Story: 7
Tuesday, 25 July 2017
Coase’s Limits
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Dimensions trap us. Once you’re in a world, it becomes hard to leave. There is always more to see. There is always the illusion that just around the corner, something awaits; some wonder unseen, some secret undiscovered, some promise fulfilled — so there is a staying power. This tempting of curiosity keeps us moving in a direction; provides an inertial captivity.
Nowhere is this effect more evident than in academia. Once you become a historian, you become ever more specialized. Perhaps you begin with a survey course of world history, and then with a survey of ancient history, and then with a survey of Ancient Greece, and then with a survey of the Classical Period, and then with a survey of Athens in the Classical Period, and then with a survey of the Peloponnesian War, and then with a survey of Pericles, and soon you become a scholar of that one man —which by definition makes you less than that man — you are stuck; that is, you are a specialist.
To validate your worth, you contribute endlessly to an inverted pyramid of scholarship, by which lesser scholars comment on greater scholars, that is, earlier scholars, who are in turn lesser than those whom came before, until we arrive at the original scholar — Thucydides — who studied the original man — Pericles. And yet Thucydides, in being a scholar, was not “less than that man”, for he did not study merely Pericles, but all men of his time — and indeed, looked both ahead to the future and behind to the past for inspiration — attempting to capture events for posterity, attempting to grasp the vast sweep of history, attempting to sum it up to his satisfaction, attempting to divine its meaning and message, so that its lessons may be applied. Nor was he a scholar alone, but a general and a statesman in his own right; fully participating in his times.
Why does Thucydides write? Thucydides writes with the urgency of one who must know, of one who was there, of one who must pass on the torch of knowledge before death takes him.
In contrast, our modern scholar is trivial to the point of irrelevance. Why does the modern scholar write? To get tenure, to be peer-reviewed, to add another layer of commentary to the inverted pyramid — which heaps commentary on commentary on commentary on commentary on commentary on the original source — that is, the one who cared. The original movement is dynamic, it has a pulse. Its derivative functions care progressively less. They know they are not changing the world with yet another commentary on Thucydides.
Our universities, entrusted with passing on the torch of Civilization, produce generation after generation of apparatchik, specialists dealing in trivia — growing these monstrous inverted pyramids. They don’t quite remember how they got there. They were just following the path set out before them. Where did we go wrong?
The dimension of commentary grows and grows; trapping us. Is it true that there is nothing to be gained by yet another commentary? No, there is not nothing to be gained. There is something to be gained. Something is said with every generation, every layer of commentary. But net-nothing is said. The something that is said is overwhelmed by the nothing that is said. The something is small, the nothing is large.
In other words, there is always something to be gained by further specialization, further movement in a direction — but the gains are quickly overtaken by the costs. What are the costs? Not just the cost of the scholar’s salary and the overhead of the university that harbors him, nor of the peer-reviewed journals, nor of the other scholars of triviality that are his peers, nor of the hours spent reading and writing, nor of the data it ultimately takes up in some server. No — the overwhelming cost is its irrelevance to Civilization — for it is not made relevant. It is trapped in academia, and it will never be read, it will never change the way we think and speak and do, shaping neither our being nor becoming.
Some modern scholars, seeing this, have taken to becoming popularizers. Their fellow scholars envy them, loathe them and deride them for it. Popular scholarship is not considered “serious”. I would have to agree. The watering down of thought does not solve the problem of irrelevance. The problem is more fundamental than that.
Who is the modern scholar? By way of the thinking above, we see that the modern scholar is not a scholar at all, in the sense that he or she has ceased to be a scholaris, that is, a student. The modern scholar is a pretender to authority in such a narrow crustaceous form of “correctness” as to be worse than an apparatchik at say, a law firm or an accounting firm or a government agency. The modern scholar is more concerned with dates and footnotes, grammatical and political correctness, with “evidence”, by which he means authorities that will vouch that his thinking is unoriginal and safe, and with pedigree — association with a university and publication that will give him prestige — than with learning.
What drives the student to learn? The felt urgency of truth — to grasp the eternal form of it, to incarnate it in time, that is, to make progress, to move forward into the future, towards the eternal form. That is what compels Pythagoras to worship triangles until their secrets open before his mind. He opens himself to them — body, mind and soul — and they open to him.
One cannot surpass a Pythagoras or a Euclid merely by studying them and then attempting to extend their works. One dos not become a Euclid by studying a Euclid. The Elements sprung from the mind of an active thinker. What is unthought in The Elements, what is unsaid, and which the scholaris must learn, is the essence of geometry. That is, the tao of geometry.
From Kerr’s Japan:
As the Chinese monk Lin-chi, founder of Rinzai Zen, lay dying, his disciples tried to reassure him by saying, ‘We will pass your wisdom on to future generations.’ ‘Then all is lost,’ cried Lin-chi. ‘My teachings will die with you, a pack of blind mules!’
What is meant by this? Lin-chi learns from the source. If Lin-chi’s students learn from Lin-chi, instead of from the source, they will never surpass Lin-Chi, and Lin-chi’s teachings will never come alive.
What is this source? What do we learn from? We learn from nature. But not from the individual things in nature, but from the systems and patterns we see between things. We must penetrate through to understand the essence — the story that is being told. Just as Darwin did not see merely the finches, but the pattern across the finches; and not merely the pattern, but the essence of the pattern — and thus he saw evolution. By the same procedure, the scholaris is to learn from all things.
