On Enabling Decentralized Development
As everyone knows, the best way to get someone to talk is to ask them questions.
I've always tried to do this since I've had challenges in the past with group projects.
What Happens
Basically, everyone gets excited about what we're working on, but then the flame sort of dies out. At first, I thought this was just because of self-interest or economic incentives. But I think there's more at stake; it comes down to the nature of collaboration.
People
People want to do the right thing, and capitalism sort of basically prompts that in the limited scope of thinking for a compounding better future. While the extrinsic numerical rewards aren't necessarily there yet, people still do things just because it would be a net benefit to society. For example, I was a "horrible entrepreneur" and did no market research when writing Nine to Noon because basically, who cares, it just needs to be.
Collaboration
While I only really did the local classes for that, I want to extrapolate to other group projects we've done over time. While most of these were limited to school in the non-compensated model, there are compensated implications which I'll touch on in my next episode of Decentralizing Capitalism. Anyway, the staying core challenge is that we go off strong at first, towards an inspirational vision of the future (potentially my specialty, I don't know).
Burnout
Then I normally have a very clear vision of what this future should look like, how it should function, what it should implement. It seems kind of like the challenge faced by large blockers trying to promote a more inclusive financial ecosystem. Well sure, something along those lines, but I throw the vision out and basically try to curve people into fitting into it.
Central Viewpoint
This is bad for a number of reasons, the first of which is that nobody is like a super duper all-magnificent master of any visions of sufficient scale. Like sure, you could argue Adam Smith knew everything and was perfect, but I think we can agree he pointed out some material problems with corporatism and central regulatory capture. These were problems that he definitely identified, but it took (and in my opinion, still taking) hundreds of years of continuing work from no central other person to fix these material difficulties.
So, Alienation
Basically, I would always push my view of how things should be onto others and then they would reluctantly implement what I thought up. When people are forced to work with me in a school environment, fine, this is okay for a start. But even then you get to a sufficient point where you can tell nobody else will work to get it past the 'good enough' bar.
Then Basically Doing It All
Which leads to the late-stage project management framework where I just do everything and the end product looks great. This is what happened, for example, in the BT thesis for Vlad where I wrote everything and he did the tiny section on possible options. It happened in a lot of other cases which are less public from middle and high school, alongside the GT ML for trading project using neural networks.
Quality
In the Tech example, I lead the charge, gave them data, and explained the rationale - and that was it. I was super focused on trading, did nothing, and the end product was just good enough. In other instances, I basically just do nothing and the end product can show that, whereas when I take charge it's great but I end up doing everything.
Sustainability
That's not good, it's not sustainable for any material project, and it's not how you have significant impact... just inefficient. Need to step back and take a little more time working on how we might collaborate and build something together, to keep involved. More to the point, it needs to be an expanding vision based on the collective wisdom of everyone working on the project to a successful mastermind.
Asking Questions
Which gets me to what I observed these last few days with the way I've been asking questions to the community, based on limited feedback and emoji replies (which are surprisingly useful in gauging sentiment). When asking obvious self-serving questions that introduce my own points of an argument, the response is pretty lackluster and doesn't really do much to expand on the discussion. But when I have an idea of what the best outcome could look like, then I ask more general questions that help others think around that frame of mind... success!
Next Frame
Not only do people generally come across to my thinking, but also there are real items like the current discussion on licensing for database data itself which are outside my expertise. We get everyone working on the idea in their own mind, and I'm sure someone more adept in that field will really shine when they give a coherent argument as to our best options. Then they can use the same process of asking what people think and presenting it as a question to the community.
Future
This ultimately seems the most collaborative way, asking questions just because you're genuinely curious as to others' viewpoints. Then sit back and just let them express their thoughts bonafide. Give them the time and space, all while you get to learn from their unique insights, background, and perspective!