In Progress No. 14

Decompressing Patrick Collison | Some Thoughts on The Past and Acceptance | History and The Triplet of Opacity

Mar 12, 2021

Knowledge

Decompressing Patrick Collison

Along with his brother and co-founder John, Patrick built the online payments company Stripe into a $36 billion behemoth in under a decade. His biggest intellectual curiosity centers around the idea of technological progress - what it means, why it happens, and how we encourage more of it. Noahpinion recently conducted an interview with Patrick discussing topics ranging from the future of technology to how innovation functions in an increasingly technologically driven world.

Here are some highlights:

1. So, what are three things that excite you most about the 2020s?

First, the explosive expansion in access to opportunity facilitated by the internet. Sounds prosaic but I think still underestimated. Several billion people recently immigrated to the world's most vibrant city and the system hasn't yet equilibrated. When you think about how YouTube is accelerating the dissemination of tacit knowledge, or the number of creative outsiders who can now deploy their talents productively, or the number of brilliant 18 year-olds who can now start companies from their bedrooms, or all the instances of improbable scenius that are springing up... in the landscape of the global commons, the internet is nitrogen fertilizer, and we still have a long way to go -- economically, culturally, scientifically, technologically, socially, and everything in between.

Second, progress in biology. I think the 2020s are when we'll finally start to understand what's going on with RNA and neurons. Basically, the prevailing idea has been that connections between neurons are how cognition works. (And that’s what neural networks and deep learning are modeled after.) But it looks increasingly likely that stuff that happens inside the neurons -- and inside the connections -- is an important part of the story. One suggestion is that RNA is actually part of how neurons think and not just an incidental intermediate thing between the genome and proteins.

Last, energy technology. Batteries (88% cost decline in a decade) and renewables are well-told stories and the second-order effects will be important. (As we banish the internal combustion engine, for example, we'll reap a significant dividend as a result of the reduction in air pollution.) Electric aircraft will probably happen, at least for shorter distances. Solar electricity is asymptoting to near-free, which in turn unlocks other interesting possibilities.

1. How do you view talent concentration between the world's largest tech companies? What are the secondary effects of all the top people in software, for example, shuffling back and forth between Stripe and Google and a few other companies?

I think talent allocation is a pretty interesting area to dig into. When I started college in 2006 I remember reading that something like 40% of the previous graduating year in my school went into finance, even though technology would pretty clearly (even then) have been a more sensible choice on many levels. Like other systems involving collective investment decisions, it's clear that the sociology can cause persistent misallocations or bubbles. I think it's interesting to think through how the hysteresis, group incentives, economic factors, generational shifts, status dynamics, institutional forces, etc., etc., may all play off each other. Overall, though, I worry less about any sector gobbling up all the smart people -- if there really are great opportunities elsewhere, some smart people will see that and things will eventually correct (as happened with finance and tech) -- and worry more about some sectors being structurally inhospitable to very talented people.

Wisdom

Some Thoughts on The Past and Acceptance

What happens when we begin to appreciate the various versions of ourselves thus far? The child that opened their heart to curiosity? The younger self whose mistakes have led to the person you are today? The person that looks back at you in the mirror this morning?

Accepting what we have been and what we have become is an appreciation for the choices we make. It is an understanding of what has made us into the person we are. Our past is a guide to the present but not a determinant of the future.

Understanding our past - who we have been, where we have gone, what we have done - is a prerequisite to understanding how we got where we are and what that means for our future. Do we keep the same system (our habits, ways of thinking, relationships)? Or do envision a new system to lead us forward? These are questions only you can answer.

Perhaps taking time to reflect on our past reveals more about where we are going than where we have been.

But I can't erase the past, only learn from it. Applying what I know makes the present and the future a beautiful place to be.
- Kamal Ravikant, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It

Insight

History and The Triplet of Opacity

Much of this concept comes from Nassim Taleb and his book The Black Swan.

History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history. There is a fundamental incompleteness in your grasp of such events, since you do not see what’s inside the box, how the mechanisms work.

The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves. You are very likely to be fooled by the outcome into thinking that you understand the causality.

The human mind suffers from three ailments when it interacts with history:

1. The illusion of understanding, or how everyone thinks he knows what is going on in a world that is more complicated (or random) than they realize.
2. The retrospective distortion, or how we can assess matters only after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror (history seems clearer and more organized in history books than in empirical reality).
3. The overvaluation of factual information and the handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories—when they “Platonify.”

History and societies do not crawl forward. They make jumps. Moving from large event to large event, with a few minor events along the way. Yet we like to believe in predictable and incremental progress.

the studious examination of the past in the greatest of detail does not teach you much about the mind of History; it only gives you the illusion of understanding it.

History can only be understood by turning the triplet of opacity into a triangle of transparency. Keep the three ailments in mind when attempting to understand the complexity of historical events.