What makes an idea have an additional ply?

· Bits and Bobs 2/16/26
  • What makes an idea have an additional ply?
    • As in, go from being a one-ply to a two-ply idea?
    • It's a question that the majority of listeners would not understand with 30 seconds of exposition.
    • That in practice is a huge hurdle to clear, because everyone is so busy and doesn't have time to consider a surprising idea for longer than a few seconds.
      • After that they just give up and say "Screw this inscrutable noise I have important things to do."
    • That means that multi-ply ideas are orders of magnitude harder for people to grok.
    • This can be bad if you need a lot of people to grok it.
    • But if all it takes is a small team grokking it, and producing disjoint value that is then obvious, it can change the world.
      • The multi-ply mechanism doesn't need to be grokked by others, if the result is obvious.