Expand Agency
Scan for leverage points to identify force multipliers that accelerate change, then pose clarifying questions to solve problems from a rounded perspective and engineering solutions through first principles discipline.
- Critical Questions
- Critical Thought
- Critical Path
- Critical Mass
- Critical Velocity
Build systems that decentralize intelligence to distribute agency fairly.
Meaningful Progress
What does it mean to live a good life?
- What force multipliers are transforming the world?
- How can you maximize your leverage with these forces to create value?
- What will be the most valuable human capabilities in three years time?
- What are the most valuable physical resources today?
- What happens to fiat currency when items of real value are tokenized and traded permissionlessly?
- What problems do you have the agency to solve — who else feels the pain?
- Why now — what makes this possible or urgent?
- Is this a preventative solution or a cure?
- Who's paying — and how fast do they say yes?
- What makes this 10x better than the next best thing?
- What stops someone stronger from copying it tomorrow?
- What secret protocols do you know that others don't?
- Who do you need on your team? How do you make the sum greater than the parts?
- What's your skin in the game — and what will break you?
- How fast are you learning — and what hard truths have changed your mind?
- What's your distribution edge — how do you connect with those that matter at scale?
- What's the business model — and what does each customer really cost?
- If it works, what does it transform the world in three years?
- Critical Path — how will you recognise signs you are heading in the wrong direction?
- Is the risk worth the reward for the expected time and energy to see meaningful results?
- When everything of value is tokenized and traded directly, what narratives will combine to become the stable representation of value to society?
- Do you really have a choice? What are the alternatives?
Waiho kia patai ana, he kaha ui te kaha.
Evolutionary Patterns
When intelligent beings face systemic breakdown - where poor management erodes belief in foundational dreams - they tend to stabilize toward several archetypal patterns:
- Fragmentation and Tribal Reformation Intelligence doesn't disappear; it reorganizes. People break into smaller, more coherent groups around shared micro-visions that feel achievable. These become testing grounds for rebuilding trust in collective capability.
- Return to First Principles There's often a gravitational pull back to fundamental questions: What actually works? What creates real value? What can we prove rather than just believe? This manifests as a shift from abstract ideology toward empirical validation.
- Emergence of Alternative Systems New organizing structures arise organically - often starting as informal networks that prove their worth through results rather than promises. These tend to be more modular, adaptive, and failure-tolerant than what they replace.
- Individual Sovereignty with Selective Cooperation Intelligent actors become more discriminating about where they invest their energy and trust. They maintain independence while forming strategic alliances around specific, measurable objectives.
- Focus on Infrastructure Over Ideology Energy shifts toward building reliable, composable tools and systems rather than grand narratives. The emphasis becomes creating conditions where good things can emerge rather than trying to control outcomes.
The pattern seems to be: when top-down coherence fails, intelligence stabilizes through bottom-up reconstruction, starting with what can be verified and building outward from there.
Virtuous Cycles
Harmonize inner and outer feedback loops by seeking connections that improve flow and influencing meaningful progress towards fulfillment of potential.
- Dreams: Know the right things to desire
- Put conscious and consistent effort into clarifying intentions
- Ask why not?
- Know where
- Know why
- Engineering: Know how to create/get the things you desire
- Practice focusing attention on big picture and small details at the same time
- Ask how can this job be done better?
- Know what
- Know how
- Know who
Explore boundaries that define the meta of the matter to fill gaps and connect dots.
If you can picture it you can build it
The Inner Loop
All that we are is time in mind there is no value in choosing Doom over Optimism.
AI has made the world an open university. Blockchain has made trust a programmable element. Together, they've created unprecedented opportunity to build a better platform for future commerce that is open and fair.
Don't waste your time building another app that adds to the noise. Engineer better protocols that add to the platform. Enable people to connect with purpose.
The greatest determinant of happiness is community. Technology should enhance this, not replace it.
Positive Sum Games
Play Positive Sum Games: There will never be a more important time in human history to experiment with ideas than the next three years. Money is just marketing and credit follows credibility and culture forms liquidity, the games we choose to play are strongest cultural influence.
- Vertical expertise that solves real problems
- Distribution channels no middleman controls
- Access to data no one else has
No marketing strategy beats word-of-mouth from true fans. No sales pitch beats endorsement from trusted connections. The best coach is someone who just solved your problem.
Dream Big, Think Global, Act Local
Collaborative Culture
People don't want technology. They want happiness. They want connection. They want to matter. Crypto must evolve from being about technology to being about culture. Meeting in real life (IRL) strengthens social currency. This is how the first stock market was created-people connecting over drinks, building trust.
- Shared purpose that transcends profit
- Trust mechanisms that reduce uncertainty
- Incentives that align individual and collective goals
- Spaces (physical and digital) for meaningful connection
Technology should exist to enable good people to do good things.