appreciation for Japanese society.

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It's interesting that you call out "winner-take-all" markets so much, because zero-sum is a problem I've spent a lot of time thinking about in the past couple years.

Not trying to shill or anything, but what do you think about zero-sum systems in politics, in general, etc? Are they good, bad?

I have my own personal opinions (see below), but I'm curious what other, more renowned and practiced thinkers think.

https://davesdailydiscourse.substack.com/p/americas-zero-sum-electoral-systems?r=e9tr3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy&s=w

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Earlier in my career (tech product management, semiconductor and industrial equipment) I spent a fair amount of time in Japan, and I concur with your thoughts here. I could never put pen to paper like you did and connect the dots, but you nailed it.

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Mar 31, 2022·edited Mar 31, 2022

(late comment, whoops)

> But I think our pursuit of meritocracy has caused us to neglect a few important things.

The really strange thing about "meritocracy" discourse is that the word "meritocracy" was invented for a book about what a bad idea it is. I think if you actually work in a hierarchical organization the problems with measuring current/past "merit" like the Peter principle and Goodhart's Law become obvious. The solution is… well, I don't know, sortition?

And of course the Japanese production concepts like kaizen are actually our own management techniques sold back to us, but apparently we don't read our own books.

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Great interview! Where can I read more on Tokyo’s block system (rather than typical grid)? Hadn’t heard this distinction before.

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