Rapid Idea Improvement

Quick tour of 7 negative effects of money printing 1) Purchasing power declines, we get poorer 2) Focus on the now instead of investing for the future 3) Boom-bust cycles 4) Picking winners and losers arbitrarily (cantillon) 5)Increases inequality 6) Finances the government deficits too easily 7) Favors industrial policy to be set by government instead of left to the market process

Some thoughts about the use of Customer Satisfaction surveys. Plus an alternative. Also check us out at: https://rapidideaimprovement.com

My attempt at summarising Bob Murphy's great episode on banking (mainly from the Human Action podcast)

Some ideas on how the typical debates about capitalism versus socialism go, and what to potentially improve about them.

How the Chicago School of economics will not arrive at the conclusion that central banking may be bad

How malinvestments (investments that go against the time preference of consumers but are undertaken nevertheless) are caused by monetary policy and how they cause in return a transition from boom to bust in the economic cycle

Decarbonisation can (and should) be evaluated in terms of how effectively it reaches its goal, or in other words, how well it solves the problem it purports to solve.

In the science of economics, there are different schools of thought, they all give different answers to economic problems how is prosperity caused in a society, under conditions of scarcity. Some schools will emphasize the role of government more than others, … Each school has a position on the relative importance of production versus consumptions to generate prosperity, .. also they have position...

We can experience different "states" when working. I distinguish 3 of them here: monotony, politics and problem solving. I argue that only the latter is fun (e.g. allows the experience of Flow to arise) and has the potential to cause progress.

Connecting 3 things: philosophy of (climate) science, the actual climate science and the morality of it (i.e. "What should we do about it ?")

Can we get out of recessions through government spending ?

Key concepts of Critical Rationalism: All knowledge is conjectural Realism Conjecture and refutation Fallibilism

What is the SSIA approach ? Why that approach and not some other ?

To sell is to create knowledge about what actions influence your prospect's subjective valuation most optimally

Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments.  It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting solely on a periori reasoning, intuition or revelation

What is induction ? The process of going from a set of observations to a generalisation See multiple objects with a characteristic X, all such objects have characteristic X The sun rose every morning already (every observed morning had the characteristic that the sun rose) … so the sun will rise every morning, so tomorrow the sun will rise again  “The future will behave like the past”

In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but by how effective they are in explaining and predicting phenomena .

Suppose you are a sales perons, and have a product that allows the customer to be 3% more efficient in his operations Why is just tranferring that knowledge to the customer not enough to make him buy your product ? You may be wrong There may be conflicting ideas still in the mind of the customer Knowledge needs to grow in the mind before it can be enacted upon

What problem ? “What can I do to influence the subjective valuation of my product by the prospect?” Why that problem ? You only sell something if the customer values your product more than its price (and more than alternatives)

Why is epistemology so important ? And why is it not talked about ?

3 concrete tips: Express ideas as explanations Say how an action will transform a situation or capability, and why that action NOT : subjective opinion about importance (loose actions / goals) Avoid positive arguments Arguments appeal to authority Encourage alternative ideas What other actions could lead to the same goal What other better goals can be achieved via these actions ?

“The fastest way to grow knowledge is to set up a "competition" between *multiple* ideas, all vying to solve the *same* problem”

Mistaken for multiple reasons: - You cannot be 100% clear about ideas - It's coercive - It's good that we have conflicts of ideas: only those lead to improvement of ideas

Sales is not easy, and all things not easy can be made fun. More on that later What is not fun about sales now Inherently disappointing : getting so many no’s for 1 yes’ We make it dull or frustrating in two ways by the typical KPI management  Discussions about numbers By throwing vague ideas around Customer is key / our products have value Can say that about everything at all times, it does not s...

Ideas/ knowledge can only change in 3 ways: Preventing them from changing: you secure them from changing by justifying their truth, by adding arguments to them that say why they are true, e.g. appeal to authority arguments. Subjectively adding parts to them (without critically investigating) that you feel are missing / or throwing out parts that you feel are not needed Actually improving them: you...