"Elite groups need time to be the sole adopters of an innovation for it to gain cachet... Fashion relied on social friction to slow down the diffusion process... This entire system is upended by light-speed information flows on the internet." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"The internet has debased two critical signaling costs: (1) barriers to information and (2) barriers to acquisition... Information can't be a strong signaling costs when 'information wants to be free.'" https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

Fashion trends over time: (source: https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd)

"Today each Scottish clan has a tartan, a practice that originated in the 18th century when weavers named their different patterns after a Highland clan; descendants of those clans use them as markers of ancestry despite no historical relationship." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Taking an economics class decreased the willingness of students to contribute to public radio and to donate blood." https://amzn.to/4hy71Ud

"From ages 0 to 10, for every 100 girls who die, 150 boys die. At puberty and shortly thereafter, the ratio is 300 men for every 100 women. Why? The proximate explanation involves testosterone and its effects on tissues, immunity, and risk taking..." https://amzn.to/4hy71Ud

"Women are twice as likely as men to have an anxiety disorder." The reason: "Women on average have about the right amount of anxiety for their own welfare; men have the right amount to maximize transmission of their genes, at a huge risk to their health." https://amzn.to/4hy71Ud

"Fear of heights was seven times *less* common in eighteen-year-olds who had experienced a fall in childhood." https://amzn.to/4hy71Ud

"In general medicine, symptoms such as pain or cough are recognized as useful responses that indicate the presence of a problem. In psychiatry, symptoms such as anxiety and low mood are often presumed to be the problems themselves." https://amzn.to/4hy71Ud

"Today more than 1 percent of the world’s industrial energy is devoted to making ammonia fertilizer. 'That 1 percent,' the futurist Ramez Naam says, 'roughly doubles the amount of food the world can grow.'" https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/how-agriculture-system-works

"Historical value is a hedge against social risk...Rational humans, especially conservative ones toward the middle of the status hierarchy, will choose older forms over newer ones when signaling, and this keeps older conventions in circulation." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

How innovation spreads: 1. High-status adoption—for distinction 2. Early adopters' embrace—emulate superiors 3. Early majority reinvention—follow emerging norm 4. Late majority imitation—avoid losing normal status 5. Laggards' adoption—no intention." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"You don't create a phenomenon like E.T. by appealing to people who love movies. You create a phenomenon like E.T. by appealing to people who see one movie a year." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Commercialization is a process of lowering signaling costs, not just of money and availability, but also of difficult taste." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down." Dave Snowden's 7 principles for rendering knowledge: https://thecynefin.co/rendering-knowledge/

Nice concise review of my @ivpress.bsky.social book Ownership by Mary Li Ma in the CRC magazine The Banner www.thebanner.org/mixed-media/...

"Until recently in human history, all information was trapped—in someone's head or on a piece of paper. This led to a scarcity mindset. We hoard it to elevate status, create job security, and protect ourselves. This perpetuates the power structure..." https://amzn.to/40NfxI6

"One-on-ones are often used as a salve for hidden dysfunction. When members lack the authority to make decisions, these meetings become the only mechanism for moving things forward." https://amzn.to/40NfxI6

"Like it or not, great meetings offer higher bandwidth—more information per second—than any other form of communication." But: bad meetings run the greatest risk of waste. There are no meetings with average-productivity. They're either great or terrible. https://amzn.to/40NfxI6

"Amazon now averages more than one software deployment every second." https://amzn.to/40NfxI6

Stages of the fashion cycle / how culture spreads: 1. elites' need for distinctive practices, 2. mass media broadcasting, 3. early adopters' emulation, 4. mass producers' simplification, and 5. the eventual achievement of critical mass. https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Innovations pose a challenge to established conventions... Thus individuals may worry that switching will lead to social disapproval... Widespread change takes place only once conservative majorities feel secure that switching won't damage their status." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Not all human behavior changes for status reasons, and not every instance of cultural change begins *as* fashion, but most behaviors we perceive as 'culture' arrive through a fashion cycle where individuals adopt new conventions in a pursuit of status value." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

""Avant-garde ideas can break escape velocity from the avant-garde community only if broader audiences no longer believe their appreciation will lead to negative social consequences." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Aesthetic value of art measures how an artist can use and abuse existing conventions to elicit emotional experiences... Artistic value measures the originality of the artist's inventions, how much the ideas break existing conventions & suggest new ones." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

