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Hello!
Welcome to my 50th newsletter. 🎉
Thanks for reading it. I’d stop writing if you didn’t. I truly appreciate your curiosity for the variety of topics that I cover. Thank you!
I was inspired by the lead designer of Magic, to rate my first fifty newsletters. The goal is to provide new folks with pointers to past goodness, and to remind everyone about the progression of things we’ve learned together.
The ratings are as follows:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: This is as good as it gets. The crème de la crème. If you're going to catch up on any old articles, these are the ones to read.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Quite good, but not perfect. Just normal crème.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: One of my bread-and-butter newsletters.
⭐️⭐️: Possibly a failed experiment. Possibly just boring.
⭐️: Not proud of it. I shouldn’t have clicked “send.”
Overall the progression of the first 50 newsletters is:
July 2017-April 2020 (#1 – #4): Sporadic newsletters. Mostly just an update. Focused on crypto, but always looping in systemic ideas.
April 2020 - May 2020 (#5 – #11): Weekly newsletters begin. Exploring post-capitalism. Visualizing abundance.
May 2020 - Sep 2020 (#12 – #24): Creating a theory of paradigms and then applying it to the events each week. Podcasts begin again.
Sep 2020 - Dec 2020 (#25 - #37): How cultural evolution works. Analyzing the US election from a sociotechnical perspective.
Jan 2020 - March 2020 (#38 - #50): Using memes to explain weekly events and showing the similarities between biological and technological evolution (ideas from my research for Terra Sapien).
Hope it’s fun to see the progression in full. Let me know if you’d like to see anything in the next 50 newsletters!
#1 Introducing “Creating a Humanist Blockchain Future” (July 2017) ⭐️⭐️
This was my first update after leaving my old job, Edify. It was written almost four years ago!
More than anything, this first newsletter shows how new I was to the concepts we now regularly cover in this newsletter: systems thinking, effective altruism, crypto, UBI, the attention economy, etc. I had just started using Twitter too.
The name “Creating a Humanist Blockchain Future” is SO BAD.
The update itself is pretty meh (too self-focused), but there’s some cool old-school content in there like RhysCoin, cryptoUBI, and The End of Aggregation Theory.
Also, I sent it with everyone’s emails in the “to” field instead of bcc. Oops! I gotta take off a star for that :)
#2 Podcast Season 1 and Pledges to Decentralize Power (Oct 2017) ⭐️
This is when I committed to a self-taxing pledge where I give 10% of my income to charity. (And refused to buy ETH at $10 or BTC at $1000 so I could be neutral.)
I also committed to interviewing 33% women on my podcast. My first twelve podcast guests were all dudes. There are a lot of dudes in crypto! This is better now. I’m less focused on crypto specifically and have spent dedicated time on D&I. More than 50% of my recent guests have been women.
I still like the idea of rich, white, American men actively committing to decentralize power away from themselves.
Besides Meditations on Meditations on Moloch, the update itself is pretty boring.
#3 ETHDenver and #ETHCommons (April 2018) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I was just beginning to experiment with leaderless hashtag-based institutions like #ETHCommons. This had proto vibes to #DeFi (see “Launching #DeFi as a Community” by Brendan Forster from Oct 2018). I was also playing in the “funding public goods in crypto” that great folks like Gitcoin have run with.
Co-founding and MC’ing ETHDenver was fun.
Given my self-taxing pledge from above, I donated $3000 (even though I only had $15,000). That post has weird things like my Wells Fargo balance. I was experimenting with hyper-transparency.
I moved away from Denver at this time too.
#4: Joining MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative (Sep 2018) ⭐️⭐️
Just an update post. Exciting to move to MIT to teach Blockchain Ethics, but sad to spin down #ETHCommons, my Patreon, and my in-progress book on meta x-risk at the time.
#5 COVID and Post-Capitalism in SF (April 2020) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I left MIT and moved to SF (right as COVID hit) to focus on post-capitalism. This is when I developed a weekly cadence.
Lots of good and lots of bad in this newsletter.
The good: Released my album Songs for 18 Pianos.
The bad: I thought it’d be helpful to give folks massive link posts, but quickly learned no one clicked on them.
#6 Sketches of Post-Capitalism ⭐️⭐️
Cool to see some initial sketches of post-capitalism anthropomorphized.
#7 Building Paradigms and Values Stacks ⭐️⭐️⭐️
My response to Marc Andressen’s “It’s Time To Build” was Building Paradigms. It does a fine job synthesizing the responses to his piece (on things like vetocracy) and presenting an alternative based in paradigm change.
This is also when I was writing a “fresh” article each week for the newsletter.
I was collaborating a lot with The Bento Society at the time and Yancey wrote a nice piece on how changing values can trickle down the cultural stack.
#8 Defining Abundance (May 2020) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I started writing about how abundance is created by technology. The first piece in this series is Defining Abundance.
