RE: The limits of knowledge - why we don't know enough about blockchain
Speaking of pundits: Just listening to a podcast of Nick Szabo with Tim Ferriss. http://tim.blog/2017/06/04/nick-szabo/
Very interesting for me as a total newbie in this whole world.
I don't know Nick but trust Tim as an excellent curator.
It is interesting to see that even a very tech savvy guy like Tim doesn't know all that much. (the difference is that he is not afraid to admit it, makes me feel better that even he has trouble with it) .
The problem with an ever more complex world, is that you are going to be more and more in the position of an incompetent newbie because things are developing much faster than anyone can learn.
That's hard to accept for some people, their self image is that they are competent persons.
The problem I think is that competence is field-specific.
I found it fascinating that you pointed out there are at least 7 disciplines involved in financial cryptography, looking at them you might be competent in 2 at a time and have working knowledge of a couple more but almost impossible to know and understand them all fully.
That almost guarantees that statistically almost EVERYONE is incompetent in the whole field of financial cryptography (defining competence as having the skill, knowledge and attitude to be effective in a field).
Few people like to admit to the limits of their expertise, because they admit to being incompetent in THAT discipline Ego wise that kind of equates to making you incompetent as a PERSON.
Like Scott Adams (Dilbert) says:
"Everyone is an idiot, not just the people with low SAT scores. The only differences among us is that we're idiots about different things at different times. No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot."
So it becomes a recipe for a lot of faked expertise. The blind leading the blind...
The counterargument to that is: you don't need to understand everything about how your car works to drive it...
I really want to develop my mental model around this blockchain thingy, I have an inkling it can be massively disruptive, but can't express coherently why yet. Still building my case in my own head... would be great if you can point to some other sources to learn about it.
Let me specify "it":
I am looking for explanations and mental models that are "good enough" for me to use and participate in blockchain concepts, not explanations to become a "blockchain" designer, mechanic or director which is what I guess your post is about.
Great reply! Yes, the thing I discovered way back when was that all of these startups hit the same problems, over and over again. And eventually it dawned on me that it was for the same reason: they were seeing the field as being only from their one or sometimes two disciplines. Over and over, cryptographers were employing computers cientists but knowing nothing about rights or accounting; others who were accountants knew about governance but were completely at sea with software; and practically everyone was in handwavy mode when it came to a serious business model (I include myself in that, else I'd be a squillionaire by now...).
The model of financial cryptography in 7 layers has stood the test of time at least from my perspective - there's nothing seriously wrong with it although I'd possibly have to modify it just to be polite to blockchain maximalists.
Having said that, the model received no particular popularity. I have no idea why. Maybe it just makes people feel like Scott Adams says, and part of entrepreneurship is convincing people you're the smartest person in the room? Oh well, we persevere on. I don't mind if I'm wrong, I'd just be happy to be told what the missing 8th layer is ;-)
ps; if you want blog posts on financial cryptography, there are over a thousand at my old blog at ... of course: financialcryptography.com ! Or just ask, I write too much anyway...
another very useful concept of Scott Adams is that of the talent stack .
I think that is going to be really crucial to succeed in complex fields.
The idea is that up until recently specialisation was seen as the way to succeed. That is how you could define an expert: "someone who has made all possible mistakes in a very narrow field"
The problem is that in a rapidly changing environment, the field which might have been useful might become either commoditized or obsolete. So you wasted your time to learn about something that after a while ceases to be valuable.
The idea of the talent stack is to develop a combination of skills, and in each skill get "good enough" or say about better than 90% of the population. That is actually not so difficult.
Now the trick is to combine these skills with other skills so their sum becomes more valuable than the skills would be apart.
Say you know about youtube.com and have been using it with moderate success (a couple of thousand subscriptions). You are better than 90 % of the youtube population (easily). But given that Youtube is unbelievably competitive, making a living off it purely through views requires you to be better than about 99.99% of the population (being charitable and saying 1/10000 is making a living of Youtube) @allasyummyfood posted about working 4 years to get 67k followers on youtube and 400 videos and making 100 USD/ a month from them).
But what if you also have some moderate programming skills? What if you are one of the few on Steemit.com already and are decent at posting? What if you know the basics of video editing? What if you start to take a writing class and hone your editing? What if you start to practice public speaking (say go to toastmasters meetings). What if you simply love talking about investing in cryptocurrency and are obsessed with it?
In the first option, trying to beat Youtube, (be better than say 99.999% of the population) is not that promising.
In the second option, through combining all these mediocre skills you become someone unique, that might be uniquely suited to explain others how to make simple bots on Steemit.com (just a random example) and market that!
Every skill you can add to that stack (that combines with it not just any random skill) will set you further apart and make you uniquely qualified not because you are the expert or the best but because of your unique talent stack.
As a risk management strategy that is interesting too because it allows you to adapt. If you are investing all your time in honing one particular skill, the risk is that there is too much competition or that this skill loses value. (look at website design or something 15 years ago and now...)
for Financial Cryptography I think you have to accept that being the absolute expert in one discipline is not as useful as having a more versatile talentstack.
Of course already being an expert in one valuable field and then building useful skills around that is really promising...
We really need a bookmarking feature on steemit
That's a great response - you should make it a blog post!
That thought occurred to me :)
It is in my cue! Currently developing several ideas about how to adapt to the future idea economy as a "standard knowledge economy professional" There is a lot and I need to clarify my messages! Will reply here when it is finished!