The average American consumes around 34GB of information per day. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1566

Kant's 3 criteria for artistic genius: 1) the creation of fiercely original works, 2) which over time become imitated as exemplars, and 3) are created through mysterious and seemingly inimitable methods. https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Knowledge of underground culture served as an important criterion for upper-middle class status... The difficulty of penetrating into the subcultural world came with high signaling costs..." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Individuals born into a certain socioeconomic class share a foundational set of unconscious conventions--i.e. the same habitus. This manifests in communal beliefs, concrete lifestyle differences, and distinct taste worlds." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

“Policies are organizational scar tissue. They are codified overreactions to situations that are unlikely to happen again. They are collective punishment for the misdeeds of an individual.” https://buff.ly/4hGoM3y

“Don’t confuse your customer with your purpose. If we act on customer feedback without judgment, we run the risk of regressing to the mean. Customers are a proxy for our purpose, our partners in solving the tension between virtuous intent & actual needs.” https://buff.ly/4hGoM3y

“The mainstream view is that performance is the result of compliance. This translates into a culture buried in governing constraints. But Complexity Conscious leaders view performance as a result of collective intelligence, emergence, and self-regulation.” https://buff.ly/4hGoM3y

"Modern questions of personal identity are best considered in the context of status." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

Difference between complicated systems and complex systems: “Complex systems are more about the *relationships* and *interactions* among their components than about the components themselves. And these interactions give rise to unpredictable behavior.” https://buff.ly/4hGoM3y

Companies don’t last very long: “In its analysis of 25,000 companies, it found that the average half-life of *all firms* was roughly 10.5 years.” https://buff.ly/4hGoM3y

“Every time something goes wrong, we create a constraint that will prevent future mistakes. We institute a new role, rule, or process… Under the guise of creating order, we drift toward the disorder of a thousand stupid rules.” https://buff.ly/4hGoM3y

“U.S. workers spend a staggering 710 million hours per week on internal compliance activities such as budgeting and planning.” https://buff.ly/4hGoM3y

The Super Bowl is responsible for an extra 17 to 18 million pounds of avocado consumption?! https://buff.ly/3CvxKlg

5 common signaling costs: 1. Money "status symbols are expensive" 2. Time "it takes years" 3. Exclusive access "granted access to restricted locations" 4. Cultural capital "spend time among high-status people" 5. Norm breaking "elites can pay the costs of disapproval" https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"The principle of detachment means all status symbols require alibis—reasons for adoption other than status seeking... Luxury goods never work as luxury goods based purely on functionality. They also must have status value." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"We judge wealth levels through individuals' clothing in as little as 130 milliseconds..." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"With rising incomes, many decided to emulate their middle-class superiors by buying televisions. They proudly placed the new TV sets in the very center of their huts--in villages that lacked electricity." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"The living rooms of the lower middle class exhibit a higher degree of conformity than those of the upper middle class, while the living rooms of the upper middle class are less individual than the living rooms of the upper classes." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Face-to-face interactions tend to be the most important reference for individuals to establish the norms of spending. This explains why *neighbors* of lottery winners also end up buying fancier cars." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

The descendants of Galician Jews of Ukraine and Poland who lived near beet sugar factories and had easy access to sugar still prefer sweeter foods than saltier foods, while the descendants of Litvak Jews, for whom sugar was harder to get, prefer saltier foods. https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Status affects our brain chemistry and bodily functions. A higher status position results in the production of more serotonin, while being in the presence of a status superior raises our blood pressure." https://amzn.to/3Cabeyd

"Men who include 'momma's boy' on their profiles have a 7% higher probability of exchanging phone numbers with another user." https://www.npr.org/2022/05/08/1095039574/-mamas-boy-is-a-flex-not-an-insult-for-a-new-generation-of-men

Mansplaining stimulates the same region of the brain as "anticipating something delicious to eat." https://amzn.to/4jqR2Zq

"Long after men have stopped proving themselves by hunting, the idea persists that to be 'a man,' a man must be a provider.... 'many men (still) base their identity, their sense of themselves as men, on being a good provider.'" https://amzn.to/4jqR2Zq