Malcolm
- Me, obviously. Malcolm Ocean
- Fun fact: Malcolm has Two Ls.
- Most people think they know how to spell Malcolm, so they don't bother checking.
- The silent L is kind of like:
- Chisholm
- Stockholm
- Lincoln
- calm
- palm
8 linked references
leadlag learning system
- It seems to Malcolm that it's important to be able to fake it til you make it with a mindset learning lead measure. I'm not saying we want people to fake it--I'm saying they necessarily will fake it, so we need to make the result of faking it be a result that we want.
February 18th, 2021
- commitment to internal dialogue
- common for people to have techniques that they think will help them solve the problems they have
- in practice they don't use them
- Why?
- One reason: an internal conflict that is partially about whether the technique is safe to use
- part of the fractal is that it extends out to interpersonal systems
- e.g. Malcolm bringing in the NNTD that is supposed to help ppl navigate a conflict, but if Benjamin doesn't trust that he is going to be cautious signing up for a form that is threatening on some level
- example of Human and Chimp wanting to resolve a conflict in different ways (e.g. the human by Logic and the chimp by strength)
- Koan in the context of interpersonal stuff: who gets to decide? who gets to decide who gets to decide? who gets to decide who gets to decide who gets to decide? why?
- Where do you ground it out?
- How do you establish coherence if there is no ground?
- with a lot of context sensitivity
- if we go back to e.g. Malcolm bringing in the NNTD that is supposed to help ppl navigate a conflict, but if Benjamin doesn't trust that he is going to be cautious signing up for a form that is threatening on some level
- what difference would it make for any given form we are using any form (NVC, something implicit like the general way ppl resolve conflicts at John St with whatever language is used), for there to be a shared recognition of a way that either of us may use the form that we would be able to say "this is not working for my system, I need it to be different. Some part of me doesn't trust what is happening right now". What difference does it make for us to consciously say, obviously w would want to be able to use whatever form is going to feel best for both of us. And we might not know what that is, and we may need to create it.
- which is inextricable with how we use whatever form
- any tool is associated with a set of attitudes, and is embedded in a context
- It can be hard (for various reasons) ...
- Say that Mal wants to resolve a disagreement with NNTD, and Ben says yes but qualifies that he wants to be able to say if it feels off, and then Mal says "of course!" ... from where does Ben come to trust that Mal both wants that, and that he would actually be able to follow through on that from a skill perspective
- integrating someone's concern is not a straightforward act
- This (the coming to be able to trust the use of a form, including the potential opt-out, for all of the parts of the system) is maybe easier to do internally than interpersonally.
- 1. You can feel internal good will and can do certain kinds of checks. Communication between neurons is quicker
- 2. There is no away w.r.t your internal parts. If you don't get along with another person you can decide not to interact very much. If your inner critic and inner rebel don't get along, they are kind of stuck in the same body. There is a need to find a way to not fight.
- Shapes within the space of this big scenario
- ex 1
- ex 2
- ex 3
- each part of the system says, if there can be a form/process/approach / means of navigating differences, that meets my needs and where my needs can be incorporated, and it can do that for everyone, then I would want to participate in and co-create that thing. And, I as a part in this system, will not ask any other part to settle for anything less
- stance, not a state
- B > or like a koan
- meta-protocol = what allows us to answer the who gets to decide who gets to decide? question/koan fully generally
- It is the process of integrating the entirety of all contexts that are relevant
- it is never done, it's not a state that can be arrived at. It is itself the entire evolving process of the universe. The whole everything.
- Why is full-fractal buy-in important
- it is what allows all parts of a systems eedds to get satisfied
- but in what way does it all it, and why are we calling it buy-in
- if you try to do some technique, if it doesn't happen it's probably because some part of you is not bought-in
- full-fractal buy-in is a kind of mutually conditional buy-in, which is like, I'm not game for the technique as stated, but in as much as some part of the group is proposing it, I would like to do some part of the technique that feels safe for me. And
- re meta-protocol = what allows us to answer the who gets to decide who gets to decide? question/koan fully generally
- ...
- often ppl resist because they feel like if they buy in then they will have to settle
- as opposed to having a move available that allows them to start
- B > I think you could really use a bunch of concrete case studies of resistances coming up for people
- so eg I'm thinking about the recent money pile or whatever we're going to call it experience, and Sarah McManus's experience
- and the sense of like, at this point, 2 calls in, there's a cost to voicing dissent, at whatever level of capacity I have to voice that and whatever capacity the group has to receive that, in whatever way will feed or not feed the group synergy
- M > yeah, she has so much epic skill at being able to notice inadequacies, but her skill at being able to point that out in ways that people will be able to see
- B > yeah, thinking of Paul Graham's Jessica Livingston article
- as an example of that kind of "suss out" role
- M > totally
February 11th, 2021
call with Michael "Valentine" Smith, talking about memes › thinking about David Deutsch's anti-rational vs rational …
- Malcolm > seems also "arational" as a type of meme
- which is what typical internet memes are
- they are intentionally optimized for being ideal replicators
- whereas anti-rational unintentionally evolve towards being ideal replicators
- and rational intentionally evolve towards being meaningfully worth spreading
tuning
- Malcolm > this is you living in the future
- not with respect to ML / whether or not it's possible, per se
- but like, you know what it feels like to interact with a system that's attuned to you
- and you think it's reasonable to expect that of a computer
- (I think Nick Winter had an old piece of software that did webcam mood analysis)
- Malcolm > old blog post of mine
- QC > "After some reflection, I concluded that how I really felt was misunderstood."
- YES! I feel misunderstood
panic
- Malcolm > if sadness is saying "plz comfort me"
- panic is saying "am helpless; plz help" - exaggerates helplessness to get help, which is rarely wise as a
Conversation App Design ("slack but good")
- the reality is that "conversation" *is* the backbone of project & team management
- they're not separate
- that's, in some sense, the actual insight slack had
- they just didn't know what a good conversation looked like
lead & lag measures
- Malcolm wrote an article a few years ago called Needles you can’t move with your hand, that is about lead & lag measures and how they relate to designing for the emergence of a collaborative culture