I still refer to this framework a lot and continue to use it when thinking about misinformation.
#9 Making Trust Abundant ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Continuing on last week’s theme, the article Abundance: Trust looked at the shift from centralized to decentralized trust. It’s a good framework for understanding internet movements (I examine QAnon, BLM, and Bitcoin). But I don’t think it’s as foundational as abundance generally, so only 3 stars.
#10 The Abstraction of Money, Simple COVID Models, and Collective Ownership ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This newsletter is chock full of content. Abundance: Money does a good job synthesizing key trends in how money is created and the impacts of the Industrial Revolution. Successful Infection = [Exposure to Virus] x [Time] helped me truly grok COVID risk.
#11 On Grief: The Death of My Mom, George Floyd, and COVID (June 2020) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My mom died and George Floyd was killed. So I wrote about it: On Grief.
The image below still stays with me. Should I keep my mom with me or let her go?
#12 Marriage Counseling with Capitalism ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Of the last 50 newsletters, this is the piece I’m most proud of. It makes abstract concepts fun and Audra’s illustrations really help it jump off the page.
#13 Defining Paradigms ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This article gives the underlying theory behind the fun illustrated piece from the week before. Paradigms are too abstract. This article clarifies them.
#14 Roote, The Rhys Show, and Patreon (July 2020) ⭐️⭐️
This is mostly an announcement post to shill my new school (Roote), my podcast, and my Patreon.
At the time, I had no idea if Roote was going to work. I’m glad it did!
#15 How Frontier Movements Embody the Roote Paradigm ⭐️⭐️
This article isn’t great. I fall into a trap of categorizing things without providing a narrative. On the positive side, I share some meaningwave songs.
#16 How to Live a Meaningful Life ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I still come back to this article. It helps me think about how religion creates meaning and also how my secular life can self-generate it.
#17 Roote Fellowship Overview ⭐️⭐️
This is when I started to release open-source videos of the Roote lectures, starting with the overview. It’s mostly a vocal explanation of the previous articles, so nothing truly new.
#18 How to Think in Systems (Aug 2020) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Week 1: How to Think in Systems, Understanding Paradigms, and The Roote System.
From Roote fellows and other folks, I’ve heard these lectures are helpful to understand systems thinking.
Nothing to see here. Just asking for feedback…which was helpful! My readers (you!) told me to connect my abstract theories to concrete current events more.
#20 Reimagining Capitalism, 2+2=5, and QAnon ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Podcasts, more Roote lectures, and connecting the theory to current events like QAnon.
By this point I had really found my stride with an overview, links (but not 100x), jobs, events, and music.
#21 Complexity in wildfires, needs vs. wants, and 公德心 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Connecting complex adaptive systems to wildfire management in California. Connecting language to collectivism vs. individualism. More Roote lectures.
#22 microCOVIDs, WAP, and DeFi fair launches ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
microCOVID launched at this time. Yay! I didn’t have a huge hand in it, but helped some. It’s been cool to see it grow and be helpful for folks.
Also, I wrote an article this week: Does WAP Empower or Objectify Women? WAP is a good way to understand Coherent Pluralism. It somehow became the top Google result for this debate and has been viewed well over 5,000 times. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#23 Biden Memes and Ironesty (Sep 2020) ⭐️⭐️
Creating Biden memes with my friends and exploring ironesty as a metamodern concept (through one of my favorite videos of the year, Cute House).
#24 Fires and OnlyFans ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I was depressed in 2020 for a lot of reasons (COVID, my mom’s death), but the smoke during Sep 2020 was top of that list.
#25 The WEIRDest People in the World ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is likely the best book review I’ve ever written. It shows the underlying feedback loop that set off the Industrial Revolution in Europe and created individualistic psychology.
The cultural evolution of psychology is the dark matter that flows behind the scenes throughout history.
#26 Probabilistically Prepping for a Violent Election ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I gave the following odds for violence during the election:
80% chance of a “clear winner” peaceful transition, a 10% chance of a “drawn out close race” peaceful transition (less than 10 deaths), and a 10% chance of this close race turning violent.
Five people died at the January 6 capitol storming and there were lots of threats at local election offices. But overall, I’d categorize the transition as “peaceful” (and still highly contested + damaging for democractic legitimacy).
For COVID, the 2020 election, and other events with tail-risk, I still think “probabilistic prepping” is a crucial 21st century skill.
#27 Remembering James Carse of "Finite and Infinite Games" (Oct 2020) ⭐️⭐️
Fine overview of Carse’s lessons, but nothing special. I’m not sure the best way to remember professional heroes that have influenced me and my community.
#28 Nacirema psychology ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This article was a fine overview of post-WEIRD psychology. Not innovative enough. It’s just explaining current trends in Inglehart-Welzel values and the mechanisms for how individualism/collectivism spread. I do think there’s something juicy here about post-capitalist individualistic collectivism, but haven’t fully formed that thought yet.
