26 chunks · 22 episodes
...rricane force coordination headwind for it to be viable. Everyone just uses the lowest common denominator: WhatsApp and Google Docs. You might erroneously conclude that no one wants this… but it's more that it's not possible, so no one even th...
...in a way that is compatible with everyone else. That pulls strongly towards the lowest common denominator.
...ate to the same silo is the hard part. It's a massive gravitational pull to the lowest common denominator. Silos are by construction close-ended in today's physics of trust. The only functionality that can work with low friction within them mu...
... that you know everyone uses. This reduces down to WhatsApp or Google Docs. The lowest common denominator multi-user tools. In enterprise, higher leverage tools can emerge, because there's a schelling point of the tools that the enterprise req...
...o viable collaboration tools because enough people have accounts. Those are the lowest common denominator coordination tools.
..., at great expense. They have to do it for a market, and come up with something lowest common denominator that everyone in that market would want. Then when users use it, their data accumulates on the service provider's turf, almost by happens...
...tude. It used to be extremely expensive to create text, so we settled for a few lowest common denominator outputs. But LLMs are calculators for words. They can easily create mip-mapped text.
Messaging is a killer app for humans. And yet everyone uses the lowest common denominator messaging apps. When WhatsApp adds a feature, it's so rare and noteworthy that it's on the front page of the NYtimes!
A product has to serve the lowest common denominator of its user base. As the user base gets larger, that lowest common denominator naturally gets worse. This is the fundamental reason why t...
...ss them that the maximum users would use. That's inherently, and literally, the lowest common denominator. If software is expensive and has to be shared by many users to make it viable, you must get lowest common denominator software.
Excellent piece from Ben Mathes on Goodhart's Law and "Lowest Common Consensus". Why organizations tend to focus on a simple, obvious metric, and then over-focus on it. It's simply easier to agree what metric to use if...
...e thing that everyone agrees is an acceptable idea. ""number go up" is just the lowest common denominator of what you can get dozens of different people to agree to." If it's run by the logic of a spreadsheet, then the only things that can sho...
...nation is bad. It's both extremely expensive and also leads to bland consensus. Lowest common denominator, at great expense. Collaboration is great: upside generation, emergent results better than what could have been done individually. But it...
...e to be the generic, socially-acceptable-in-most-situations version of you--the lowest common denominator of you. That is the most average, boring version of you. We have fewer and fewer channels for truly private ideas in modern society, and ...
...big tent then it becomes diluted. To appeal to more people it moves towards the lowest common denominator. If it's too welcoming it auto-extinguishes by diluting itself. If the movement has too many purity tests then it auto-extinguishes by no...
... complexity, to appeal to those marginal users. Sanding down and aiming for the lowest common denominator is by definition bland.
...nd then building a thing they all would like… which necessitates aiming for the lowest common denominator. Once it becomes mass produced, it loses its soul. It feels less like human-scale creation for individual humans, but machined, efficient...
... user: to grow scale, these providers need to make their products more and more lowest common denominator, dumbing them down. Imagine a feature that would revolutionize the lives of a certain niche of people, e.g. TTRPG players. Let's imagine ...
...s to the mean. If you want to grow your audience, you have to get closer to the lowest common denominator. This is inescapable. An alternate way to express Ivan's Tyranny of the Marginal User.
...endar. A calendar that is good enough for everything and great for nothing. The lowest common denominator calendar. This is the defining character of an app-first approach. What if you could have a calendar display perfectly suited to the part...