What matters most is positive impact in the world.

· Bits and Bobs 2/18/25
  • What matters most is positive impact in the world.
    • Often there's a logarithmic curve of principles to scale of impact.
    • Would you rather have:
      • A 99.99% fidelity outcome of your values, with a thousand users?
      • A 99% fidelity outcome of your values, with a million users?
      • A 90% fidelity outcome of your values, with a billion users?
    • To me, the obvious answer is the last one[zt].[zu]
    • 90% fidelity to important values (e.g. privacy, decentralization, user empowerment) is nearly an order of magnitude better than the status quo.
    • The overall impact to maximize is the differential fidelity to your values (compared to the status quo) multiplied by the number of people affected[zv].
    • If you don't ship a heavily used thing in the wild then it doesn't matter if it's theoretically perfect, it has no impact.
    • Align with pragmatic optimists.
      • They see the problem but see how to make things that aren't perfect but make concrete progress and get adopted.
    • Don't aim for perfect, aim for good enough with a glide path of continued improvement from there.

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