The Glass-Half War: Empty or Full?
April Fool's, The Optimist's Christmas + Learning Is Good, Actually
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Well, I am once again too distracted to write about Hype Deflation like I said I wanted to last week. But I promise I'll get there.
Instead, this week I was too distracted thinking about a few specific observations that I made that continue to shape my perspective on optimism and pessimism. And, increasingly, it feels like the culture war we're experiencing in this country in many cases comes down to The Glass-Half War: whether people choose to believe the glass is half full? Or half empty?
I wrote a piece over a year ago called "I Choose Optimism." In it, I said this:
"In the face of all the pain, and suffering, and corruption, and inefficiency that exists in the world, I still choose to be optimistic. I choose to acknowledge the reality that, in many ways, life is better today than it has ever been before."
That is me choosing a side. I choose to fight on behalf of the Glass Half Full Brigade.
Now it could be as simple as stating your optimism, and then being grumpy that not everyone is as optimistic as you. But that's not how wars are won. That's just how fits are thrown. Instead, we have to step back and evaluate the war games as it pertains to the Glass-Half War.
In that same piece on optimism, I also said this:
"I often write about consequences. Picking up one end of a stick will always entail picking up the other. Choosing to be optimistic is picking up one end of the stick. So what's the other? Optimism requires responsibility. It’s not enough to say “everything will be fine.” We have to identify what, within our circle of influence, we can do to help optimism along."
So what does our optimism require of us? My general thoughts this week came across three things: (1) tell new stories, (2) reframe existing stories, and (3) fix the stories that no one wants to tell.
New Stories: April Fool's, An Optimist's Christmas
The first thing that was too interesting to me this week was watching April Fool's Day play out. I don't know why it struck me so uniquely this year, but I think its because so much seemingly crazy stuff has happened in the last few years, almost every few days, that its so much harder to discern reality from fiction.
I remember when Theranos happened, and everybody talked about that. Then WeWork happened, and everybody talked about that. Today, it feels like there are 15 things at any given time that are insane, and no one is spending enough time talking about any of them.
So lets unpack some of the stories we all told when the veil was lifted, and we could tell whatever stories we wanted to for just one day. (And granted, these are just a few of the ones I saw, I'm sure there were plenty of other interesting ones).
New Media Overtakes The Old
First thing on the morning April Fool's Day, when I was at the gym, I saw a tweet that I briefly took to be real before remembering the date. It was from Litquidity.
I had seen all the stories of media layoffs and restructuring, from Sports Illustrated to TechCrunch to BuzzFeed to Vice Media, and on and on. So for a moment, I thought this was just another shake up in the media world.
Then, I saw a double down from Litquidity's media arm, Exec Sum that struck me as odd / harder to believe.
"Why wouldn't Morning Brew just spin back out? Is Exec Sum big enough to buy Morning Brew?" I kept thinking to myself. I really got going. I started to think about new media operations, like Pirate Wires, and how the Meme Lords are taking over.
Then I remembered it was April 1st.
Now, do I want Business Insider to go out of business? No. But do I want media to be revolutionized? Absolutely. So the optimist in me was eager for the shake up. Eager to see how things are changing in the way that people craft, create, and curate information.
New Tech Powers Old Tech
Next, I saw the CEO of Perplexity say they were going to power askjeeves.com. First, I clicked and realized that askjeeves is still up! Second, I was immediately thrown back to the early 2000s when I 100% used AskJeeves!
And you realize that we originally conceptualized the search engine as a butler, so AI chatbots and agents are just building on that initial vision! The more things change, the more they stay the same. But not in terms of being stuck in the past, but that we've been envisioning digital assistants for decades, and they're just getting more and more real.
Shake Up The VC Model
Final one I'll point to is Sarah Guo joking that she's going to put the rest of her fund in Nvidia and wait for AGI. This one struck me as funny because, in many cases, LPs would have been better putting their money in an index representative of a trend and going on vacation. Instead of trying to invest in Social 2.0, investors should have just put their money in Facebook. Instead of trying to invest in ecommerce 2.0, investors should have just put their money in Amazon.
