[ExI] Fwd: Re: [mta] Re: Bitcion Moore's Law?

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com>wrote:

>  To me, how many people are willing to make an effort to 'canonize' their
> view, is a good indicator of the quality of their views.  Most people that
> haven't thought through things very clearly, aren't really very motivated,
> or aren't interested in other points of view, and they tend to discover
> they are full of mistaken BS, when they do think about it and see other
> points of view.  The tendency for the noisy mistaken, non motivated
> beetling herd to self sensor in this way is one of the great things about
> Canonizer.com.   So I'm tempted to think the same for all people with
> opinions they aren't willing to Canonize.  If you are the only one that
> thinks the way you do, why should i care?  If lots of experts I trust,
> think the same, then I should definitely trust you more and spend more time
> listening to what not just you are saying.
>

Careful.  There is a distinction between "lots of experts in the field
think this way" and "lots of experts have signed on to Canonizer.com and
expressed an opinion".

The primary distinction is, have they even heard of it?  If most have not,
then of course they won't Canonize even if there is broad consensus on an
issue.

A corollary is: do they think it is worth their time?  Canonizer does not
have a mass audience as of yet.  This is what I call the "inverse network
effect", as it is the short/bad end of the "network effect": when you have
a service that would be valuable with lots of users, it is not so valuable
at first when you don't have many users, and that itself drives away many
who would otherwise use it *regardless of how valuable the service could
have been*.  The exact turnover point varies (by utility even with few
users, by size of the field served, and other factors), but is typically
within a couple orders of magnitude of 1 million active users.
Canonizer.com has less than 1 million users who post at least once a month
(or at least once a quarter), right?

(This "inverse network effect" applies to things beyond Internet services.
For instance, it seems that 1 million people - and distinct geography of
some sort, preferably not presently claimed by another country - is about
the minimum you'd need to start a new country that would get recognized by
most current countries.  Make a serious press for countryhood when you're
less than 10,000 and you're just making things harder on yourself;
10,000-1,000,000 is possible but you'll be a minor player that many
countries won't bother acknowledging, especially if there's any controversy
vs. luddite norms such as claiming sovereign territory in space or
enshrining the proactionary principle in the constitution.)
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