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
This is the first teaching of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. In returning to this, we have gone very far back, to an ancient source — and that source is pointing us still further back, into this “Darkness within darkness”.
What Lao Tzu is letting us learn is that same insight demonstrated by Raphael in The School of Athens. Plato is pointing up, towards essence, towards the Tao, towards the Forms, towards the “Darkness within darkness”, towards “the mystery”, and Aristotle is pointing downwards, towards “the manifestations”, the dimensions, the specializations.
Aristotle did not let these dimensions trap him, because he knew the source from which they arose. Aristotle was a polymath — he was a true scholaris, a learner of everything, a seeker of the deep patterns and connections between things. Thus he was able to move seamlessly from rhetoric to logic, from physics to metaphysics, biology, psychology, ethics and so forth. Aristotle is the father of sciencia, not of any one science — for he was pursuing a universal and incarnate understanding.
It is almost as if he was asking: How shall we unfold the destiny of all disciplines into time? As we uncover the secrets of these crafts, where do they lead us — to what end — and how are they connected?
Aristotle was a polymath. What is a polymath, a πολυμαθής? It means one who has learned much. It comes from polús, many, and máthē, learning. One who learns many, one who has learned much of many things. One who has taken upon himself to learn everything about everything — to penetrate to the essence of things.
When confronted with phrases like “Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding”, a modern scholar cringes. This sounds like superstition, or, at best, a spiritualized poetic language that should be abandoned in favor of plain language. In our chronological snobbery, and our dimensional snobbery, we suppose that our language is best, and that this language is imprecise.
What if this language is precise? Dimensions are expanding. What are they expanding into? Space — an endless darkness that receives expanding matter and energy. Space is Darkness within darkness. Where do dimensions come from? They come from a Big Bang — an original explosion. What came before that? A singularity, a Black Hole, a Darkness within darkness. What is the gateway to all understanding? The gateway to all understanding is both looking down, that is looking out into the frontier — to see the dimension expanding into space — and looking up, that is looking back to the Alpha, the beginning — to see where the dimension came from — and looking forward until the very end of time, the Omega — and seeing where things may end up.
What might a true scholar of history look like? A scholaris of history urgently seeks to know what history means —what is the story? What is the story of time? What is the story of humankind? What is the story of species? Of the planet? Of the solar system, galaxy and universe? What are all of these stories and how do they relate together?
A scholaris of history is confronted by the vast sweeps of history and does not have time for footnotes. Because the scholaris is not a fool, the scholaris realizes that his life is very short, that the vast amount of books that have been written, the vast size of the encyclopedia — makes it impossible for him to both specialize and to seek and apply the truth.
Not every scholar is called to the same truth — perhaps some scholars are truly called to a narrowly specialized truth. But even in that, for a scholar to be called to a narrowly specialized truth, the scholar would have to have at the very least an intuitive sense for why it matters, why it urgently desires to be learned — what its significance is in the grand story.
Hölderlin:
We are a sign that is not read.
History is a sign that is not read. In what direction does it point? What does it mean? So concerned are we with the correctness of our history — that we do not attempt the larger gestalts, the larger narratives.
Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan:
The question is: what comes next? In ancient China, when the Mandate of Heaven passed from one dynasty to the next, the very first task of the new dynasty was to record the history of the previous one. Sung scholars wrote of T’ang, Yuan scholars wrote of Sung, and so on. It is only when a culture has been superseded that it can be summed up. Early Edo was exactly such an age: its artists, like Totetsu, were able to create works summing up the best of Muromachi. The current time is another such summing up. The very fact that Japan’s culture is breathing its last gasp is allowing artists of unprecedented genius to flourish.
When is the scholar? The scholar is always at the end of one moment, and at the beginning of another. Before the scholar can begin the new moment, the scholar summarizes the moment that came before. This is the urgent, felt need of doing history — this reaching for a gestalt, grasping for perspective. The scholaris reads the sign of history. Where does it point from? Where does it point to? Such a one is seeking the truth that time, that is, Chronos, has to tell.
The nature of gestalts is to be imprecise and even incorrect. As you zoom out, you lose resolution. As you shift your gaze from the territory to the map, you lose resolution, but you gain perspective. All maps are lies. This is Korzybski’s map-territory relation: “the map is not the territory”. This is Bonini’s paradox: a simulation of the world that is less than the world is not a simulation of the world.
So to simulate history we must abstract it, and abstraction introduces errors, that is problems. As abstraction increases, these problems compound.
Abstraction gains something and loses something. What is gained, what is lost? What are these errors, these problems?
What is gained by zooming in is specialization. What is lost by zooming in is coordination. What is gained by zooming out is coordination. What is lost by zooming out is specialization. Specialization is depth. Coordination is breadth.
Given a choice between the two, the scholaris chooses coordination and then attempts to gain specialization over time. The scholaris goes broad before he goes deep. For having once gone broad and seen the relationships between things, in going deep in one thing, the scholaris goes deep in all things.
