Discontinuities create schelling points.
Discontinuities create schelling points. Moments when everyone can agree that something has happened, and coordinate some kind of action. Coordinated action is significantly more likely to...
Topic: schelling point
72 chunks · 52 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.
- schelling point appears in 72 chunks across 52 episodes, from 2023-10-02 to 2026-04-06.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 4/1/24 (2024-04-01), with 3 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with compounding value, network effect, and coordination cost, while by chunk count it sits between mental model and network effect; its yearly rank moved from #48 in 2023 to #22 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.
Before GUIs the computers booted into the CLI.
...hen the window manager created the potential for GUI apps. Suddenly there was a schelling point for getting started that less savvy users could understand. We're missing the GUI for LLM native software. Chatbots are the command line to get LLMs ...
It doesn't matter if you know the right answer if you can't show the answer and get people to agree it's right.
...e right answer if you can't show the answer and get people to agree it's right. Schelling points are often way more important than your own 'genius' idea. We have a bias to think our own ideas are great.
Finding schelling points can unlock convergence.
Finding schelling points can unlock convergence. They pop into existence naturally all the time. They are hard to find, like truffles in the forest. Often they require a cal...
To win, a side needs to stay coordinated, to act as one thing bigger than the sum of its parts.
...o act as one thing bigger than the sum of its parts. That's easier if there's a schelling point, a thing that everyone takes for granted at the center. Either a long-term ideal that is bigger than anyone and has been true for a hundred years. Or...
The emergent coffee shop culture probably wouldn't work without an addictive substance at its core.
...y to have at least some desire for the product that's sold, making it a natural schelling point to meet up, a focal point of a community.
Folksonomies allow open-ended convergence.
...ce. Open-ended systems diffuse by default. Convex. Folksonomies create emergent schelling points so they can cohere by default. Concave. This allows useful ontologies to accrete, emergently. A similar dynamic from Dan Bricklin: "Prototypes are t...
Schelling points help counteract the natural diffusion of open ended systems.
Schelling points help counteract the natural diffusion of open ended systems. They give a point for high-quality things to congeal and emerge. Folksonomies work beca...
Which will win, the vertically integrated tool or the tool that can use any model?
...t stuck with any of them. But it's unclear which of those offerings will be the schelling point that starts getting compounding momentum. Probably some existing company with a brand that is well respected (i.e. not one of the major engagement-ma...
This week I learned about a simple model that predicted the path of the ancestral migrations in Australia.
...isual landmarks to sight off:" In a big undifferentiated desert, having a clear schelling point is valuable to not drift.
A schelling point requires a certain sharpness.
A schelling point requires a certain sharpness. It needs to be sharp, not dull. That point is a nucleation site where the energy can attract and condense.
Ecosystems can sometimes "spend" decentralization at the wrong layer.
...t need to use go.dev at all--it has no special behaviors, it's just the obvious schelling point for the community to cohere around and it's great so why would you bother creating another one?
Three types of innovation: informative, transformative, and formative.
...ve innovation. Formative innovation must start small, as a little demon seed. A schelling point of a tiny viable thing that can grow at a compounding rate. If it has to be large to be viable, then it will diffuse or die before it ever becomes al...
Platform features that require coordination often can't be "solved" in userland.
...tly different conventions. This led to less interoperability than was ideal. No schelling point could emerge; there was a sea of subtly incompatible options. If you used an object from another framework it might have a subtly different lifecycle...
Fiction is easier to differentiate than the news.
...rve in media: as distribution friction declines, the hyper-niches and the hyper-schelling points thrive, and everything in between withers.
Email is the schelling point where all of our cross-origin use cases meet.
Email is the schelling point where all of our cross-origin use cases meet. When you visit a site or an app, you have to go to it. Email is where that service comes to you. If you...
Pirate testing is a method of creating interoperability.
...ht not even care to be interoperable, but if the community wants to use it as a schelling point, a pirate testing suite can help create and maintain alignment emergently.
Off-road teams are harder to get to do something coherent.
...t of the challenge going off road is there are no roads. So you have no default schelling point to cohere around as a team. Everyone pulls by default in a random direction, averaging to mush. That means that as a team going off-road together, yo...
The schelling point for an ecosystem is often just as important as the protocol.
The schelling point for an ecosystem is often just as important as the protocol. Git is the protocol; GitHub is the schelling point. The schelling point is where people ...
Coordination (within a team, or ecosystem) will take all the cost you're willing to give to it.
...t spending all of our time debating which Vite config to use." There's power in schelling points that everyone can agree are reasonable and good enough and stop spending time debating.