Rhys Lindmark

housing

Abundant Housing Slogans

The slogan "America is a melting pot" is a great slogan for ensuring that America accepts its changing demographics (through immigration). (It's not perfect, of course. We discriminate new immigrants—Irish in the 1800s, Chinese in the 1900s, and Latino/x in the 2000s. But eventually,

housing

Building Abundant Housing in California

I recently learned the political mechanism (and a possible theory of change) for how California can build abundant housing. SF currently has 900,000 people but only 1/3 the population density of Paris. To get SF to Paris levels, we want to increase the population 3x, to around 3M.

abundance

Non-Duplicative

One of the Roote values is to be network-driven. This means that we're constantly aware of our role in a larger network of human progress. We stand on the shoulders of giants. It takes a village of peers to do great work. Instead of trying to find a

abundance

Compersion

Compersion is when you feel happy for someone else's happiness. It comes from the polyamory community—feeling happy when your partner has great sex with someone else. Compersion is the self-domestication of competition itself. Here's how it relates to schadenfreude, jealousy, and empathy: I believe that

neuroscience

Predictive Processing

Predictive processing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding] is a theory of how our brain makes sense of the world. It says that "the brain is constantly generating and updating a mental model of the environment. The model is used to generate predictions of sensory input that are

A Viral Is Content With Built-In Distribution

There was a delightful conversation between Eugene Wei and Kevin Kwok recently where Eugene defined a meme as content with built-in distribution. Here's the 1min clip: I love this definition, though I would replace "meme" with "viral" (and leave meme to be the more

information

The Culture War Wants You

When the latest culture war clash (like Basecamp's apolitical manifesto) appears in your newsfeed, what does it feel like? Do you want to click it? Do you feel pulled towards it? If you're human, the answer is likely yes. This is because the information wants you

information

Medium-Message Fit

When a product is a good fit for the market's needs, we call it Product-Market Fit. The product Uber fit our needs to conveniently get around a city. In biological evolution, when genes are a good fit for the environment, we call it Gene-Environment Fit. The genes in

moral foundations

Networked Ideology of Fear

In Noam Chomsky's 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, he introduces the Propaganda Model of Communication. Raw news comes in the top, but is filtered by the financial incentive structures of media: Although a news organization might want to give an anti-war perspective on the Iraq War, they are disincentivized

evolution

Ears And Mouths Are Optimized For Speech

In Medium-Message Fit, we showed how a given medium (like brains or text) determines the kinds of messages that can live on it. But the medium is not fixed. Memes can change their information layer. As an example, early sapiens made two changes to increase our memetic bandwidth for verbal

cultural evolution

Biology-Culture Fit

Biology-culture fit is the extent to which cultural adaptations fit onto our biological anchors. For example, we can't make biological ants believe in a Sun God. Ants' simple biology isn't a good anchor a complex culture. For another example, let's look at how

systems

The More You Do, The More You Can Do

On Jim Rutt's recent podcast with Matt Ridley [https://jimruttshow.blubrry.net/matt-ridley/], Matt gave a phrasing of feedback loops that I'd never heard before, but is quite powerful. Here's the phase: > The more you do, the more you can do. Here'

evolution

Popper Criterion for Politics

The Popper Criterion states that the long-term health of any system is based on its ability to remove bad instances from it. Let's look at politics. In politics, the Popper Criterion is known as "democratic accountability." People should be able to remove bad leaders through a

evolution

Popper Criterion

The Popper Criterion states that the long-term health of any system is based on its ability to remove bad instances from it. In politics for example, people should be able to remove bad leaders through a democratic election. Without this ability, authoritarians like Putin stay in power even if the

personal

Raising $10,000 for a 150-Mile Walk in Kenya

tl;dr: In August I'll walk 150 miles in Kenya to raise money for a children's center out there. If you'd like to donate, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you! Learn more and donate here: https://www.lalmba.org/2021-tembea-na-mimi-walkers/ I. BACKGROUND

evolution

3D Fitness Landscapes

A fitness landscape [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_landscape] is a helpful tool for thinking about biological and memetic evolution—which information will be successful in a given environment. Unfortunately, most fitness landscapes neglect the environmental dimension. This stops us from thinking clearly about how information flows. We should

books

Better Book Reviews

I think the book review ecosystem is broken. Here's a quick story explaining why. My day job is co-leading Roote [https://www.roote.co/], an online school for systems thinking. We'd love to get more students to apply to the school, so we're thinking

big history

Three Alphabets, Three Trees

The universe's complexity can be understood by three trees: the tree of molecules, the tree of life, and the tree of ideas. These trees are created by three building block alphabets: elements, genes, and memes (language). Let's look at each. I. Elements Create The Tree of

book review

When Should Law Forgive?

> “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” — Paul Boese To forgive or not forgive? That is the question. Should we forgive student debt, rent during COVID, and The Other Side for supporting their candidate? These are difficult questions to answer. Martha Minow, Obama'

roote

Searching for a Roote Co-Founder

Update: This position is deprecated and now exists here: https://field-belief-c8c.notion.site/COO-Roote-Foundation-6a81370e96154612ad5d0fe708ba5f72 The goal of this article is to find a great co-founder (or two!) for my company, Roote [https://www.roote.co/]. Please reach out [rhys@roote.co] if this interests you! I. What is Roote? On

politics

15 Lessons of Networked Democracy

We're still in the beginning stages of understanding the 2020 U.S. election specifically and Information Age elections more generally. We're growing out of our earlier years of internet election adolescence. We're maturing. Here are 15 initial lessons, broken into three categories: I. The

book review

Book Review: Cultural Evolution

> More than 45 years ago, I argued in The Silent Revolution that "A transformation may be taking place in the political culture of advanced industrial societies. This transformation seems to be altering the basic value priorities of given generations as a result of changing conditions influencing their basic

book

Remembering James Carse

James Carse, the author of Finite and Infinite Games [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infinite_Games], passed away last week. I want to remember his legacy by revisiting his book and the impact it had on us. I have three points: I. Infinite Games Provided An

psychology

Post-WEIRD Nacirema Psychology

> From 2000-2200, the customs of the Nacirema [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema] tribe shifted considerably. At the start of the 21st century, they were leaders of a pan-capitalist ideological superstructure. But as the decades unfurled, their monolithic stature dissipated into the Networked Human Organism. > Their Industrial Age

book review

The WEIRDest People in the World

The cultural evolution of psychology is the dark matter that flows behind the scenes throughout history. Joseph Henrich is the world's leading scholar of cultural evolution. He released a brilliant book last week, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.