In an age of specialization, looking forward to a future of specialization, it is a very strange thing to encounter a wholehearted rejection of specialization. Robert Heinlein, the science fiction author, wrote:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Specialization is both the universal standard, the aspirational ideal and the hope for utopian salvation. And yet, here the tao of specialization is being held up as antithetical to the tao of humanity. What, then, is the human being called to become, if not a specialist — a generalist?
No, the opposite of a specialist is not a generalist. The generalist is not committed to mastering any dimension. The opposite of a specialist is a meta-specialist; a polymath — one that is committed to mastering all dimensions.
The specialist is not to be understood as an expert in one thing. The specialist specializes in one thing — past the point of relevance; that is, the specialist is a specialist by virtue of being trapped in a dimension. Being trapped in a dimension does not make for expertise. Expertise in one dimension requires in expertise in all dimensions — for all dimensions are connected.
Specialization naturally leads towards hyper-specialization, which is where we find ourselves— past the point of relevance. The hyper-specialist is lost — does not see how dimensions connect, cannot take power from one dimension to apply it to another.
But the meta-specialist is committed to mastering all dimensions. The meta-specialist has found himself— can see how dimensions connect, can see who, what, where, when, why, how and how much he is, can take power from one dimension and apply it to all dimensions, and vice-versa.
How does the meta-specialist come into being? The generalist is not committed to mastering any dimensions; that is, the generalist is not committed to anything. The meta-specialist is committed to mastering all dimensions; that is, the meta-specialist is committed to mastering everything.
What does it meant to make oneself a master of everything? To master everything is to to master every thing — but to master Everything. The hyperspecialist is a master of one thing. The meta-specialist is not a master of every one thing, but of Everything — that is he is a master of being a master… he has learned how to learn… he has a framework of frameworks… he has a system of systems.
The meta-specialist is committed to building a synthetic intelligence whereby all forms of intelligence are united into a single being. The meta-specialist knows he cannot possess all forms of intelligence — but he knows that he can possess that form of intelligence which unites all forms of intelligence.
The meta-specialist travels across all worlds, but takes care not to be trapped in any one world. His quest is to build bridges to connect all worlds.
The primary challenge of the polymath is to find leverage. What problems can I solve that make it easier to solve all other problems? What tools can I make that make it easier to build all other tools? By mechanisms such as these the polymath does not just learn different specializations, but learns to specialize in specialization.
Specializing in specialization requires an expertise in the nature of specialization — the tao of specialization — an ability to solve the problems that specialization creates. What are the problems that specialization creates?
Specialization creates this trapping problem. Specialization runs into limits, is everywhere hitting limits of irrelevance — and continuing far into irrelevance. Why does specialization continue past the point of diminishing returns? Because force requires expression. A dimension, having been found, is always giving us the gift of “Darkness within darkness” ; that is, is always receiving us, drawing us into itself. Not having anything else to do with our force that is productive, we give our force to the dimension in which we are most productive, even if that productivity is in itself no longer productive. Although in our hearts we no longer believe our contributions to be meaningful, at least with our minds we can bear witness to problems being solved.
Problems are being solved. Specialization is always bifurcating infinitely, creating more sub-dimensions, more hyperspecialization. Hyper-specialization is solving more and more micro problems. But in the endless solving of problems, a master problem is being birthed.
The biggest problem in the world is solutions. The biggest problem in the world is solutions. The biggest problem in the world is solutions.
What are the problems that specialization creates? Specialization gains create coordination costs. For every specialization gain, there is a corresponding coordination cost.
The biggest problem in the world is solutions because solutions create problems —specialization solutions create coordination problems.
Solutions have costs. Solutions have to be discovered, purchased, integrated, organized, maintained and upgraded.
These costs are known as coordination costs. Coordination costs are also known as transaction costs.
Coordination costs limit the exponential growth of specialization gains. If coordination costs could be reduced, these limits would be lifted, and specialization gains would be unlocked.
Let us abandon this thought for now, to rediscover it later.
In the same way that historians are trapped by their specialized dimensions, they are also trapped by the total dimension of history. History is in no way historical.
History has everything to do with politics, with philosophy, with religion, with science, with technology, with architecture, with the arts — history has everything to do with everything. Its essence is bound up with the essence of Civilization — the source from which all these sub-dimensions arise.
In the same way that the historian is trapped by a narrow micro-dimension of history, and by the macro-dimension of history itself — so too is an economist trapped by a narrow micro-dimension of economics, and by the macro-dimension of economics itself.
How did the modern scholar come to be? The modern scholar came to be by following the rules, that is, by following the way set before him. The way set before him was a way of specialization, a single dimension of movement, a form of “progress” defined by academia. And so in that dimension the scholar moved — from his Bachelor’s Degree to his Master’s Degree, from his Master’s Degree to his Doctor’s Degree, and from there to “teach”, and from there to publish, and from there to become tenured faculty, so that he may continue “teaching” and publishing. What is being accomplished by this? Commentary on commentary on Pericles — which Pericles himself would utterly despise.
There is no true teaching occurring. If they were teachers, they would have more to learn than their students — for that is what would make them teachers. The scholaris is one who seeks the truth. To acquire knowledge and to become a commentator on knowledge without the urgency of one who seeks truth is to become a net-nothing. Something is being gained, but it is smaller than the something being lost. What is being lost? What is being lost is the pretender’s humanity, the pretender’s soul — their labor is wasted, like a seed that never flowers.