I think all the time about this tweet from Post Market:
Am I saying Sarah (or any other VC for that matter) shouldn't invest in AI startups? Not necessarily. But my optimistic nose likes the occasional smell of a little asset allocation shake up in the morning.
Tell New Stories
I've often said this phrase, "there's a little truth in every JK." Something true is usually that special ingredient that makes a joke funny. The same is true with jokes on April Fool's Day. The same is true in the fantasies we weave. Finding the kernel of truth is what makes them special.
One of our responsibilities in The Glass-Half War is to tell stories that people WANT to believe in. I want to believe in new media, new tech taking on the mantle from the visions of old, new strategies for allocating capital and creating wealth. I want new stories!
I've written about storytelling over and over and over and over and over again because its such a critical part of optimism. And its a skill that so many of us are so very bad at. If we're going to win a war against the Glass Half Empty Annihilators, we need better and better stories.
Reframe: Learning Is Good, Actually
Speaking of the Glass Half Empty Annihilators, one of their generals came out in full force this week, which was the second thing that kept me distracted.
You can unpack the whole drama in the quote tweets and replies to your rabbit hole-addicted desire, but I'll just summarize super briefly.
She's mad because a startup called Mentava has a pitch deck where they talk about how they "claim they’re gonna have kids done with Algebra 2 in fourth grade." She did a relatively bad job of explaining the logic behind her outrage because, hilariously, many of her replies look like this:
So what is her outrage with *checks notes* teaching kids math? This is her thesis statement:
She has an entire multi-faceted tweet-threaded rant against, not just Mentava (which my kids have used), but against Replit (which I invested in) and Balaji's network state. So obviously I'm biased, but I can't help but feel like this is perfectly summed up by this meme.
I tried really hard to read the thread, and her myriad of posts... but it just feels bonkers to me. She cites a court case against Baby Einsteins, which focused on stopping them from making claims about enabling children as old as 9-months to read. Here's where an idea comes in that I've written about before when it comes to nuance:
"There is a clear relationship between having a dream. A successful imagination. And then leveraging will-power in pursuit of that dream. But here's the rub. We start to get into nuanced territory where beliefs and actions don't always easily align."
So it's true. In the pursuit of optimism, there is a fine line between an optimistic story and a flat-out lie. If Baby Einstein's is making factually inaccurate claims that have been disproven? Then yeah, they should stop. But for a startup that has a dream of helping children learn math earlier in their life, and is in active pursuit of that goal, that's not lying. That's dreaming. And, as far as I can tell, that's not a bad dream! Math is good, actually.
This was one of the best responses I saw.
Her Glass Half-Empty philosophy would have you believe that exploitation is a natural state. Any child who develops any skill will be automatically exploited. Why does she believe that? Probably because a lot of people do get exploited. But to this guys point, education is not a path to exploitation. Education is the path that breaks the chains. We need more education, not less.
Fixing: Don't Just Say It's Broken
I'll end with a point that I've thought about for a long time. When I was a missionary for my church, I was in a meeting with a bunch of regional leaders. Missionaries who were responsible for other missionaries. One set of missionaries were asking questions about why they had to set certain goals for their groups of missionaries, because it felt like it wasn't helpful.
A wise friend of mine, who was also in the meeting, said something along the lines of this:
"I would just encourage you to think about setting goals as a tool. Just because the tool isn't working correctly, doesn't mean you throw it away. It's worth evaluating how to fix the tool, and make it better, so that you can actually use it."
In response to that, our Mission President, Clint Topham, who was an older gentleman in charge of all of us summarized vey wisely in a way that I've added to "My Music":
“Don’t look to complain. Look to improve.” (Clint Topham)
And now, I see this principle all over the place. Every few months, I see another iteration of it on Twitter.
So I'll end with this. As we rage on in The Glass-Half War, it isn't enough for the Glass Half-Full Brigade to tell exceptional stories. It isn't enough to reframe the stories of the Glass Half-Empty Annihilators. We have to seek to improve. To seek superior outcomes. To find better solutions that move progress forward for everyone.
That is how we win. We fill up the cup. The cup should be overflowing with so much optimism and excitement, that the Glass Half-Empty Annihilators no longer have a leg to stand on, and can't do anything other than stand back in awe of the progress we're making.
Fight the good fight.
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