I like Hotz’s style: simply and straightforwardly attempting the difficult and complex. I always get the impression: “You don’t need to be too fancy or clever. You don’t need permission or credentials. You just need to go out and do the thing. What are you waiting for?”
Strictures which successfully regulated desire crystallized over the ages into particular forms of tradition and morality. Hence early conservatives like Carlyle and Chesterton were anti-capitalist: they saw the economics of desire as a corrosive force that would break down and nullify the experience of centuries as encoded in customs, tradition and other social bonds.
Successful protest movements are typically successful because they are organized and/or leveraged by a counter elite or foreign actor. One example is the CIA orchestrating protests to topple the PM of Iran in 1953.
Protest movements lacking elite or foreign state sponsorship (like the yellow vests in France, Occupy Wall St, or the Canada truckers) tend to wither away by attrition, get infiltrated and redirected, or else are dispersed by force.
I made the jump to Mint Xfce when MS announced it would stop supporting Windows 7. Pretty seamless transition. I still enjoy that older minimal style reminiscent of the early 00s.
Also — what industrial plan? As far as I can tell, we just have tariffs without a complementary plan to encourage investment, build infrastructure, train workers, reduce labor costs, etc.
I respect him for standing up for his people. It’s honorable, in my opinion. It would be dishonorable (and easy) to be a mercenary, profit-seeking individual with loyalty to no one but himself.
Everyone stands up for their people. Tribalism is the most primitive form of society. Standing for principle is harder because sometimes you have to speak against your tribe.
Yes, it would be dishonorable to be mercenary, but being a tribalist is merely the default position. We’re all so at some scale.
No, not alone, I find GPT far preferable when it comes to fleshing out ideas. It is much deeper conceptually, it understands intent and can cross pollinate disparate ideas well. Gemini is a little more autistic and gets bogged down in details. The API is useful for high volume extraction jobs, though — Gemini API reliability has improved a lot and has lower failure rate than OpenAI IME.
This mirrors the military doctrine of "mission tactics" which entrusts subordinates with wide latitude in executing orders. But it requires a high degree of alignment and competence, which explains why YC focuses on founders over product or idea.
This makes sense in a dynamic environment with sensitive local conditions and "network lag" in the chain of command. But in more static or settled market environments it may be wiser (for investors) to focus elsewhere and restrict founder autonomy. We see this pretty commonly with successful founders who get "phased out" and replaced with more experienced managers.
I wonder how much this sort of "distributed decision-making" has been formalized and studied.
This was eye-opening. I used to think militaries were completely centralized and top-down, but a friend who was an officer explained this to me and pointed me to the literature. It was fascinating and educating to understand the principles behind Mission Command being successful as a method (competence, mutual trust, shared understanding, etc).
> Commanders, staffs, and subordinates ensure their decisions and actions comply with applicable U.S., international, and, in some cases, host-nation laws and regulations. Commanders at all levels ensure their Soldiers operate in accordance with the Army Ethic, the law of war, and the rules of engagement. (See FM 27-10 for a discussion of the law of war.)
It isn't very complicated from a military law perspective. The chain of command (following orders) has a lot more weight on it than a given solder's interpretation of military, constitutional, or international law.
If you believe you are being a given an order that is illegal and refuse, you are essentially putting your head on the chopping block and hoping that a superior officer (who outranks the one giving you the order) later agrees with you. Recent events have involved the commander in chief issuing the orders directly, which means the 'appealing to a higher authority' exit is closed and barred shut for a solider refusing to follow orders.
That doesn't mean a soldier isn't morally obligated to refuse an unlawful / immoral order, just that they will also have to pay a price for keeping their conscience (maybe a future president will give them a pardon?). The inverse is also true, soliders who knowingly follow certain orders (war crimes) are likely to be punished if their side loses, they are captured, or the future decides their actions were indefensible.
A punishment for ignoring a command like "execute those POWs!" has a good chance of being overruled, but may not be. However an order to invade Canada from the President, even if there will be civilian casualties, must be followed. If the President's bosses (Congress/Judiciary) disagree with that order they have recourse.
Unfortunately the general trend which continues is for Congress to delegate their war making powers to the President without review, and for the Supreme Court to give extraordinary legal leeway when it comes to the legality of Presidential actions.
The YPG, an armed anarchist military group, defeated Islamic State in North East Syria and more or less founded their own country without a traditional military command structure. Instead they had loosely coordinated teams.
There is a good book on that subject by Stephen Bungay called "The Art of Action". He explains the concept of Auftragstaktik. Great book, although a bit hard to read.
I think OODA is fundamentally different to Auftragstaktik.
Auftragstaktik describes a clear purpose / intent. Like: capture the bridge (but: we don’t care how you do it since we can’t foresee specific circumstances)
OODA describes a process of decision making.
So, Auftragstaktik answers who decides what and why.
OODA answers how decisions are made and updated over time.
If it focused on founders over product or idea you’d see some actual heterogeneity in the YC set. It has been a few months since I last skimmed the startup lists but it seemed like 95% were LLM for X companies.
"Nelsonic doctrine", for whoever wants to google this concept.
> In war the first principle is to disobey orders. Any fool can obey an order. He ought to have gone on, had he the slightest Nelsonic temperament in him.
Yes, and a big part of the reason labor costs are so high is that living costs are high. The US worker is saturated with debt, fees, payments, rents of every stripe.
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