#29 EndSARS, new emojis, and self-taxing for paradigm change ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This newsletter is fun because it involves lots of reader interaction.
It’s also a concrete example: How #EndSARS in Nigeria displays our theories of cultural evolution and hashtag-based movements.
#30 Liquifi, animating capitalism, and trashing ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Starting to highlight work from Roote fellows. Starting to highlight how social justice activism repeats historical patterns of bottom-up movements. (How trashing in 70s feminism is similar to cancel culture today. “Relational aggression” helps powerless folks get seen, but is zero-sum so eventually self-terminates on the in-group itself.)
#31 Internet language and radicalized p2p tech (Nov 2020) ⭐️⭐️
I learned a lot about emojis from podcast guest Lauren Gawne. Also, I made my favorite image of this year in preparation for the election:
#32 15 Lessons of Networked Democracy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My takeaways from the election. Re-reading the 15, here are my top 4:
6.INFORMATION VACUUMS CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR DISINFORMATION
9. SHAMING INCREASES POLARIZATION
14. BUREAUCRACY SAVES DEMOCRACY
#33 Medium-sized lies and metaphors to be a good ancestor by ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Understanding medium-sized lies and how authoritarians/anti-science folks weaponize doubt. This was the start of me understanding how antifragile lenticular memes spread.
This podcast episode with Roman highlights a key theme of my work: how frontier ideas get expressed through new metaphors. e.g. How long-termism is expressed through new language like being a “time rebel.”
#34 Help me find a co-founder, crypto is anti-authoritarian, and digital public infrastructure ⭐️⭐️
Looking for Roote help and highlighting the rise of digital public infrastructure as new language.
#35 Words and Albums of the Year ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cottagecore! I do think that language changes are a good indication of societal change.
#36 Off-week, just enjoy TikTok's Top 100 videos of 2020 (Dec 2020) ⭐️⭐️
Top-notch curation if I do say so myself.
#37 Documentaries using deep fakes for good ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I think one way I personally add value is by showing how technology is used for good. This is a great example of that.
#38 Eli Pariser's digital spaces, Pixar's Soul has meaning, and mRNA vaccines teach us information theory (Jan 2021) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
With the new year I started to transition my writing time and energy towards Terra Sapien, so stopped writing weekly articles. Now the newsletter is more: highlighting learnings from podcasts, applying paradigm theory to daily life, and sharing some learnings from my journey with Terra Sapien.
This newsletter has all three.
#39 Martha Minow on forgiveness, why markets are up, and B117 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This warning on B117 shows some of the negatives of “probabilistic prepping.” I warn that spring will have an intense surge in the US. This will (likely) not happen, mostly because of vaccine rollout. (This surge is happening in Eastern Europe right now.)
Still, I think it’s good to prepare for long-tail outcomes that could be extremely negative, even if they turn out not to happen.
#40 Satire in the Information Age, post-capitalish communities, and microCOVID in WIRED ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Learned about Babylon Bee.
Continued to harp on the idea that QAnon and storming the capitol are the result of a unmet needs, especially the need for meaning.
#41 What the Russian protests teach us about technology, politics, and values ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Good application of this newsletter’s frameworks to Russian protests.
#42 GameStop, duh (Feb 1) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is where I start to explain the learnings I’ve had from Terra Sapien meme research to the GameStop meme. The internet-native memes (BlackLivesMatter, QAnon, Bitcoin, Gamestop, etc.) are finding ways to infiltrate our infrastructure. Watch out!
#43 Betsy Cooper on tech policy, ContraPoints on J.K. Rowling ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Learning about a) How folks weaponize “protecting the victim” and b) How antifragile arguments over semantics derail political goals.
#44 Lenticular memes, lots of jobs, and acapella music videos ⭐️⭐️⭐️
More applications of memes to daily life and the issues with signaling in US progressivism.
#45 Off week. Three cute clips. ⭐️⭐️
Cats, dogs, and humans.
#46 David Christian on Big History, $ESSAY, and new research on global values ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I finally started transcribing my podcasts and was able to share the ideas of Big History with y’all.
Plus, I made a cultural values gif:
#47 Little Free Libraries and movie soundtracks ⭐️⭐️⭐️
How LFL’s show abundance. I think this is a simple but clear example of abundance. It seemed to resonate with folks.
#48 Sarah Drinkwater on language in responsible tech. Also, the Grammys kinda suck. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Again, another example of how language creates movements. (Learning this time from Sarah.)
#49 Learning biology from the internet and VORP for everything ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Beginning to share my learnings from Terra Sapien research on things like the origins of life. (Previously, I hadn’t talked almost at all about biology in this newsletter.)
#50 This Newsletter ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Retrospectives are important!
Here’s to the next 50! Let me know if you have any feedback on what you’d like to see in the next year or anything you learned from this retro.
Thanks again! - Rhys
❤️ Thanks to my generous patrons ❤️
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