In low-friction environments, higher quality things have compoundingly better outcomes.
- In low-friction environments, higher quality things have compoundingly better outcomes.[akv]
- The seed crystal exists because the first few people who looked at it found it useful.
- The boundary gradient works because people at the margin can see that the thing is useful and is not hollow.
- They use it because others have found value in it and it's useful to use the same thing others already like… but also because when they look at it they can see it seems useful to them, too.
- The quality of the thing thus does correlate with how successful it becomes, but the quality to outcome is not linearly proportional (due to the compounding being a self-accelerating phenomena) but a power law.
- That's why power laws happen; the boundary gradient's steepness is driven by quality (a linear difference) but the size of growth is driven by surface area of the boundary, which grows with the square of the current size.