The sadness is that in their heart they know it is true. The modern academy is taking a metaphorical selfie — Look! I am a scholar! I am advancing civilization! I am extending the frontiers of knowledge, truth — sciencia, techne, poiesis! Please like and comment on my peer-reviewed journal article!
What is so confusing about this phenomenon is that progress may be observed. It is not true that no progress is being made. More progress is being made than ever before, in the sense of hyper-specialization. More force is being poured into more dimensions than ever before. But that force has long since been irrelevant.
How many modern scholars realize this, and return to the tao of the scholaris? How many read the sign that is not read; and seek to solve the problem of specialization; to meta-specialize; to become polymaths; to build synthetic intelligence? Fewer than ever before. Indeed, so few — that each one, though he bears but a little candle, being surrounded by darkness, has become a great light. Let those who have eyes, see…
At last, we return to Bastiat’s seen and unseen:
For every policy, there are seen and unseen benefits and costs.
For every seen benefit, there is an unseen cost.
For every seen cost, there is an unseen benefit.
This is what sets apart the good economist and the bad economist, the good politician and the bad politician, and so forth. The ability to see the unseen.
To he who sees only what is seen, they see only “more progress than ever before”. To such a one, to complain about the state of progress is absurd.
And yet that is the trap. The dimension has trapped us. By it, we may progress infinitely, and yet never arrive. It is a Zeno’s Paradox. Further and further we go, moving by half-measures, making less and less progress, but still making progress — approaching the asymptote but never crossing over the threshold.
Although more and more progress is being made, it is being spread over a larger and larger circumference — and the distances required to travel to center are increasing.
As specialization increases, coordination limits. Having put down the discovery, we pick it up again. Let us abandon this thought one more time, and see if it will find us again.
Who is the scholaris? The scholaris is the amatore, the amateur, the one who loves. What does the amatore love? Learning. Learning, yes — but what of it? Learning points to truth. The amatore is a lover of truth. Truth, yes — but what of it? The amatore is a messenger of truth, an agent of truth, a builder towards truth.
Truth, what is that?
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
This is from Keat’s Ode on a Grecian Urn. When does the urn come from? The time of Plato and Aristotle. What is it? It is a sign that is not read. What does it say? It says that someday, centuries hence, that is, today — you will need this reminder. What is the reminder? The reminder is that Beauty is truth, truth beauty. To love truth is to love beauty. To love beauty is to love truth. What is love? Truth and beauty. What is truth? Love and beauty. What is beauty? Truth and love. These are all just faces of a single jewel, a polygon.
What is the nature of a polygon? It is connected, integrated. That is all ye know on earth, because these forms don’t come from earth. They don’t come from this dimension. They are like numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 — where do these come from? They come from a different dimension. What dimension is that? We don’t know. We call these forms Eternal Forms. They came from before the singularity, before the Alpha. Perhaps we will learn more of them after the singularity, after the Omega. They are part of the Darkness within darkness. To understand them is to pass through the gateway to all understanding; that is, the understanding of all — not the understanding of any or every one thing, but the understanding of all — the synthetic intelligence.
But that is all we know on earth — all we know on earth. What is all we know on earth? All we know on earth is the synthetic intelligence of earth.
But that is all we know on earth. This is the mystery from which the manifestations arise. So our pursuit of truth is bounded. I cannot claim to know the secret. For the tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao. The synthetic intelligence that can be built is not the Ultimate Intelligence.
Then does this mean that the scholaris has come to the end of his quest? No, this is not the end. This is just a pause, a limit, in the pursuit of higher Truth, capital T. The quest is not complete. For there is so much to know and to do on earth, there are many lower truths, lowercase t. So from Plato is birthed Aristotle. Finding our limit above, we seek our limit below.
What is the limit we find below? Aristotle gives birth to sciencia and sciencia contains all the dimensions of truth pursuit. One of these dimensions is history and within history there are practically infinite sub-dimensions. Our bureaucratic-industrial complex manufactures specialists to pursue these sub-dimensions. What have they accomplished? A nothing greater than their something. The limit we find below is specialization. This is not the way.
Having put this thought down a second time, it finds us again on the way — a third time it finds us. The biggest problem in the world is solutions. The limit we find everywhere is that solutions have costs; specialization gains runs into coordination limits, until they are erased — further gains, though still gains, become irrelevant.
Seeing this, the scholaris may seek to become a polymath, pursuing the way of Aristotle, giving himself to many dimensions: giving himself to history, to politics, to ethics, to literature, to mythology, to economics, to technology, to business, to leadership and so forth.
In so doing, the scholaris is bound to encounter frustration and resistance. Frustration because in all of these dimensions he will find many things of interest, many opportunities to explore further, and he will constantly be saying “no”. Resistance because in rejecting specialization, he will in turn be rejected by specialists.
The scholaris encounters frustration. What is frustrating is to constantly be entering and exiting dimensions. This means constantly saying “no”, even though there is further progress to be made. How does the scholaris know when to say “no”, when to leave, when to say “I have seen enough for now?”
The scholaris is looking for diminishing returns. When investing more time in understanding the subject results in less units of understanding in that subject, it is time to leave. But usually, before there is diminishing returns in this host dimension, there is diminishing returns in the meta dimension: when understanding one subject ceases to yield benefits in understanding all subjects — it is time to leave.
