What is the strategic staying power of our Google Accounts?
...nds of services. That would be a huge amount of fiddly labor. So it's largely a coordination cost moat.
Topic: coordination cost
42 chunks · 32 episodes
Topic summary
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A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- coordination cost appears in 42 chunks across 32 episodes, from 2023-10-02 to 2026-04-13.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 4/6/26 (2026-04-06), with 4 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with vast majority, schelling point, and Google, while by chunk count it sits between Saruman and downside risk; its yearly rank moved from #12 in 2023 to #21 in 2026.
Over time
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Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
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The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
Centralization emerges, naturally, because bilateral coordination is super-linearly expensive.
...cause bilateral coordination is super-linearly expensive. Centralization lowers coordination costs, and coordination costs are compoundingly expensive. Centralization creates a power structure at the center fundamentally, no matter what you do. So...
Asking for permission changes the coordination speed by an order of magnitude.
...t. You need to wait for the counterparty to unblock you. Sync points expand the coordination cost super-linearly. That's one of the reasons with agent swarms, dangerously-skip-permissions is so freeing. It's also freeing in human organizations, wi...
A lot of coordination costs inside of organizations are not about "is this a feature we want to support long term" but "is this worth even spending the time to think about?"
A lot of coordination costs inside of organizations are not about "is this a feature we want to support long term" but "is this worth even spending the time to think about?" LL...
An open system that has meteoric growth is the best.
...the best. As it gets more momentum, more and more others choose to participate. Coordination costs are high, but it's a no-brainer for everyone to join in. An open system that's stagnating is the worst. All the downside, none of the upside.
Coordination cost needs to be paid if there isn't a schelling point.
Coordination cost needs to be paid if there isn't a schelling point. Coordination costs are huge. Schelling points make it go from large to ~zero. All it takes is a po...
I was talking to a friend about an upcoming paper that digs into optimal organizations by experimenting with agent swarms.
...ue to humananities' foibles but just structurally and inescapably. For example, coordination costs go up exponentially for any coordinating entities, human or not.
There's an optimal amount of information sharing in an org.
...ormation sharing in an org. Too much is expensive, since there is a compounding coordination cost. Also, too much sharing creates a monoculture. Overfit, fragile. Too little information sharing leads to local maxima and lack of alignment.
Refactors that go for more than a month are always a disaster.
...on the plan with infinite patience. So you get 10x productivity without 10x the coordination cost.
A named milestone switches from default divergent energy to default convergent.
...that goal?" A milestone is a schelling point created by a leader to cut through coordination cost. A milestone is an assertion that "this collection of projects add up to more than the sum of their parts."
Markets emerge automatically where they are useful.
...ically where they are useful. Markets are extremely expensive. They introduce a coordination cost, and competition is, from the point of view of the individual, extremely costly. But in some cases, the ability to get components that automatically ...
Ideas that fit in one brain are an order of magnitude easier to execute.
...xpensive process. Once crossing the single-mind threshold you also start having coordination costs, which can balloon massively.
BlueSky moved a load-bearing centralized component to being run by a nonprofit.
...a nonprofit. Starting with decentralized systems is hard (they have significant coordination costs, and before getting PMF, coordination costs are death). But once you have PMF, decentralizable systems are great.
P2 features are ones that would add value, but will almost always be below the line of worth doing.
...ue, but will almost always be below the line of worth doing. Either because the coordination cost to build them is too much. Or because the feature isn't worth complicating the UI for the benefit of only some users. The line gets higher the larger...
Quilting point: a robust, flexible join point between two systems.
...in their development. Being able to separate subcomponents' development reduces coordination costs super-linearly.
The principal agent problem largely goes away if everyone is a clone of each other.
...oblem largely goes away if everyone is a clone of each other. A worker bee. The coordination cost goes away because it's no longer a swarm. But is it possible for that non-swarm intelligence to be resilient and adaptive enough? If everyone is a cl...
The thing that makes companies hard to run is not CEOs being smart enough, it's coordination cost.
The thing that makes companies hard to run is not CEOs being smart enough, it's coordination cost. Coordination cost scales at a super-linear rate, but intelligence in an individual scales at linear rate.
Decentralization has significant coordination costs.
Decentralization has significant coordination costs. Coordination costs scale super-linearly. The benefits of decentralization are abstract for most people. They're more about downside capping of tail...
The biggest cost to creating a prototype is coordination among a collection of experts.
... have to communicate it with enough clarity to a team of people to execute. The coordination cost dominates the cost to create. But if you could have it one head, you could get away with significantly less coordination for a given magnitude of out...
The Coasian Floor for a massive scaled company is huge.
...up, the scale of the downside goes up. But also as the company gets larger, the coordination cost gets super-linearly higher. That means that as the amount of usage scales, the Coasian Floor of a feature goes up at an accelerating rate. That means...