Stripe press could provide low touch support to a community of frontier openers

It is feasible to consciously cultivate a scene of frontier openers

Long lived organizations need culture keepers

Scenes have low barriers to entry

Xerox PARC was not that impressive as an institution

# §Scenes
- [[Scenes are people producing work aimed at impressing and one-upping each other]]
- [[Scenes form around a shared sense of what is celebration-worthy]]
- [[Scenes push the edge of human capability]]
- [[World-class cities do not necessarily have world-class scenes]]
- [[A Florence is a city with multiple world-class scenes]]
- [[Scenes push the edge of human capability]]
- [[Effective scenes are smaller than Dunbar’s number]]
- [[A scene is world-class if people who want to do new ambitious things in a discipline try to join it from around the world]]
- [[A minimum viable scene can be created by two people]]
- [[A scene can become world class when it goes from doing things that are locally new to things that are globally new]]
- Scenes are susceptible to [[Legibility poisoning]]
- [[Scenes form around a shared sense of what is celebration-worthy]]

### Related
-

### References
- [[Visa thread on scenes]]
- [[Geeks, Mops, and sociopaths in subculture evolution]]
- [[Taste for Makers - PG]]
- [[What makes a scene with Alex Danco]]
- [[Third Places as community builder]]
- [[Visakan Veerasamy]]’s notes on scenes: [Roam Research – A note taking tool for networked thought.](https://roamresearch.com/#/app/visakanv-public/page/IAfI_5S9h)



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/§Scenes)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/§Scenes)




Geeks, Mops, and sociopaths in subculture evolution

Scenes are people producing work aimed at impressing and one-upping each other

§Scenes

Visa thread on scenes

What made Florence a Florence?

Any conversation can be a conference

What makes a Florence stop being a Florence?

# A minimum viable scene can be created by two people
### Authors
- [[Visakan Veersamy]]
### Link
[Visakan Veerasamy on Twitter: “what’s a minimum viable scene?if you have two sufficiently obsessive people who are trying to impress and outdo each other in public, two is enoughbut usually it seems that it takes a broader/wider scene to generate 2 such obsessive people… https://t.co/Y5snVVcQWE”](https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1153708306206035968)
 
  

[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/A_minimum_viable_scene_can_be_created_by_two_people)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/A_minimum_viable_scene_can_be_created_by_two_people)






The default state of an institution is to become a permanent thing dedicated to its own self preservation

DARPA is incredibly flexible with who it hires to be program managers

Scenes push the edge of human capability

Work with people you like working with, not the ones who are the most qualified

There are many tight feedback loops built into the ARPA model

National labs and other government research centers are a research alternative to universities

Externalized research is a buffer against B players

Corporate labs no longer fill the niche they did in the early-mid twentieth century

The term ‘Double edged sword’ is bothersome

# A players hire A players and B players hire C players
Originally from [[Steve Jobs]]?

[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/A_players_hire_A_players_and_B_players_hire_C_players)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/A_players_hire_A_players_and_B_players_hire_C_players)






A Florence is a city with multiple world-class scenes

People who aspire to  be world-class flock to do groundbreaking things  flock to Florences once they become well known

World-class cities do not necessarily have world-class scenes

A place is world-class in a discipline if people who want to be world class in that discipline feel like moving there is the best thing they can do for their career prospects

Wide vs deep networks and Clusters with respect to DARPA

# A scene is world-class if people who want to do new ambitious things in a discipline try to join it from around the world
There are two preconditions here: 
1. The scene needs to be doing things that are worth joining from around the world.  [[A scene can become world class when it goes from doing things that are locally new to things that are globally new]]
2. People need to *know* about what the scene is doing from around the world.

Precondition #2 may not be necessary. It may be possible that we only recognize the scenes as world-class after the fact. [[How often do people realize a Florence while it is still a Florence?]]