But the scholaris is saying “yes” just as often as he is saying “no”. To exit one dimension is to enter another. The scholaris is following his curiosity — when he sees a connection, a leap, he takes it. And in taking it, he exits the previous dimension and enters a new dimension. In so doing he is building a bridge, a synapse, a gateway between dimensions, a secret doorway between worlds.
The scholaris encounters not just frustration, but resistance. Where does this resistance come from? The resistance comes from “the system”.
A scholaris is what the Chinese would call a hogai — a scholar or artist who works outside official systems. Another way of understanding a hogai is someone who operates outside of any one dimension, but rather operates across dimensions. A hogai is a free thinker.
What does it cost to be a free thinker today? I am friends with many thinkers who are not free thinkers. They are afraid to speak their mind. They are afraid to write. They are afraid to publish. As a result of their silence, they cease to be free — they have surrendered their freedom. And they cease to be thinkers; for it is very hard to think and remain silent. Thinking moves us to express. To think freely is to let the mind roam, to let it follow its thoughts to their natural conclusions, even if those conclusions overturn your previous beliefs, or worse, beliefs that your friends, family, company and society take to be unquestionable truths.
If this is a free country, that protects freedom of speech and thought, which we hold to be sacred, which people have lived and died to protect — then I should under no circumstances surrender my freedom of speech and thought. And yet I know specialists, managers, executives and even CEOs who are “afraid of their boss”. It is funny to meet a CEO who is “afraid of his boss”. Because everyone else in the company is afraid of the CEO. But the CEO is just as, if not more afraid. The CEO is not just afraid of his Board Of Directors, but of his circle of friends, his network and society. I’ve found that CEOs, by and large, for all their courage in some dimensions, are usually cowards when it comes to speaking their mind, and thinking free thoughts.
What have we traded our freedom of speech and thought for, exactly? It is not true that we have traded it just for money. More than money, we have traded it for acceptance. Ostracism is an unspoken fear. And we want to be attractive, we want admiration and respect, more than we will admit.
The most intense resistance that the scholaris faces is from specialists operating inside of the system. From the perspective of these specialists, the scholaris is making error upon error. The scholaris who is operating between economics, philosophy and history offends all three disciplines — economists, philosophers, and historians. For to coordinate across these three dimensions comes with the tradeoff of specializing less in all three. This is no fault of the scholaris.
In the same way that Heidegger says that “the unthought” is the greatest gift in a thinker’s thought, these errors are the greatest gift of the scholaris. For although the scholar is making errors across three dimensions, the scholaris is achieving a fourth dimension that unites all three. And if he achieves that fourth dimension well, he makes the minimum number of errors in the other three. These errors are not just unavoidable, they are an almost mathematical bi-product of the union.
Unable to see the substantive achievement, the specialists do see the errors — and they criticize them. The scholaris does not have much time for “scholarly criticism”, for he is too busy traveling to, understanding, and uniting all worlds. But the specialist, resident of one world, sees him as an intruder, and becomes hostile.
Why does the specialist feel so threatened? The specialist is the insecure Queen constantly asking, Mirror, Mirror, who is the fairest in all the land? Being the “fairest” justifies the existence of the specialist.
For the specialist’s ego is tied up with the standards of the specialization — should those standards erode, the specialist has no means by which to prove his value, and redeem his sunk costs. In his heart, the specialist feels the emptiness of his net-nothing contribution, and yet the standards of his specialization measure his contribution as positive, which he has worked very hard for. Therefore, the specialist is constantly threatening all entrants to his world — attacking them with these standards. Those aren’t the right dates! That’s not exactly how it happened! You are making leaps of logic! What evidence do you have of this?
Dimensions trap us. We have seen that dimensions trap us in academia. And we have seen that the scholaris, who is a hogai, who operates outside the system, and between dimensions — is a lover of truth and beauty who desires to understand and unite all dimensions. We have seen that the ultimate unity of the Tao eludes us, but that nevertheless, there is much to be gained in coordinating sciencia.
What are the other dimensions which trap us?
Our sports trap us. Never before has there been so many resources of health and fitness. There are more sports than ever before. And yet what are we training for? Every sport — tennis, swimming, basketball, yoga — is at war with all other sports. And yet what is common to them all, movement is neglected in a dimension unseen.
Our entertainment traps us. There is practically infinite cheap high quality entertainment. Entertainment has achieved deflation faster than other industries. We are making Movies and TV Shows and Video Games better, faster, cheaper. One could spend all of one’s time consuming content or playing games.
Our society traps us. There has never before been such an open society. It is easier to find sexual partners and easier to make new friends than ever before. But having 5000 friends on Facebook requires 14 hours of coffee meetings a day, 365 days a year, to spend one hour with each friend a year. How many parties can we go to? Although every new friend, every new lover, every new event represents a gain, we also run into a limit — at some point these gains become irrelevant. Yet somehow we cannot quite escape the allure of just one more.
Our cities trap us. Southern California is an endless sea of suburban purgatory. In this purgatory, there is always more to explore, in the sense that there is always another coffee shop, another bar, another restaurant, another grocery store, another movie theater, another gym, another attraction. But as anyone who has lived the horror of suburbia knows — there is nothing to do. Very quickly one exhausts the categorical range.
