Minimum Viable Personality (2011)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06yy88tLWlg

Maybe at a certain age when one is full of naivety, that is true. But at this point, I prefer products that are stable and work well, even if they are a bit "boring". This is not limited to tech: no amount of marketing is going to convince to prefer a thoughtless but glitzy cafe than a cozy one where I am made to feel comfortable through attention to detail.

I suspect I am like most people who have more than a certain level of experience in life, but maybe I may be wrong. The more I consume various products, the more I realise just how horribly bad most products are: insurance that barely works, software that is insecure, etc.

I wonder if one problem is that cultural/societal values change over time, and a company might not be keeping up with the times. And that may adversely impact the way a company is treating their customers. What do you think?

I could change that, educate myself about shoe materials and construction, but I choose not to for one simple reason: I can educate myself about literally anything and everything, and I've noticed in my life that where ever I look, there is practically infinite depth and detail, and so I have very carefully choose what to spend my time learning about. Shoes aren't it.

Instead I use heuristics -- I have the finely honed taste in branding and advertising that all westerners have, I can infer from the storefront and typefaces and colors on the box what range of quality a given pair of shoes is. From there I have a manageable selection of like 10 types of shoes I can look at, and from there 3 that I like the look of that I can try on. Occasionally I get burned--shoes that my branding intuitions say should be adequate quality for the price turn out to be shitty. But mostly I get this right and end up with shoes that I like.

A shoe expert has a whole different process, I'm sure. They are in the know about the latest construction trends and who is using them, and know how to source them.

Similarly, when you and I buy a computer we can meaningfully distinguish the details of the hardware we're considering, so we do. But most people can't. They have to use branding heuristics. And you know what? I think they are mostly fine. If someone who knows nothing about computers buys a Dell to check their email because they seem basic and reliable, they are going to do fine for the most part.

And for Apple, "people can change the world" isn't the real message. The real message is the thousands of microscopic heuristics that fire when a product brands using high concepts and slick design. They add up to basically "this is a product I am paying extra for, it will be better than most other things on the market but not exactly value for money, and the support on it will be extra good." Which is a heuristic that basically holds for Apple products (although, recently...?)

So actually when I put a personality on my company I am choosing something for my customers that I actually would choose. I'm building in the heuristics they need to make a decision without being an expert in the domain. And because I'm both not an asshole and don't want to deal with a bunch of anger customers, I am going to try to make those heuristics accurate.

Also, sometimes the symbol becomes the focus, instead of the actual underlying value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ

As always the rare, incredible threat dominates our minds so much more than the mundane everyday threat.

It can also more easily go viral. Here's how ordinary, regular people can help. When people start being extreme and a bit divorced from reality and engaging in violence, unsavory almost-violence, and untruthful agenda pushing, people need to call it out, and also call it out from their own sides. It's a failure of calling out one's own side which reads as tacit approval and most strongly gives the false impression to others that the extreme represents the median. Understanding this is one key to understanding why the views of reality diverge so strongly between groups in society in 2019. The tricky part of this, is that to be able to do this, you have to poke your head out of your "side's" information bubble. (If you think your side is 100% in the right, you're not poking hard enough!)

There are forces in society who claim to be championing human rights, but then throw out fundamentals like due process, paint entire groups with a broad brush based on surface characteristics, and engage in the same sort of tactics that the Westboro Baptist Church and the people in the past who tried to exclude Jewish people, blacks, and homosexuals from the mainstream and most valuable parts of society. It's just harder to see, if it's being done on behalf of your own "side."

The real conflict in 2019 is the mainstream vs. the extremes. The extremes actually don't have the same values as the mainstream. The extremes have the advantage of stealth, by re-framing everything in terms of "us vs. them." What they really want is to create more outrage to roll the dice and increase their own power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Stop believing so much in symbols.

Start "following the money." Start examining what's happening in terms of how media uses a basic emotion like outrage to go viral. Who benefits?