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/A_scene_is_world-class_if_people_who_want_to_do_new_ambitious_things_in_a_discipline_try_to_join_it_from_around_the_world)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/A_scene_is_world-class_if_people_who_want_to_do_new_ambitious_things_in_a_discipline_try_to_join_it_from_around_the_world)




We need better ways of comparing nebulous things without numbers

When you're trying to copy Darpa you need to both say why you're changing anything you're changing and at the same time you absolutely need to change some thing

# By definition outlier analysis can’t rely on data as comparison to other organizations
Outlier analysis can’t rely on data to compare to other things because they are in completely different regimes and it’s not clear what differences matter. The extreme take on the incomparability of outliers is that data don’t matter and you should just inductively say which things matter or not and why.

However, it may be possible to use data to support or deny a narrative. People often extrapolate anecdotes about outliers in an intellectually dishonest way. So perhaps more accurate than “you can’t use data when looking at outliers” is “you can’t use data to compare outliers to others in their category but you *can* and *should* use outliers to compare them to themselves.” Using data like this is using it in the historical sense, not the scientific sense. [[Historical narrative is not scientific inquiry or engineering design but it is valuable]]. Further, this use of data in a narrative sense suggests that [[Outlier analysis is a historical discipline]].

More generally, [[Data is good when it’s comparing things that actually belong together and bad otherwise]]?

### Related
- [[Grounded Theory - ToA]]
- [[§ARPA model]]
- [[Quantum leaps that make it through the current system do so through outlier circumstances]]
- [[Streetlight Effect]]
- [[You can’t cut off just one tail of a distribution]]
- [[How can you compare nebulous things without numbers?]]
- [[We need better ways of comparing nebulous things without numbers]]



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/By_definition_outlier_analysis_can’t_rely_on_data_as_comparison_to_other_organizations)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/By_definition_outlier_analysis_can’t_rely_on_data_as_comparison_to_other_organizations)




Intergenerational culture is like a standing wave

How often do people realize a Florence while it is still a Florence?

Legibility poisoning

Culture is what happens when you're not in the room

Florences pull in people of multiple disciplines

# Geeks, Mops, and sociopaths in subculture evolution
- Subcultures die when they start getting interesting because they are invaded by outsiders who ruin them.
- Calls the outsiders “muggles”
- Outsiders are either mops or sociopaths
- This was influenced by [[The Gervais Principle]]
- Subcultures grow from scenes
- Scene is a group of creators who invent a New Thing
- The group of creators riff off of each other in a scene
- Scenes draw fanatics
- Fanatics don’t create but contribute energy and resources
- Creators and fanatics are geeks - they love the thing for the thing’s sake
- The scene often draws mops
- Mops are fans who want to get as much out of a scene while contributing as little as possible
- Mops turn a scene into a subculture
- Mops dilute a culture
- Mops can cause fanatics to quit
- Creators in a subculture generate social capital 
- Sociopaths mimic the creators but better
- Sociopaths fool the mops and monetize them
- If a creator can give the New Thing mass appeal they can escape the trap
- From pure social value the cycles are good because there are many more mops
- Ways of excluding mops can save the subculture but keeps it niche
- Optimal mop to geek ratio is 6:1
- Recognize sociopaths and eject them
- Subcultural mode died around 2000
- Geeks need to adopt some sociopathic tendencies
### Published
## Questions
## Thoughts
## Related
- [[Scenes are people producing work aimed at impressing and one-upping each other]]
- [[A minimum viable scene can be created by two people]]
- [[Visa thread on scenes]]
## Authors
- [[David Chapman]]
## Link
https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Geeks,_Mops,_and_sociopaths_in_subculture_evolution)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Geeks,_Mops,_and_sociopaths_in_subculture_evolution)




§ARPA model

DARPA works on programs that go against the established paradigm

Online ARPA Community

DARPA facilitates idea sex both between PMs and Performers

DARPA is a coordination mechanism

# Maverick work is lonely and DARPA provides peers and community
[[Presenting to peers regularly encourages you to get shit together]] as a general rule, but when you’re working on weird things it is harder to find those peers. DARPA helps solve this problem because [[A large part of a DARPA program manager’s job is focused network building]]. 