And yet, some people spend their lives happily trapped in suburbia. There is enough there to keep them interested. Those who can’t stand it move to cities. But the cities are just bigger versions of the same phenomenon. More variety, more range, more specialization — but the same categories of experience.
The entrepreneur, that is, the undertaker, is the scholaris who frees society from this trap. The entrepreneur overturns this dimension — making war upon it — not just making it better, faster and cheaper, but building new dimensions inside of it, attempting to introduce new categories of experience.
Yet do we lack entrepreneurs? Surely, we don’t lack those who claim the name. But how many of them deserve to be called, properly speaking, undertakers. What are they undertaking to change? Every entrepreneur has a venture — a journey, a quest, an undertaking — and the purpose of that venture is what defines the entrepreneur.
How is it then that entrepreneurs, breakers of chains, who set us free from our traps — find themselves trapped? They find themselves trapped because they are pursuing ever increasing specialization. Because they are now hyper-specializing, they are moving past the point of relevance for society as a whole — and while the best companies solve problems and make profits; the problems they solve are incremental, and not exponential — even as we enter an exponential age.
The most thought-provoking thing about our exponential age is that we are still not exponential. How is it that in an age of network effects, GDP does not compound at an ever faster rate, Civilization does not compound? Except for software, the physical world I inhabit is fundamentally the same as the one I was born into — nearly 30 years ago. Indeed, that world was in many ways happier — for its physical dimension was newer, and its delights were still fresh. Now we have come into the grey maintenance of faded shopping malls, familiar enticements.
The question that the entrepreneur asks himself is:
What is the biggest problem in the world?
It is a difficult koan. It forces one to think. Many centuries ago, it was easier to answer that question. In the beginning, there were no butchers, no bakers, no candlestick makers. Then there were the first. That was an undertaking. That was an increase in specialization. That was a major moment of progress for civilization.
But today, what is lacking?
Since the Renaissance, the secular trend in the economy has been towards increased specialization. Entrepreneur after entrepreneur has undertaken to invent new dimensions and to turn over existing dimensions.
And yet it was not until the 19th century that anyone noticed, developed a theory, and gave it a name. The one who noticed was David Ricardo, the British economist. Ricardo came in the moment before Bastiat.
Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage explained how all players benefit from consensual transaction, that is, free trade — which generates wealth as a bi-product. That even when abstracted to trade between nations, all players benefit as each finds its comparative advantage. In finding its comparative advantage, each player stops competing at what it is bad at, it only focuses on what it is good at. As specialization proceeds, the world as a whole stops duplicating efforts and monopolies form.
Monopolies form. Monopolies are the natural result of specialization. Players gather force until they absorb all force in a dimension. Having absorbed all force in that dimension, they own that dimension. Owning that dimension, they grow that dimension — if there is a will to power, it is natural to grow what you own, to seek to increase power, to compound power with power. So they grow and grow the dimension, thus growing and growing their force, until…
Until what? Until dimensions clash. Conflict between dimensions, inter-dimensional conflict, is natural. Monopolies war. Monopolies make war against other monopolies. Olympians supersede Titans. But only one can rule Olympus.
Violence is not the only dimension of force. Although governments have a monopoly on violence, we have yet to achieve one world government. And yet we have achieved global monopolies in capital dimensions. It is possible that a single company will soon wield more force than any government. For currencies may be traded for other currencies at different exchange rates. And a monopoly in another dimension may be traded for violence.
So it is that governments are quite jealous of their power, and anti-trust regulations have arisen. But this aside, capital monopolies rarely make direct grabs at physical power — having a preference for indirect influence. It is easier for them to get more of what they want by competing for dominance in additional non-violent dimensions of force, than to compete for dominance in the violent dimension of force.
Monopolies consolidate an industry, and sometimes monopolies consolidate many industries. New industries are born and with them new monopolies. And yet it is surprising that instead of there being less and less monopolies over time, we observe that there are more and more. Should not even non-violent force consolidate?
Monopolies are increasing in power even as the number of monopolies is multiplying. This signifies the creation of wealth overall, as well as the explosion of dimensions. This explosion of dimensions perpetuates an equilibrium of non-violent warfare across capital dimensions, that is, industries.
Being an equilibrium, how stable is it? A possibility suggests itself: might there come a time in which a single monopoly defeats all other monopolies, consolidating power across all capital dimensions? Then, having won in these dimensions, cross over into the violent dimension — becoming the one world government? Then, having done this — being the one world corporation and the one world government — proceed to conquer what remains of religion and art and science and the like, becoming the one world organization?
This is a preposterous fancy. Or it sounds like one. But there was one who took it seriously. And his name was Ronald Coase. After witnessing the total war of World War II, Coase asked himself the question: Why does not a single company take over all companies?
In calling this into question, he was rewarded by an overturning of economic thought. Coase realized that hitherto economists had ignored the most obvious assumption: that markets exist. Economists had assumed the existence of supply and demand, had assumed the existence of commodities and prices — and had focused on their interactions. But economists had neglected to consider how markets form, and how supply and demand transact.