Since it is harder to find peers when you’re working on something weird, you might decide that it is just not worth the effort. In that case you may move more slowly than if you did have peers ([[Connections create new knowledge]].)

[[Adam Wiggins]] pointed out that a big value add of early batches at [[Y Combinator]] was the feeling of community around doing something weird. 



### Related
- [[The peer review and citation system incentivizes people to work on things that other people think is interesting]]
- [[People who aspire to  be world-class flock to do groundbreaking things  flock to Florences once they become well known]]
- [[Scenes are people producing work aimed at impressing and one-upping each other]]



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Maverick_work_is_lonely_and_DARPA_provides_peers_and_community)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Maverick_work_is_lonely_and_DARPA_provides_peers_and_community)




Heat cycles for democratization and cutting edge experiments innovation and discovery

For sure the stars outline v2

Maverick work is lonely and DARPA provides peers and community

Could you build a community the same way you build a zettlekasten?

Podcast List

David Lang conversation 20 Apr 2021

# Scenes are people producing work aimed at impressing and one-upping each other
A direct result of this is that [[Scenes form around a shared sense of what is celebration-worthy]]. The only way that 

One-upmanship has a nuanced relationship to competition. It is certainly a form of competition — there’s an inextricable sense of comparison in oneupmanship and I would argue even the

### Related
- The bloomsbury group 
	- [Visakan Veerasamy on Twitter: “I don’t usually think of John Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf at the same time, but they were basically twitter mutuals. Shame you can’t just search from:keynes woolf to see what their correspondences were like https://t.co/EPqSjShQcS… https://t.co/n7jxscUmWu”](https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1250414684215234563)
- [[By definition outlier analysis can’t rely on data as comparison to other organizations]]
- [[What made Florence a Florence?]]
- [[A players hire A players and B players hire C players]]
- [[Why will people become PARPA PMs?]]
- [[A scene is world-class if people who want to do new ambitious things in a discipline try to join it from around the world]]
- [[A minimum viable scene can be created by two people]]
- [[Scenes push the edge of human capability]]
- [[Scenes form around a shared sense of what is celebration-worthy]]



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Scenes_are_people_producing_work_aimed_at_impressing_and_one-upping_each_other)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Scenes_are_people_producing_work_aimed_at_impressing_and_one-upping_each_other)




# Scenes push the edge of human capability
 A scene is not just a bunch of people interested in a thing. It’s a bunch of people interested in doing something *new* with a thing. Because [[Scenes are people producing work aimed at impressing and one-upping each other]] the people in them by definition need to be doing something new (at least locally.) How else can you one-up the other people. [[A scene can become world class when it goes from doing things that are locally new to things that are globally new]].

Since [[Frontier-dwellers tend to live in developed places]] it makes it more likely that scenes will happen in developed places and specifically explains the first half of [[Florences require a world-class high-profit discipline and a world-class cultural discipline]].

### Related
- [[A players hire A players and B players hire C players]]



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Scenes_push_the_edge_of_human_capability)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Scenes_push_the_edge_of_human_capability)




# Visa thread on scenes
- [[Scenes are people producing work aimed at impressing and one-upping each other]]
- [[A minimum viable scene can be created by two people]]

### Thoughts
[[Effective scenes are smaller than Dunbar’s number]]
### Related
- [[A minimum viable scene can be created by two people]]
### Link
[Visa is fixing the typos in his ebook on Twitter: “one of my recurring talking points to anybody who’s willing to listen: any small group of people loosely-but-truly aligned on something can create powerful vectors by producing public-facing work that’s directed at each othertalking about the creation of scenes, basically”](https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1153706486586994688)

[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Visa_thread_on_scenes)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Visa_thread_on_scenes)






§Florences

# What made Florence a Florence?
# What made Florence a Florence
What made Florence so absurdly productive during the 15th century?
ie. What made Paris the center of culture during the 19th century?