Markets form through discovery. Supply seeks demand. Demand seeks supply. Buyers and sellers must become aware of the opportunity, must become aware of each other, must gain each other’s trust, must agree upon a contractual mechanism, must transact. These are what Coase called transaction costs.
By way of transaction costs, Coase realized that companies cannot endlessly transact. There are natural limits to transactions. There is friction that prevents transactions from happening that should happen.
Within every company, there is a market for labor. This market includes the contractors, freelancers, vendors, products and services that the company hires that are outside of the company. And it includes the company’s own team and technologies. These external and internal solutions must be coordinated. The company cannot endlessly add on team members, for in so doing they are creating a management problem. Each additional team member requires training and management, requires coordinating with the other team members. In the same way, each additional vendor requires integrating with existing systems. And each additional technology requires syncing with existing technologies.
These transaction and coordination costs explain the natural limits which govern Coase’s Theory Of The Firm. They are best represented in this graph.
Sharing a graph like this makes me shudder. I wish it could be remade to signify its spiritual import. As it is, it looks very Cartesian. And yet, it would be more appropriate to see this etched into stone, discovered in a prehistoric cave — a shock to archeology. If we found such carvings, we would ask: Had ancient man discovered the secret of civilization?
This is such a simple, and yet such a powerful secret.
A paradox lies at the heart of our economy:
The biggest problem in the world is solutions.
There is an app for everything. There is a vendor for everything. There is a specialist for everything. If you have a budget for a problem, someone will take your money in exchange for a credible product or service that professes to solve that exact problem. So why isn’t everything perfect yet?
Everything isn’t perfect yet because solutions have costs. Solutions have to be discovered, purchased, integrated, coordinated, organized, maintained and upgraded. The more solutions you have, the less important their primary value is, and the more important these secondary costs are.
Restated:
Primary problems have primary solutions.
But primary solutions have secondary problems.
As the number of solutions increases, primary benefits increase faster than secondary costs — until they don’t. At some point in the curve, secondary costs cancel out primary benefits. After this point, adding more solutions doesn’t result in progress, it results in regress.
In other words, every solution has both a benefit component and a cost component. Even as solutions solve problems, they create problems. We call them “solutions”, because they solve more problems than they create. Or, more precisely, they have net positive value: we judge the problems they solve to be worth more than the problems they create. Their primary benefits exceed their secondary costs.
But this progress is marginal. That is, as we add more solutions to a system, the system keeps improving, until it stops. After that point, adding more solutions makes the system worse, or even breaks the system.
If there aren’t enough cooks in a kitchen, adding another cook improves the kitchen. But at some point, there are too many cooks in a kitchen.
Replace “cooks” and “kitchen” in this sentence with “team members” and “team”, and you have a hiring corollary. Replace it with “customers” and “startup”, and you have a premature scaling corollary. Replace it with “features” and “product”, and you have a design corollary. Replace it with “rabbits” and “field”, and you have a ecology corollary.
There are too many apps.
There are too many vendors.
There are too many specialists.
There are too many solutions.
Now that’s an interesting problem.
What do you do about that problem?
What is the solution to solutions?
In coming after Ricardo, Bastiat noticed something that had escaped Ricardo. For everything, there is a seen benefit and an unseen cost. Bastiat applied this to political economy. Coase applied it to the firm and the market. There are seen specialization gains, but unseen coordination costs.
After a coordination limit is reached, we should stop seeking specialization gains, because we hit diminishing returns. Making the specialization slope steeper and steeper does create progress, but less and less progress. Most of the progress occurs beyond the horizon set by the limit, and is thus unrealized.
And yet we continue moving forward towards hyper-specialization, because dimensions trap us in a Zeno’s Paradox — once we are in a trajectory of progress, we do not think to exit, but only to pursue.
Coase’s limits suggest that the are two ways of solving any problem. The first way is the vertical way. This is to create progress by increasing specialization gains. The second way is the horizontal way. This is to create progress by decreasing coordination costs.
The most obvious arbitrage opportunity in the world is to invest in horizontal technologies. Invest in lowering coordination costs, because everyone else is focused on increasing specialization gains — but they are stuck in diminishing return traps. Every coordination gain suddenly realizes gains that have already been made — allowing the specialists to cash in on gains long since won; allowing society to benefit from their expertise; redeeming what had been irrelevant, by bringing it into the light.
In Japan, there is a concept of un-useless invention called Chindōgu. An invention is considered Chindōgu when it solves the problem it set out to solve, but in so doing creates so many new problems that it is not worth adopting. Such inventions are paradoxical: they are not technically useless, but they are not useful either — so they are called un-useless.
Once you understand this concept, you see it everywhere.
Writers wrestle with Chindōgu when they seek concision. Is this point really necessary? Can this be explained in fewer words?
Napoleon faced an unemployment problem. So he paid people to dig ditches and fill them back up. Problem solved. But… Chindōgu.
Chindōgu is the defining trait of bureaucracy. We have all suffered the following conversation: “Why does form 23A exist?” “Oh, 23A is necessary to complete 23B.”
Startups are Chindōgu until proven innocent. Any product or service that creates net negative value may be described as Chindōgu. Although every startup believes itself to be creating net positive value, ultimately, the market decides that almost all of them are Chindōgu.
According to Schumpeter, this creative destruction is necessary. A restatement of Schumpeterian waste might be: the ratio of true innovations to Chindōgu is X, and indeed, the process that creates true innovation is mysteriously linked to the process that creates Chindōgu, so less waste should not be sought.
What is an example of Chindōgu? Today I spoke with an entrepreneur that is doing an X for Y business. The entrepreneur is building a marketplace for buying trucks on the internet. The entrepreneur might as well have been building a platform to manufacture trucks on the internet. This is hyperspecialization. There are already marketplaces for buying cars on the internet. But now the next adjacent dimension is being explored — and that is the truck dimension.
This venture may or may not succeed. But there is certainly the sense that even if it succeeds commercially, it is not of fundamental significance to the destiny of technology and civilization. It is hardly as significant as say, Amazon — which was the first marketplace to succeed.
In counterpoint to this vertical hyperspecialization, perhaps an example of a horizontal technology is something like Neuralink — something that would lower input costs for all players, improve interactions for all players, etc.
Horizontal technologies are overlooked because they are more abstract and more risky. But if they succeed, they tend to be much more valuable.
Neuralink, being a horizontal technology, lends itself towards meta-specialization. That is, it makes it easier to specialize in specialization — because you can cover more ground. It lowers input costs, switching costs, look up costs, etc. These are all forms of transaction and coordination costs.
But Neuralink in and of itself is not a meta-specialization technology. It just lends itself towards meta-specialization. This begs the question of what a technology that specializes in specialization would look like. What would a system of systems look like?
Invisible Technologies is my incarnate answer to these and other questions explored throughout this series of essays. These are the revolutionary claims the company is making. But the questions deserve to stand on their own.
There are vertical technologies and horizontal technologies. There are technologies that create power and technologies that control power. And then, there is Chindōgu.
In order of popularity: there is Chindōgu, then vertical technologies that create power, then horizontal technologies that control power.
How do you know what is vertical and what is horizontal? The distinction is ultimately as arbitrary as all binaries. Technologies that create power often control power. Technologies that control power often create power. Technologies that make gains in specialization often reduce limits in coordination. Reality is dynamic.
Reality is dynamic like the brain is dynamic. Specialization is like neurons and coordination is like synapses. Specialization is power, coordination is control. How can you separate them?
Inseparability does in no way diminish the significance of the distinction, or the importance of understanding how their essential relationship.
But certain technologies tend to be horizontal, and certain tend to be vertical. Technologies that increase productivity tend to create power, tend to be vertical, tend to result in more specialization, in more gains in a dimension. Technologies that increase communication tend to control power, to be horizontal, to result in more coordination, in fewer limits across dimensions. Very specialized markets tend to be vertical. But large markets, and markets as a whole, are horizontal in nature. They coordinate buyers and sellers.
Computers and companies and markets and governments and individual decision-makers are all analogs — that is, they all share something in common. They are all brains. They are all inherently horizontal, they are control technologies that coordinate things.
Brains, being networks, are governed by Metcalfe’s Law. Metcalfe’s Law is normally understood in the positive, in the vertical, in the sense of exponential gains. As the number of nodes in a network increases linearly, the number of connections in a network increases exponentially. This explains the network effects that protect a company like Facebook — the value of a network is exponential.
Yet Metcalfe’s Law is more significantly understood in the negative, in the horizontal, in the sense of exponential limits. As the number of players in a firm increases linearly, the number of relationships between those players increases exponentially — thus exponentially increasing coordination costs.
Coase’s Limits applied to an inverse of Metcalfe’s Law is the best economic explanation of the phenomenon of Purgatory. Civilization has expanded in every direction, and yet our sprawl is disgustingly uncoordinated. As society grows, both its ugliness and its beauty expands. And the ugliness increases at a faster rate than the beauty. Because Metcalfe’s Law penalizes lack of purity, lack of density. If a network is efficient, the efficiency scales. If a network is inefficient, the inefficiency scales.
As individuals, corporations, governments add solutions, they are overwhelmed by noise and chaos. As we add more solutions to any system — Coasian limits multiply, choking progress.
The biggest problem in the world is solutions.
And the solution to this problem is a solution for solutions.
That is, a system of systems.
A synthetic intelligence.
A meta-specialist.
Who shall make such a service?
Polymaths shall make it.
They shall be hogai, scholari — those operating outside the system.
Who shall such a service make all who use it?
Polymaths — it shall make us in its own image.
Narcissus —
Looking within, once more, reborn the human spirit.
How many specialists are trapped in the world today?
How many purgatories exist that are stuck in a local optimum?
How much Chindōgu is being created today?
It was the best of times,
It was the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom,
It was the age of foolishness,
It was the epoch of belief,
It was the epoch of incredulity,
It was the season of Light,
It was the season of Darkness,
It was the spring of hope,
It was the winter of despair,
We had everything before us,
We had nothing before us,
We were all going direct to Heaven,
We were all going direct the other way.
Civilization reveals to us an aspect of its polygon: its ability to move in opposite directions simultaneously. Towards ignorance and towards intelligence. This is the hindrance that ensnares us, again and again; trapping us, enclosing us within the prison walls of purgatory. Even as we move towards progress, it withdraws. The Tower Of Babel is the symbol of coordination costs. Our great projects are opposed by a force unseen.
Only by a force unseen may we be free.