- [[People who aspire to  be world-class flock to do groundbreaking things  flock to Florences once they become well known]]
- [[A Florence is a location in time and space]]
- [[A Florence is a city with multiple world-class scenes]]
- [[Florences pull in people of multiple disciplines]]
- [[Florences are sticky]]
- [[Florences require a world-class high-profit discipline and a world-class cultural discipline]]
- [[A city can become a Florence multiple times]]

There’s also a sense that places are primary in something and secondary in other things. For example, LA and NYC feel secondary in tech industries but equally primary in fashion. 

### Case Studies from the present
Let’s think about the exceptional places in the world today and why people wanted to go there.
- San Francisco is the center of the software industry and weird discursive projects. World class people who want to build software, fund software, and collaborate with weird people do. Locally, Berkeley and Stanford both pull in world-class academics who has an interest in commercializing things. 
	- It pattern matches against the high margin industry leading to people donating to universities
	- The tech billionaire version of patronizing might be angel investing
- Los Angeles pulls in world class people who want to be part of the fashion industry (is this true?) and movie, tv, and content production industry generally.
	- Do world class technology people go there?
- New York pulls in world class people in Finance, Writing, Theater, Music, Art (is this still true? Probably in Brooklyn), Fashion, 
	- How important are the colleges 
	- Julliard seems important 
	- It pulls 
- London pulls in world class people in Finance, technology, cooking, 
	- It  feels like the proximity
- Boston for people in biotech, academic minded research people 

### Case Studies from the Past
- Amsterdam in the 17th century?
- Tokyo in the 1980’s?
- Prague at some point?
- Vienna in early 20th century
- Edenborough during the 18th Century
	- Smith
	- Hume
	- Hobbes
- Athens in 2nd Century AD

### Observations from cursory Case Studies

- None of these places seem to pull in people for manufacturing but many got their start doing that
- Being centers of trade seems really important

Is the fact that these places tend to center around industries a cause or an effect or both? The industry clusters may also be an artifact of how I’m defining “world class” because I think of world class as people who want to be the best at what they do.  Thinking more it’s how I perceive these people’s decision making process around somewhere being “the place to be” without sacrificing their careers.

In the early 21st century, it feels like there are many world-class cities but San Francisco

- [[A Florence needs accessible low-cost-of-living lifestyles]]
- [[Florences are going to have a lot of inequality]]

### Research Questions
- [[Has anybody studied what made Paris Paris?]]
- [[How often do people realize a Florence while it is still a Florence?]]
- [[Why do people go to a Florence?]]
- [[What is the difference between a Florence and simply a ‘top city?’]]
- What are other historical examples of places?
	
- Is there something in the nature of the high margin industry? ie. Silk was probably a high Margin industry but you didn’t see a cultural center there
- I wonder if the people who did the research for civilization V would know more
- Are there necessary cultural preconditions or does it change? [[Culture is intellectual dark energy]]
- Are they always coupled to a specific new thing?
- Has anybody mapped the top cities over time?
- Could you strictly look at net immigration to a city? High-skilled immigration?

### Related
- [[A minimum viable scene can be created by two people]] and the idea of scenes in general. 



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/What_made_Florence_a_Florence)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/What_made_Florence_a_Florence)




What traits do high-potential PMs have?

How do you motivate people via Kleos if they can’t take credit for their work?

ARPA Model Conclusions

# Why will people become PARPA PMs?
- Would shared stock in the same enterprise 
- Can a non-profit create a compensation pool? 
	- Nonprofits can offer an incentive to their staff as long as the incentive is not based on profit goals

### Related
- [[What traits do high-potential PMs have?]]



[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Why_will_people_become_PARPA_PMs)

[Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Why_will_people_become_PARPA_PMs)




Benʼs working notes

Scenes are people producing work aimed at impressing and one-upping each other

Related

Links to this note